Herlock Sholmes: Not so long ago? Both the en passant and the castling rules date from the late Middle Ages. And the queen has moved as she does now since the late Middle Ages as well. Perhaps the only fundamental change in the rules of the game of chess in the last 500 years were the 50- and 100-move rules. I would call chess a game that's evolving all the time. In fact, I'd call chess a rock solid game when it comes to stability of the rules.

As for people playing the same kind of music - that seems to be more common than the other way around. There are more people who stick to Rock or Classical music or HipHop or Country than there are people that enjoy all of equally.

And you may find chess boring, it's still far more popular than any variant. There are no tournaments with hundreds of thousands of dollars of price money for chess variants. There are no players of chess variants known by the public at large. There's no regular mentioning of chess variants in newspapers.

And I bet that while the set of people who find chess boring is pretty large, I expect the set of people who find chess boring, but chess variants not to be pretty small. Most people who have no interest in chess have no interesting in variants either.

Personally, I find many chess variants interesting to play a few games in. But then the novelty wears off, and I never play the variant again. I keep playing regular chess though.

The longest possible game in Massacre Chess is 31.5 moves. This game lasted 29 moves. Is that a record so far?

rabbitoid: I first played at FICS more than a dozen years ago. They already had Fisher Random and several other "wild" variants, next to suicide and bughouse.

Constellation36: I've played a few more Ambiguous Chess games that you did. I'd say that promotion, or possible promotion is rare enough that this isn't much of an issue. And when promotion can happen, the promoting side usually already has a winning advantage.

I wouldn't call the game ruined because of it.

WhisperzQ: <sarcasm>Automove? Of course not. This being Brainking, you'll be forced to make your forced moves - after all, you might want to leave a message for your opponent.</sarcasm>;

Beren the 32nd: A somewhat easier variant (easier in the sense of calculating probabilities) assigns probabilities based on number of pieces that can be moved. For instance, for the first move, 8 pawns and 2 knights can be moved, giving an 80% probability a pawn has to be moved, and a 20% chance of a knight. After 1 e5 c5, white can move 8 pawns, 2 knights, 1 bishop, 1 queen and 1 king, so he has to move a pawn with chance 61.5%, a knight with a 15.4% chance, and there's a 7.7% chance for each of the queen, king and bishop.

Fencer: I don't think that regular chess rules actually forbid the king giving check - that would be a redundant rule: in regular chess, the only squares a king can ever attack are the squares directly surrounding it - but since it cannot be next to the opposing king (as it would threaten the square), it cannot give check.

But if giving check is not allowed, I would like to report a bug. In this game I played a move (6... d6) that emptied the diagonal between the kings, and it marked the move as "giving check". I do not know whether my opponent was forced to move his king - but he shouldn't if the king wasn't allowed to give check.

Can you give check with the king? Can you take your opponents king with your king? In normal chess, this is impossible, but in CCC, the first time a king moves, it moves as a queen, so it's possible to have a situation where one king has moved, and the other hasn't, threatening the other king.

The rules aren't clear about this; it's not mentioned in the differences with regular chess (that only mentions the king moving like a queen on his first turn), but such a situation is (obviously) not covered by the rules of regular chess.

In case Fencer wants to introduce yet another chess variant: chess-3

dicepro: can you calculate how many different placemet of 16 pieces can be on a board with 64 squares

That's fairly trivial. Not counting rotations and reflections of the board, the number is (6462605856545250*49) / (2^6) which equals 159708538424128885551360000. (You might want to turn of the stupid smileys).

joshi tm: Since the player in disadvantage has the swap option, the player in advantage should try to play those first two moves in balance, otherwise White will swap and probably win.

I'm not convinced by this argument. The advantage of black isn't in the first move, it's the fact that he has the last move. Swap rules work (although I won't say 'fine') for games where there's an advantage of having the first move. But in Cheversi, it's the advantage comes at the end.

wetware: That's the nature of games with a high random factor like Dice Chess or Behemoth Chess. Or even Logic, which you can also lose on the fourth (or even first) without doing anything 'wrong'.

There are lots of games you can play here where this cannot happen.

SKA: Mainly lucky or unlucky...did you read that one too. Yes, I did. That isn't "many many ways to win" though.

Did you read the game rules carefully.
Yes, I did. It doesn't list "many ways to win".

SKA: I think one kind of strategy is to kill your player's king fast enough to win.

Right, as opposed as the strategy of say, Logic, where the strategy is not to be fast enough to win. Sorry, but "achieve the goal of the game fast enough to win" isn't strategy - that's what the game is about.

As whether or not Behemoth has a mate, that depends on your definition of mate. If you define mate as "a situation where the player is in check, and the player does not have a move to get out of check", then, sure, Behemoth does have a mate. I don't really know how else to define mate.

Could you care to elaborate on the There are so many ways to win? Person mention a handful?

How many games have ended in a real mate? I won a few games where my opponent left his/her king in a 'check', but most games have been ended by the behemoth snatching a king.

What kind of strategy do people use in Behemoth?

danheg: If a player guesses the opponents code on his first move, how did he use his mind to figure it out?

As for the luck factor in Behemoth Chess, the luck factor is quite high. Higher than in any other game on Brainking. But the luck factor isn't any less on the third move than it is on the second move. Yet BKR is awarded if luck decides to kill your king on the third move, but not if luck decides to kill your king on the second move.

IMO, that doesn't make any sense. Either one takes the stance that luck plays a too high factor and doesn't award any BKR on Behemoth Chess - or accepts the fact there are games with a high luck factor and awards BKR for games that have a regular finish before the end of move 2.

coan.net: I disagree. Behemoth Chess is a quick game, and it can be over in a few moves. It's kind of silly to not count it if the game doesn't reach an arbitrary number of move. Even if that number is two.

And it's not just Behemoth Chess. One might get lucky in Logic as well, and guess the code in the first or second move. Should one denied a BKR change because of it?

In Behemoth Chess, it's entire possible to win the game in the first move (I did so in my second game). No other game on Brainking can be won without a timeout or resignment on the first game. However, that also means the game isn't counted for ones BKR. Probably because the game finishes before the third move.

Is this intended? Or just a side-effect of how current implementation?

nabla: Perhaps you find it quite easy to remember, and it probably would if you are playing in real time, but I doubt I would be able to remember that when the game progesses with one move per week, and I play 10 games.

nabla: An alternative rule could be is "if a promoted piece is captured by a friendly force, it becomes a pawn again". That would prevent Queen cloning.

nabla: I don't think you can compare Recycle Chess and Loop Chess in that way. It's much easier to get a bunch of pawns in hand in Recycle Chess than it is in Loop Chess.

nabla: Yes, I think that pawns should be able to promote, but I also agree that they can become too powerful because of the ability of dropping them on the seventh row.

Perhaps some compromise rule can work. Pawns can only promote if they either weren't dropped, or dropped on the first four rows. If a pawn dropped on the fifth, six or seventh row reaches the eight, it disappears. You would then need a way to distingish between such pawns.

dresali: I grant you that if there is a drawish move for black that a swap rule could "work" (although that would be a very different game, one that is decided on the first move). But it's not at all clear to me that, for any first move of white, there is such a move for black. Not that I really like games where blacks first move has to be a bad one.

As for your perfect information example, I'm a bit confused about your meaning of 'good' and 'mediocre'. Since all moves of white (A, B, C) can be beaten (A', B', C') and alternatively lead to a draw (X), I wouldn't qualify them as "good" moves. Although I guess that if white doesn't have any moves available that win, all moves are equally "good".

I still claim such a game would be a game of perfect information (nothing is hidden or determined by a dice roll). But I'm fine with you seeing it differently.

Pafl: K vs K+N+B is not a nightmare in Dice Chess. And it's the lone king that has the upper hand. In Dice Chess, a lone king is a very strong piece. Its strength lies in the fact that since there are no other pieces, the king is garanteed to move on each turn - if it's its next to the enemy king it will take the king on its next move (assuming it survives the opponents move). In a K vs K+N+B end game if the lone king is on a square next to the other king, and it's currently not attacked by the N or B, it has a 67% chance of winning the game if it's the opponents turn to move, and a 100% chance of winning if it's its turn to move.

Is 1. 0-0 a valid move in Recycle Chess (taking both the bishop and the knight)? If not, should it?

I notice that if you move non-knight with a knight like move, a 'R' is put after the move. I wonder what the 'R' stands for.