to Nasmichael:
Still nowhere, because that has simply been a proposed study, causing no interest in that matter at all. So that idea still is sleeping.

Sumerian: Excellent graphics. How does one get the FEN editor for that?

to Nasmichael:
have a look at: http://f51.parsimony.net/forum203932/messages/21.htm

If you need to contact the inventor of hostage chess, I think I have the details somewhere.

Fencer: Would it be possible, since we are adding Shogi, and we already have Loop Chess (CrazyHouse), could we add Hostage Chess also? It is in the family of "drop chess", but it keeps the forces per side more even, and gives each side the opportunity to take a calculated initiative in the game. Hostage Chess description. Let me know what is possible here. Great game.

Mikezilla: There is always a chance.
WhisperzQ: No, why? What I want is to increase the number of paying members. Whatever happens outside BK is less relevant.

Fencer: hat about negotiating a contradeal ... if anyone pays up on the originators site becasue they first found the game here then you get a cut of their registration or whatever there?

Fencer: Thank you, Fencer! Those are great games, and I look forward to playing them on BrainKing. Is there a chance that the BK implementation of shogi will include handicaps?

I would love to see arimaa. It is very intersting.

very weird as well ... :P
and for xianxi I'd recommend the standarized stones for an
"european gfx" option as described by budde/kasperczak ... ~*~

Caissus: Yes. Chinese Chess will be added too. And also Japanase, Korean and Thai Chess.

rest on crazy screen as well ... just place a pawn on baseline :D
or does somebody know a proggy that cAn handle such weirdness ? ;) ... ~*~

Fencer: But Fencer,don`t you think that you can get more paying members with a more known game for example with Chinese Chess (best would be with western and eastern chesspieces) or with bughouse,which are also free?

Fencer: Very true! Also, those players who are concerned about Computer assistance can rest easy, as our silicon friends have difficulty with the game.

100 for three or five years would have
been my thought too, as worthwhile ... :) ~*~

danoschek: That's right. However, I've just managed to negotiate the fee to only 20 Euro. It means, if the game brings at least 1 new paying member, the expenses would be covered.

For my vote, I would be more than curious (now that the idea of Immobilizers has come up) to see Demigorgon Chess,
or Medusa Chess. It was invented by Vernon Rylands Parton in the 1960s, and it is a great variant. The text on the games, including Alice Chess and several others, are located in a Text File at ChessVariants.org, in reference to several pamplets on chess variants, both 2d and 3D, and some draught-based variants as well. Look under the section on "Demigorgons" on pages 4-6.

Fencer: I think the game is interesting. Surely the addition could not hurt the site. But, like Walter says, Ultima, or Maxima, its sister game, would be just as interesting, and free. Maxima: see ChessVariants.org on Maxima

Ultima: see ChessVariants.org on Ultima

Arimaa -- I like it. See what some others think.

although I would like to see the game here,
100 bucks are 100 bucks ... a piece of hardware ~*~

The game looks interesting, but I would not waste money on any game that you need to pay for a licence - there are PLENTY of games & variants which can be done for free.

I thought you guys said you didn't licenses for board games in Europe. Why's this any different? From the looks of the game, you wouldn't even need to use animals, just regular Chess pieces should work fine. The creator should be happy to have the exposure that BrainKing will bring his game and I'm sure that's worth more to him than a hundred euros. Maybe he can pay you to have his game on the site? :) A little negotiation is in order. I for one have never heard of this game until you mentioned it. Is it widely played in Europe?

If you need more or different games, I still think Ultima would be a good addition to the site.

danoschek: It's not fairly easy to implement but it's not impossible. I just want to know a possible interest because the game creater wants 100 Euro a year for the licence.

Fencer: sounds very interesting ...
if it's fairly easy to implement, count my vote.
happy new year ... ~*~

Does anybody know of a game called Arimaa? Would it be interesting to add it to BK?

Draughts (related to checkers) is played on a 10 x 10 board. In some countries (for instance, the Netherlands) were draughts is popular, most wooden chess boards can be turned over giving you a 10 x 10 draughts board.

mikezilla! sorry it took so long to read your post. Yes, you are right, the Chinese characters both reflect the transmission of the game and the fact that Hangul wasn't created until the 1500s by King Sejong to stop the Sinofication of Korea. Before that, all Koreans wrote Korean using Chinese characters. As for the details of games and variants, I really didn't get into it at that level, just playing fellow university students who were fairly ignorant about all except the basic forms, like me, and should've been studying instead. Again, like me. I have yet to see a non-octagonal changgi set too.

http://www.chessvariants.org/multiplayer.dir/tandem.html

I've seen a board 8x10 and 10x10 on the two sides, I think you and Caissus should ask the checkers players.

I'd like to play Ultima on this site. Any chance of getting it Fencer? If you do, don't use the upside down Rook for the Immobilizer. Do what we do, put a bottle cap on top of him. :)

The Grand Chess people make 10 X 10 boards. They make the pieces too. I like there design of the Cardinal and Marshall. I'm going to get one of there sets soon. I eventually make some of my own too. When that happens, I'll post here and let you know. Seems like any woodworking shop that already makes regular chessboards could make what ever board size that you might want for a reasonable price. I'm going to think of a way to have the board interchangable so it'd 10 X 10 on one side and 8 X 10 on the other. That'd be cool for playing various versions. With a 10 X 10 board you could also cover up some rows and files for different configurations. It'd be a challenge to make a board like that that would still look nice though.

would you pay ... range on ... :D ... ~*~

can be seen and bought on the interesting page of the french fairy chess enthusiast Jean-Louis Cazaux :
http://history.chess.free.fr/staunton.htm
These pieces can also be used as Janus, Chancellor, Archbishop and Amazon, which are not available here in Europe.
Does anybody know,where you can buy a chessboard 10x8 and 10x10? The single field should have about 5 -5,5 cm.

I agree. I think that hostage chess is a much better game than loop, and the best adaption from shogi that I know of.

There is a link about the game, which is the western standard game with a bit of the Japanese Shogi flavor in terms of captured pieces, instead of leaving the game completely, being able to return during a "trading of hostages", whereby pieces can be dropped as in Shogi. It complements standard play very well, and makes for a very interesting game. Look at www.chessvariants.org/difftaking.dir/hostage.html
to see some details on the game, or check out D. Pritchard's Popular Chess Variants to read about it. I got a chance to play it (it is similar in the dropping aspect to Loop Chess) and so would not be such a challenge to modify the programming, I would guess. And the gameplay is marvelous.

(I mentioned this on Feature Requests, but it seems more appropriate here.)

Would anyone like to play Ministers? It's Chess on a 9x9 board with an extra queen. It looks like fun.

http://www.corinthiangames.com/

BK would need permission from the company, I suppose. I should hope they would welcome the publicity - I found only a handful of pages mentioning it on Google.

joshua9000

Hi Caissus,

FRCEC is a club for Fischerandom chess players around the world to meet and play this chess variant among the different chess servers in the net that support this variation.

At FRCEC we do not (and do not intend to) have a FRC playing interface that competes against any of the other chess servers in the net.

Instead we promote playing FRC in all the different chess servers by arranging matches and mini-tournaments among our players in any of the chess servers out there.

It is our members own choice to join any or all the chess servers in the net that support FRC to play their games.

What FRCEC does do, is to keep an universal correspondence FRC ELO rating that is updated whenever they play a FRC game regardless of the chess server or servers they use to play their games.

So if our members play games in 2 or more chess servers, their FRCEC rating gets updated each time they finish a game in any one of the serevrs they choose to play.

FRCEC is a new club, only started in April 2004. We currently have 53 members representing 25 countries around the wolrd.

I can't guarantee that our members would play mainly in any particular chess server, as it is complety their choice to join any of all the servers that we are aware that support FRCEC.

Becoming paying members is also their choice. We do have members that are paying members in some of the chess servers that play FRC, but this is totally their choice because they enjoy playing in that particular chess server.

Jose Carrillo
FRCEC Moderator
http://frcec.tripod.com/

Hi Jose, could you please explain the activities of your email-chessclub? How many members has it and would they play perhaps here mainly and become paying members? This would allow you to organize special FRC-tournements and create FRC-fellowships.

Does BrainKing.com plan to support the FRC variation?

I run the Fischerandom Chess eMail Club (http://frcec.tripod.com), and I'm looking for different servers to promote the game among the members of the club.

Let me know if you will entertain FRC in your site, so that I can start promoting BrainKing immediately FRC becomes available.

Screen chess is no good to setup FRC positions as it doesn't allow castling or en passant.

Thanks.

Jose Carrillo
FRCEC Moderator
http://frcec.tripod.com/

You probably meant "bughouse"? We don't have it here, but you can try "Loop Chess" instead (2-player version of bughouse).

i wonder if a version of bunkhouse could be played here? that would be a great version to have. has anyone played that lately?

Yes, Pardubice in Czech Republic during the Chess tournament

In Pardubice happened this year the 15th championship of Chess,Bridge and other games (Go,Backgammon,Checkers etc) with 3600 players from 46 countries.Chess was played as blitz,tandem,with problems and fisher-random chess.Those who are interested can find more here:www.czechopen.net and www.czechtour.net.

Do you mean Pardubice in Czech Republic?

Hi all
It will be great to have Shogi here, because next European Shogi Championship will be in Pardubitce in July 2005
It is also possible to read book "Japanese chess - Shogi" on Russian
http://www.bookpost.ru/Hidden/p30178.pht
ml
Hope it will be usefull for someone
Hope it will be usefull

I certainly wouldn't want to play Chinese, Japanese or Korean chesses with some bizarre "western" characters, imagine playing chess with the pieces replaced with letters K, Q, B, etc. It's no more difficult to memorise oriental characters than it is to memorise quaint little statuettes. Fencer, for shogi pieces I hope you'll use the top ji only, as is done in books, newspapers, etc, not the full characters that appear on normal sets.

Alice chess is good fun, I'd love to see it here.

I am running a tournament there in Alice Chess, but I would love to play here! Great game.

is interesting as well and can be played at
http://www.schemingmind.com/.But better here :-)

What about Alice Chess, does anybody play this game?

Redsales, it is interesting, as you write, that Chinese characters are used in lieu of Hangul -- is there an historical reason for this; had Korean been written with Chinese characters in the past, or does it merely reflect the route of transmission of the game?

As to the shape of pieces, my only exposure to them is the shape of pieces that I purchased at shops of emigré Koreans and pictures on the internet. I have two sets in plastic; both have octagonal pieces of three sizes corresponding to their importance, the king being the largest, the pawn the smallest. The script is, as you write, Chinese. The red pieces are in a nicer printed script, and the green look like cursive versions of the same characters to be seen on a set of xiangqi pieces (although on both sides the kings' character is not the general/governor seen on xiangqi kings).

I have seen on the internet a set of Three Kingdoms' Xiangqi. Did you see or play that variant during your time in China? Have you ever read any articles on the history of xiangqi and its historical enlarged versions? I have wondered if there is a possible connection between them and the large shogi variants. I only know of one non-Asian source on the history of these games, Peter Banaschak's _Schachspiele in Ostasien_, but my ability to read German is not so good, so I await its future English translation.

I have suggested in earlier postings to this board that shogi and its smaller variant tori shogi would be grand additions to BrainKing's offerings (my personal preference is for shogi above all other representatives of the chess family of games). I wonder if other posters to this board enjoy shogi and whether any have tried tori shogi.