Is Grand Chess also ok? I know you are a master in that game too, and I don't like the 10x8 variants so much. I'm not a good chess player however, I hope you don't mind.

Fwiffo: I'm know he does.

Want to play a couple of games of Embassy Chess?

No gothic chess anymore? Does Ed know already?

WhiteTower: That's what I was thinking too.

Fwiffo: There is no such board in BrainKing. The current regime doesn't like retrograding :)

Pythagoras: Well, I am almost tired to repeat myself. You should actually know, what turns me down.

SMIRF Engine: If you really would be able to clearly win as you claim, you should do it in a fair way. Else nobody will understand your strange behaviour.
1st: I don't understand the "fair way". Why i wasn't fair?
2nd: Also it was not my fault that we would not know the result of these games as it was not me that resigned.....
3nd: Why my behaviour is strange....?

Fwiffo: Yeah, but don't hope for a fight to start between Reinhard and me! I'm a huge fan of Smirf and i fully support Reinhard in what he does(at computer game programming) and there is not even a tiny chance to start fighting with him.....
I just disagree with him sometimes....

Pythagoras: If you really would be able to clearly win as you claim, you should do it in a fair way. Else nobody will understand your strange behaviour.

Hey, the Gothic Chess board is getting interesting again!

SMIRF Engine:
Huge advantage????? In what game are you refering to? Black one or white one?
In white game i would win clearly. In black game i had the small advantage although the game was definitely complicated....!
If you say huge advantage due to Smirf's evalutions i have proven before that Smirf's evaluations and generally computer's evaluations in that kind of games i create in 10x8 Chess variations, are worthless.
Remember that in our first black game Smirf believed it had even a +5.000 or more points advantage, but i knew clearly that i will win like i did....

Pythagoras: That must have been a very tired wish ... facing SMIRF's huge advantage.

They were very interesting and i wanted to attack to Smirf's King.....

Thankyou both for answering. I found your other finished games quite interesting to play through.

Beren the 32nd: The game was played with a very long thinking time. Nevertheless the time moreover had been extended by automatic vacation. When additionally noticing, that Pythagoras played other games during that 'vacation', I preferred to terminate that game by resigning. Even though his behaviour is conform to brainking rules, I am not motivated to continue games under such conditions. So you have the chance to gather points by following his example.

Because i played with a low time frequency.... I've had around 5 days to move if i recall correctly so Smirf resigned....
It's my fault and it's not my fault! I play slowly and i feel sorry about that (and i can't do nothing for that) but i don't feel responsible about the decisions of others....
Smirf wants to play quick, i was playing quick at the most part of the match, but from a period and then when i started to be very busy, i was playing like a turtle for 2-3 moves and for my last move i've made 5-7 days to move and Smird didn't like that so he quited.....

Can anybody see why white would resign in this game:
http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=1370112&i=35

HalfPawn: Does that site have other games on it? I wouldn't mind playing a game or two Embassy Chess or Dark Chess live.

If you can make the connection to the royals being on one side I would think you'd not have much trouble with the rest of the court being on the other side. Least ways that was the connection I was making. I suppose Cardinal side would work or Marshall side, but that's not consistant with royalside since you'd be naming one side for two pieces and only using one piece for the other side. None of it matters much as long as the people you're talking know what it is that you're talking about. Avoiding confusion is the main thing.

Since you won you did OK:-) And since you won from a much inferior position after the late middlegame you did better than OK....:-)

HalfPawn: Courtside is easy enough. It is the King's court, eh?

A very interesting interview of Reinhard Scharnagl is available! Unfortunatelly this is only in German for now, although it has been stated that an English translation will follow soon....

For all of you that don't know, Reinhard is the author of Smirf engine and you see one of his posts immediately below my post....

Thad: To use piece related expressions like Queen side or King side to characterize the castling side in variants is not helpful at all. Be aware, that a Queen might have been captured or moved before a castling could be done. If then the Queen originally had been placed not the traditional side, it is hard to explain, what should be the Queen side. Thus in random games like Chess960 or Capablanca Random Chess such expressions will be avoided. Thus it is better to use neutral expressions like alpha castling O-O-O (remember a triangle) and omega castling O-O.

Thad: Nothing as long as you remember White's left is Black's right. I think the naming of the Kingside and Queenside predates the notation and was the traditional way to describe it. If you have books old enough it will say Queenside castles or just castles if there's no ambiguity, instead of using the zeroes.

Since Embassy Chess is mirrored like regular Chess it is probably preferable to emulate describing like things in each game in a similiar way. Kingside and Queenside will work just fine too, but I think some people would rather not call them that seeing how the King and Queen are on the same half of the board. Hence other names being thought up. It sounds like Reinhard has heard of people that already deal with this issue in other large board Chess games that have castling or notation of a like kind. I think I'll stick with royalside or courtside and name the square if there's a doubt. Seeing how I just play on this site and the notation is not something I have to deal with at the moment, it doesn't matter all that much. I brought the matter up for those that might play off line or who write their moves down and take them to show someone away from the computer. I'll also have to keep the M and C straight if I do want to write a game down, least ways until Fencer changes it over.

Walter Montego: What's wrong with left-side castling and right-side castling? Aside from not being very elegant.

WhisperzQ: Bobby Fischer had named castlings in FRC / Chess960 a-castling and h-castling. The WNCA has decided to name castlings from their target file c-castling or g-castling. To make it independent from the board size and different castling variants it could help to name it alpha-castling and omega-castling.

WhisperzQ: You can just say the King's ending square. A royalside castle would be a "B-file" castle. Not too pretty, but there's no doubt as to where the King is going. Either way works and is easy to remember plus you could say them both to remove all doubt.

What I have trouble remembering is which gets the three zeroes.

panzerschiff: I like the term "flank", but the castling procedure for each "flank" would be different depending upon whether you are white or black, so actulally it probably doesn't work.

The problem I have with courtside and royalside is remembering which is which ... I know it has been explained and the explanation makes sense, I can jus never remember how it works ... old age I expect :)

At least for castling you could use the terms "castle long" or "castle short". Referring to the board is more clumsy since you don't have the traditional Queen-side and King-side referral points. I guess we could borrow military terminology and use right or left flank.

HalfPawn: I had this same problem and posted about it a few days ago. I suggested calling the side with the King and Queen; the Royalside, and the side with the Marshall and Cardinal; the Courtside. Royalside in honor of the royalty and Courtside in honor of the rest of the aristocracy. http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=34&ngi=501381


I thought it was a sensible idea, but maybe you have one that'll work better? It seems easy enough to refer to the Royalside of the board and know which side you're talking about. Files A through E. And you can always just name the actual squares or files to avoid any misunderstanding or confusion if there's any doubt.

That post also had some comments about the naming of the pieces and the notation used on this site for the other games and for castling.

Yes, thanks for looking into that. I can improvise a Janus Chess set from among my Gothic, Omega Chess or Grand Chess sets, but it would be nice to have an actual Janus set. One of my weaknesses is collecting things related to my hobbies, whether it is chess books, I own about 2400 of them, or wargames, two or three hundred are in my closet. I also like naval history, but fortunately for my wife I don't have so much clutter in that area!

Caissus: Cool, I'm sure panzerschiff will appreciate it.

Walter Montego: I think these tips in chessvariants.com are very old ,because we pay in € today and no more in DM. I never received a answer about my questions from Stefan Blasius or the owner of www.janusschach.de.
But I will contact tomorrow the Schachhaus Madler because of Janusschessboards and -sets will report here.

HalfPawn: I can't read French, so how am I to know what the articles and posts say? The graphics look as if lifted right from another page, especially how it shows the board. It does have a little English. It makes a point about four files being the same as regular Chess and the other side's three being the same too. IF that's a selling point for the superiority of the game, may I point out that Embassy Chess is even move Chess like in its set up with five files on one side being the same as in regular Chess and three on the other side. Not only that, but with the King being next to the Queen instead of spaced once, you get a lot of the same threats and themes as in regular Chess.

panzerschiff:
A booklet on Janus Chess is sold by Stephan Blasius, Lebacher Str. 30, 66606 St. Wendel, Germany, for DM 8, plus an extra amount for postage (Variant Chess mentions DM 3 for postage). Janus Chess sets are sold for over DM 100 by Schachhaus Madler, Wagenerstr. 5, D-01309 Dresden, Germany.

I found this at the Chess variants page.

HalfPawn: Sorry, an extra return slipped into the address when I edited it last ... fixed now.

Again apologies ... WQ :)

HalfPawn: No, my message didn't say anything about you being a genius to be able to read the post.

HalfPawn: So what?

In my view unless statistical results show that either white or black seems to have a big advantage, all the 10x8 variants are pretty much alike. Once past the opening phase the strategy and particularly the tactics of the games won't be all that different whether you play Gothic, Embassy or any other arrangement with the Marshall and Cardinal pieces. What variant a player prefers will probably just come down to their own personal tastes. Experienced Classical chess players may even prefer something like Janus chess or even Carrera's chess. They are very similar to good old chess and one's previous studies are easier to apply. Other more adventuresome types would probably like the more unique arrays found in Embassy, Gothic or even Grand Chess on a 10x10 board. In these variants you would have a harder time trying to apply variants of classical chess openings.

Some arrays of course will have flaws. One can picture trying to set up something even closer to classical chess like this array: CRNBQKBNRM. However the problem with this array is that when white play 1.f4 black's choices are already somewhat limited. Is he going to defend the a7 pawn which is undefended and already attacked on white' first move or try some other counterattacking idea? Regardless white seems to be already dictating the game. Change this array a little and say make it a game of Marshalls MRNBQKBNRM and maybe the array isn't so bad. The game in fact might be a lot like classical chess. Marshalls like Rooks don't have a big effect early in the game and the openings that develop might not be unlike those in classical chess just with the extra pieces and manouvering room.

It's hard to say if classical chess is quite ready to be supplanted yet, but it would be interesting to see more financial support of possible future alternatives. I guess Janus Chess had money behind it at least at one time and even attracted big name players to play in the events. Is this type of support still going on to any degree?

Anybody out there know an address or website that might sell Janus Chess sets? Since tournaments were run in the past, I would assume that there must have been a set available for purchase at one time?

TheLamer: Thus let us find more interesting themes. E.g. it could be very encouraging to find some sponsors to support some CRC events, or to motify some chess programmers to join a competition in writing 10x8 enabled chess programs and competing therein.

There is big life beyond woodo-walled license zones!