Hi Ed!

Thank you so much for allowing Gothic Chess to be available here online! I am a happy owner of a physical Gothic Chess set and was a Gothic Chess Association member for a year. Your newsletters were great! Well, I'm looking forward to Gothic Chess's online debut here and would be delighted to play you! Of course, I'm sure you'll trounce me, but I'll be able to tell my grandchildren that I played the inventor of Gothic Chess. :-)

John (a.k.a. Juan Grande)

P.S. I attempted to carry on a discussion of the relative values of the Gothic Chess pieces from your article in the July 2000 Gothic Chess Review over in the "Janus Chess" discussion board here. If you have the time or inclination, we'd love to hear your input. :-)

Hi Juan,

I am Ed Trice, inventor of Gothic Chess. We are underway to making Gothic available here online. And, Gothic Chess is PATENTED, so a license had to be issued (U.S. Patent 6,481,716) but since I am the patent holder, no problemo!

Hopefully you and I can play one day soon.

Thanks for the mention on here.

--Ed

they impliment a doubling cube in 'gammon games, I will become a brain rook!! ;o)

Fencer, are players divided to sections randomly in tournaments? In dexters 6x6 reversi tournament there is seven 1900+ rated players and 5 of us are in the same section. And in another section the highest rating is 1600ish. I'm not complaining, I just love to play lots of high rated players. But i think it would be more equal to everyone if in the future tournaments players with high rankings were divided more evenly to different sections.

what need is there for card games on a turn based games site?

Brian & Scampy: Cribbage etc... was spoke about a while ago. As you know this site is a turn based, so can u imagine how long a game would take.
i.e. Playing one card & then waiting for your apponent to play one, just one hand would take a while.
I think maybe cribbage as in once round the board with 5 cards may be better, i know Fencer is open to suggestions on it. Also he is working on single player games such as Solitare.
Any suggestions to help make easier versions would help him alot - hope this helps a bit.
M.M.

CRIBBAGE! A game that WebTV people can play? That would be wonderful! Possible?

I know Fencer is busy. However how about introducing card games such as cribbage, hearts, rummy, or even solitare.

kitti: That's great! The whole BrainKing.com is written in Java :-) Thanks.

Fencer: I would also love to see Go implemented. Here is a Go development kit: http://playgo.to/GDK/ It's in java but it might be helpfull anyways.

Thanks, Scampy, I hadn't seen that page!

I would like to but I am not sure about a correct algorithm. Are there some resources about Go programming model?

Hi! Wonderful site, I just found it... it's very fast too!
I see you've got Pente, so the board is there already - how about implementing Go as a game?

Angus: Actually, if you want to upgrade your existing level to a higher one, send me a message (to my message box) and I will let you know how to do it.
eddie: Sure :-)

hey fencer..have you noticed that when ya start a tourney for a fellowship...like when ya hit close this tourney or start this toureny that it takes you to the main tourney page...when i close it i would like to stay in my fellowship so i can go back in and start it but the way its set up i always end up on the main tourney page...can that be fixed sometime in the future? or am i out of requests haha.......

Sigh, maybe playing all these games has depleted my brain juice... @¿@ I could have sworn there used to be an option to upgrade! I actually asked for someone else, so I'll pass the message along - thanks!

Harley -- here's a page that tells it all.
http://scrabble.thedaisypatch.net/closure/

DmitriKing, You can join as many fellowships as you like, but in each fellowship you can only join one team of each game type.
You can also leave fellowships any time you wish, its not set in stone :o)

Angus: What option? I have added or removed nothing on Paid Membership page. But if you want to upgrade your existing Brain Knight membership to Brain Rook, send me a message.

Thanks, I'll try it!

Just to make sure you understand the rules - on whites 2nd move - it has to be placed AT LEAST 3 intersections away from the center.

Fencer, need help, can't make a move on pente!

Fencer, there used to be an option to upgrade your membership level - is that not possible anymore?

Thank you for considering Gothic Chess and Omega Chess! I guess I'll have to try Janus Chess in the meantime... :-)

When Fencer introduces tournaments for inter fellowship competition you will be representing that fellowship against others in a team comp. For now it is internal fellowship tournaments only. Of course some fellowships consist of groups of friends from this site or others as well

I was invited to join a fellowship. in as few words as possible, someone please explain to me what it means to be in a fellowship, thanks.

Irma.. has scrabble bug shut down completely? I've not been able to get on but I thought it was just a fault and would be back on in a few days.

BlazinBrian: Your game with deathwolff was ended after the first move, that's why this game was not counted for BKR. Please read the FAQ page, all cases are described and explained there.
Dmitri: You are activated :-)
About Pente board size - yes, I am already working on that, I will add more sizes ASAP.
About Chess variants - why not, they look very interesting :-)
About Scrabble - I have no licence for implementing Scrabble (it is a trademark of Mattel). Maybe later.
Nytedream: Strange. But the font size could be the problem. I will do some tests.

Is there any chance that you will be able to have the game scrabble. I was playing at scrabble bug, and as of two days ago it shut down. It has been up for 2 years. Many games were not completed... Would love to play again.....

The checkers game was not ended that way. We played 80 moves and agreed on the draw. The Halma 8x8 was played to its conclusion.

BlazinBrian: If one of the games was deleted before the 2nd player made their 2nd move, it will not count towards your rating even if it was rated. There is always a possibility that your rating will not change from the result of a game...happens to me all the time! :-)

Dmitri King: There is a game with this piece, called Maharajah chess, where white only has a maharajah and black has the standard setup.

Hi! I just registered for this site and I hope it's not impolite to suggest a couple of chess variants that I would really love to see! If you implemented them, you would be the only site that has them (and it would convince me to become a Rook member and tell all my friends)!

1. Omega Chess: See http://www.omegachess.com/

2. Gothic Chess: See http://www.geocities.com/bow_of_odysseus/

Since these are commercially sold games, I suppose there might be copyright issues; however, it would seem that supporting it on an online site could only help their sales (and provide opponents for me :-) )!

Note that the Archbishop in Gothic Chess moves like the Janus in Janus Chess and the boards are the same, so Janus Chess enthusiasts would probably appreciate Gothic Chess.

By the way, it's really cool that you've provided the capability to edit your posts after posting them! :-)

Hi, Dimitri -- good to see you here. I did mine by credit card. It was on a weekend and on Monday morning I was up and running. Maybe Fencer is getting so many memberships now that it is taking a bit longer. Hang in there --

I'm definitely having problems with the Pente and Keryo-Pente boards...the board was rectanglular and the lines were broken. I adjusted my font sizes and that fixed it...unfortunately now the board and pieces are so small it's difficult to play...any help would be appreciated. :)

I paid through PayPal (through the other place) - and it was under 1 hour before my membership was upgraded! VERY FAST! (I think it is whenever Fencer is on-line, he does it!)

Hi Dmitri.. It only took several hrs for me to see the change to rook status, but i believe Fencer said that it normally takes about 24 hrs.

Nice to see ya here. :)

Maybe someone who is already a rook can anwser this question. How long after I paid by credit card before I gain rook status?

testing edit

I would like to have the option to create a 2-game match and have both games start right away.

ALso, I had a thought for a chess variant. I had always thought that a piece that moves like a queen and a knight would be a great idea, and apparently it alrady exists. How about incorporating it into a game? Maybe in Janus chess, there could be one knight-bishop per team and one maharajah per team, played on the 10X8 board that Janus is on.

I noticed the chess board can be resized, will this be possible for pente also?

Last, I would like to commend for checking these boards and responding often, I don't know how you keep up with it all but it's great to see.

Would it be possible to add a setting so that we could enlarge these two boards?

I have 2 questions about ratings.
1. I played a game of checkers to a draw. I am unrated and the opponent was under 1100. It was the fourth completed game. I am still unrated. WHY?

2. I won a game of Halma 8x8 with an unrated player and I am 1204. The rating did not change. Why?

Yes the games were to be calculated for player rating.

Fencer: could you possibly look into creating a new Chess Game? calling it Atomic Janus Chess, incorporating the Atomic Chess and Janus Chess rules.

Hi Fencer .. yes, I'm using Netscape 4.7.
Yes, you get those 'spaces' but now I've removed the background picture, as suggested, it's much easier on the eye :)
Thanks for the response :0)

Niki: Are you using Netscape 4.xx? This browser always displays "spaces" between table cells, there is no way how to force it not to do it. Internet Explorer and Netscape 6+ can display it correctly.
eddie: Good idea. I will do it.

can ya shade the center spot and/or the area around it to help where we put the first few peices...i know where they go and why the game itself is fine...its just hard to find the spot with with little clicker sometimes haha..also will the settings be changed so we can change the board kinda like five in line?,,,thanx for the new games,,,,,

You are so right Big Bad Wolf....IYT does do it that way. Guess I just got spoiled playing 5 In A Line here with the stones in the squares.

BBW and jason .. thankyou ! That does the job :0)

if you go into settings you can put a tick in or take out to remove the background picture ;~)

Niki: You can "remove" the background picture in the "Settings" option on the left. Just unclick the "show background picture" option.

anybody else having problems with the board being over the 'pawn on check cloth' picture ?
maybe it's just me .. but I'm finding it really difficult with the picture showing through :(

Stones on the intersecting lines - I think that is how it is done on other sites (like ItsYourTurn) - but it's been awhile since I played it there, but I believe that is how it is done there. :-)