Grand Chess already has the pieces designed and made.
http://www.mindsports.net/DownLoad/Noware/
GrandChess.ht
I suppose you could order the set from them and cover up two of the rows to the board from 10 X 10 to 8 X 10. I like the design and names of the Marshall and Cardinal, which correspond to the Chancellor and Archbishop. You could just use the pieces from the set on an 8 X 10 board also. I wonder what Ed's design looks like?
Ordering information:
http://www.mindsports.net/DownLoad/
No
$49 for the set seems like a reasonable price for the quality of the pieces. The board is another $39. I think I still might make one myself and just order the chess set.

hahah..right. See Othello/Reversi for further reference.

So sell "Byrd Chess"sets..with a disclaimer its not to be confused with Gothic chess,and be sure to vividly explain the difference in rules.

END OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION.

No addresses in my mail here yet, did you change your mind?

First, I never said anything about including the rules of Gothic Chess, so I'm not sure where you are getting that I'm full of crap, but whatever.

What I'm saying is if someone makes a 10x10 board, makes the pieces which are the ones used in GC, then they can sell it.

what about that Kansas City tournament?

I notice Ed didn't answer the part about Checkers, did he?

Your wrong BBW. The configuration of the game is what is protected, and the rules. The name is not patented at all. It is a registered trademark.

You can rename every piece, leave notation off the sides of the board, whatever you want, but if you sell it with rules that are the same as Gothic Chess, you violated the patent.

I am not getting into arguments with people that have no intention of doing anything with Gothic Chess. I already have two wins under my belt and one out of court win.

I think you are both full of crap.

If you really want to test me, send me your address, openly admit you are challenging my patent and intend to sell the game, sell one set to someone, and watch what happens next.

END OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION.

Send me private messages with your addresses and your intention to do what you said, or you are all full of crap.

yea, if they call it "Gothic Chess", then you have a point Trice. But if someone just has the board, pieces, and sells them without calling it "Gothic Chess", then your patent can not touch it. That is what I believe Walter is trying to say.

If you really believe what you say, send me your address. Show me a Gothic Chess set you made, and say you are going to sell sets. Otherwise, you are full of it.

I won two cases already regarding patent infringement.

Here is a third, settled out of court just this week.

exhibit b

exhibit c

If you don't believe me, call Derek Nalls at 580-223-2226 in Ardmore Oklahoma and ask him yourself.

Maybe you should tell Fencer he does not need a license to run Gothic Chess on here, and tell Cowboy on CowPlay.com he does not need one, and tell Frank Camarrata of HouseOfStaunton.com he did not need one, and Micheal Grey of Hasbro he did not need one.

Mike Grey is the VP of Research & Development for Hasbro, a 3.9 billion dollar per year firm, and their legal team agrees they need a license.

But not you Walter. You are smarter than the rest of the world, aren't you?

Welcome to the board, HUBY40. We should have a Janus Chess tournament in your honor.

You might be right about Monopoly and Clue, but you are quite wrong about Battleship. Monopoly is based on copywritten stuff and propietary rules. I'm not sure about Clue. As for Battleship, anyone can sell it. They may or may not be able to call it Battleship, but they can certainly sell it. Just as this site has Battleboats. A la Othello / Reversi. Gothic Chess is in the same class as Reversi. There's no copyright on the rules or play, just the name of the game. I certainly could too make and sell sets of it without your permission. Maybe not call it Gothic Chess, (A name I don't like for this game, but have grown accustomed too), how would you stop me from doing so? Your patent is bull, and we all know it. The patent office might have taken your money and issued you a patent, but it'll never stand up in court. The game is over 100 years old. Changing the initial starting position doesn't make it a new game. It makes it a modification of prior art. None of the pieces are designed by you. In fact, they all predate your birth by many decades or centuries! Same thing for the board and playing rules. You even say the rules are the same as for regular Chess! You site Bird's version of 1875 in an article written by you about Gothic Chess at http://www.chessville.com/GothicChess/GothicChessIntro.htm
I, or any game manufacturer could start making Bird's Chess sets and sell them. You just try and get licensing fees for it. Who are you trying to fool? I could enclose with the rules a mention of different starting positions and variants. It'd be cool to make the board be adjustable in size so one could play different games on it, plus throw in extra pieces too.
Since you say you're an expert Checkers player, I assume that you're familiar with playing Checkers where the game is not started from the initial position, but instead the players are given certain moves to make first and then are free to make whatever moves they want? Is that game still Checkers, or should I patent it and demand royalties and licensing fees as you have done for Bird's Chess? This is how it appears to me as to what you have done. Amazingly to me, you have gotten a lot of people to go along with you.

As for you not arguing on this board about it, or telling me where to send my messages, too bad. I like this forum very much and with you not in the moderator's chair others can have a say in it, especially those that disagree with you and your position. And that's whether or not they're knowledgable about patent law or have access to attorneys either.

2¢

Walter, with all due respect, you don't know what you are talking about, which is why I asked to have a discussion OUTSIDE of this BBS regarding the patent.

You can't build your own Monopoly game and sell it, nor your own Clue game, nor Battleship.

It's called a METHOD PATENT which protects the game in total, not the decompartmentalized boards and individual pieces.

Your statements about what I "own" are 100% incorrect, and I will not argue with someone that doesn't know what they are talking about.

I will not reply to any more posts on this DB about the Patent. You can either talk to a patent attorney, or talk to me via personal message.

<>By the way, does anyone know how fast Hydra is searching in regular chess?

I knew that before updating to the new system Hydra calculated up to 8 million nodes per second.
In this new system that aparts from 16-Intel Xeons at 3.06 GHz and from 16 FPGA cards, i think i have heard that it can calculate around 16 million nodes per second but i'm not sure at all.

Hydra right now is one of the best Chess playing programs, but i think this is due to it's speed(not only this of course) and Shredder 8 for example on a system like that would be better.....

The only thing that you own is the name Gothic Chess. The pieces are already designed in Grand Chess. Very nice I might add, check out their site though the game is played on a 10 X 10 board the pieces used are identical to the ones in Gothic Chess and the game is from the 1970's. The 8 X 10 board is over a hundred years old. Why would I, or anyone else need your permission to make and sell game sets that could be used to play Gothic Chess or any other version of Chess?

We make sets, of course, and we also have a licensing agreement in place with House of Staunton to produce outstanding wooden and carved marble sets. Hasbro, who now owns Milton-Bradley and Parker Bros., will be manufacturing our pieces domestically in the March 2005 timeframe.

If anyone wants to ask me about licensing, what is involved, who is required to obtain one, etc., that person should contact me privately.

I intend on getting woodworking equipment soon, and I'll be making the appropriate pieces, plus other historical pieces.

Only after Ed has been officially contacted for licensing ;)

Have chess set makers decided they want to make gothic chess sets?

By the way, does anyone know how fast Hydra is searching in regular chess?

Yes 700 thousand I meant. 700 million, egads!

But at least I can say I have won games against World Computer Champions in the game of chess (Deep Thought) and Checkers (Chinook) and I don't think anyone else will be able to say that ever again :)

<>At this time, the program was doing about 700 million nodes per second, still very fast.

That was a true bean counter:-)
Although i think you are wrong. If i remember correctly the number was 700.000 nodes per second and not 700 millions.
Note that the latest version Deeper Blue that beat Kasparov, was having 200.000.000 nodes per second.


>You can see my moves were a tad tactically complex, the thing that drives a program crazy >(having multiple hanging pieces and offering more) so it finally succummed to the momentum of the attack.

All these are not enough to trick the todays Chess-engines on a fast hardware. Sometimes there are, but as i've said very seldom........

This game is mentioned is Feng's book on Deep Blue, but he calls me a mere "expert" (I was over 2200 at the time and was a moderate master class player) and does not mention my name (cause I upset him with some of my tauntings.) He also mentions that Deep Thought just walks into an easy checkmate, which was not the case at all.

Feng was a bit of an elitist, and there was absolutely no piece of advice you could share with him that he would take. I tried to tell him that the play of Deep Thought in its Center Counter was not that strong. I said it rather plainly, just offering friendly advice, and he said something like (in broken English with a bad accent) "In your weak mind maybe, but machine is high performance."

He started to walk away when I yelled after him "I will crush your machine if it plays the Center Counter and I am given white!" About 20 people heard this, and there was about 2 hours before the last round was to start, and he was convinved of his superiority, so he see up Deep Thought to play Game in 30 with me.

At this time, the program was doing about 700,000 nodes per second, still very fast.

He typed something into his opening book to avoid some of this book play, so I got it out of a main line. Even with its 14 and 15-ply search, it saw the win of a pawn, and no way for me to capitlize on it.

You can see my moves were a tad tactically complex, the thing that drives a program crazy (having multiple hanging pieces and offering more) so it finally succummed to the momentum of the attack.

<>I meant it more like "computers can be beaten", there are not invincible. For example, >you beating Vortex :)

Well 2 things:
I'm not beating Vortex since i only beat it with white and i lose with black, so we are somewhat even.
And Vortex has a long way to travel at the magic world of Gothic Chess, to be able to reach the level that Chess-engines are today. I could grab some wins from Fritz 1.0 and early versions of Chess Genius, but with todays development and hardware it's almost impossible. I can't win with any way Deep Fritz 8 at quad! The same i suppose will be with G.Vortex. At 8-9 years i wonder if i could still have any wins.


Speaking about your game with Deep Thought at 1989, we should note the following things:

7...Bxf3 was a bad move from D.Thought.
All todays commercial top engines(Shredder 8/7.04/7/6, Deep Fritz 8/7, Fritz 8/7, Hiarcs 9/8, Junior 8/7, Chess-Tiger 15/14, Chessmaster 10000/9000/8000, Gandalf 5, Ruffian 2.1.0/2.0.2) as also ALL free today engines suggest 7.Bxf3 as a bad move IMMEDIATELY and play 7...Nf6 instead.
Shredder 8 for example gives 7...Nf6 a +0.14 only for white while 7...Bxf3 a +1.03.

8...Qxd4 was an awful move according to all todays programs. And they realise it IMMEDIATELY. Shredder 8 for example gives 7...Qxd4 a +1.78 for white in 30 seconds and after 2 minutes a +2.09, while 7...Nf6 a +0.91. A huge difference for those who know. And while 7...Nf6 is almost steady as plies increase, the 7...Qxd4 has a big fail low. Deep Fritz 8 has a little problem on this as it does 19 seconds to realise it's a bad move. Very soon (50 seconds) it sees that it loses.

All this on a poor PIV 1500 MHz. When we speak about 3.2GHz or quads then it's a matter of seconds to see the truth.

These things show that the days that computers was material hunters, belong to the past. Sometimes even todays computers show from where they've come from and play for material but this is happening very seldom.

ughaibu, I have placed you on hide for your obscene post. If you delete or edit it, I will unhide you.

Thad

I meant it more like "computers can be beaten", there are not invincible. For example, you beating Vortex :)

Two different things, when I play online chess some people cheat , they can give it enough time and with a little intelligence of their own, anti-computer play doesn't work.
I dislike to play with a computer because it doesn't have soul. I can't talk with it, its tactic is perfect, we can't get drunk and play all the night :)

<>Well it is still possible to outdo the silicon machines. here is my chess game against the Deep >Thought computer from 1989:

Well this is not something i would say a right logic:-)

You have beaten (with an amazing way i can say) a computer at 1989 and you say: IT IS STILL possible to beat the machines.
Since your win was at 1989 you can't conclude from this, that it is still possible. It's obvious i think....

Although i should note, that i don't disagree to the statement about if or not is being possible to beat now the machines.

Well it is still possible to outdo the silicon machines. here is my chess game against the Deep Thought computer from 1989:

Ed Trice vs. Deep Thought

You can replay this and enjoy!

Who you callin a ****?

There are many different people who enjoys chess in different ways. I'm just an old man who regret old days when there was no computer. Now I can't tolerate clock pressure in OTB games and want to enjoy CC. But unfortuanetly chess engines spoil it.
As you called a tool (which is more valuable for me than an engine) a copper edition , I said to release it free , just a joke :)

I enjoy GothicChess and fortuanetly have found some old friends to play it.
Again Thanks Mr. Trice for inventing it and your hard effort on a silicon monster (although I hate engines)

1st article, about 2 Megs

2nd article, 224 K

3rd article, 284 K

George I don't know why you are equating file size with the program being the same. Even if I add 300 lines of code to the program, it won't change its size once I compile it.

This change was more subtle than that, a new "pruning mechanism" that generates fewer positions in the game tree, but also evaluates the positions better. It plays R + P vs. R + P 10,000 times better than the old Vortex program.

Well i download it, but the file size is the same with G.V 1.03, so it's the old one:-(

The version of vortex that was recently uploaded to "softlookup.com" accidentally has my super-strong version of the evaluation function, but it has the old opening book.

If anyone wants to try this one out, better get it fast!

click here to go to their download site

For those looking for "checkmate puzzles", take a look at the new Gothic Chess article on Chessville, now online at:

http://www.gothicchess.org/chessville/ches
sville_3.doc

or click here to download it as a word file.

Not really, there's Chessbase Light, which is free, and then there's the full Chessbase with more capabilities - surely you could do the same, I mean Chessbase's success proves it can be given away for free in a cut-down version...

It is still "vaporware" though... that project has not officially started yet.

I always thought people would prefer an engine to play against rather than a collection of games to browse with no opponent.

fariborz2.. and you too can become a programmer.. actually I think that price Ed quoted.. was awfully fair..

I am thinking if we do release such a version, it will be no more than $10.

Oh my god, I wish I was a programmer, I wait for a (non free) copper edition,please release it :)

OK, you pay my developer the $60/hour times the number of hours he works on it, and I will release that version for free.

Deal?

Yes, Something like chessbase is a very useful tool. It could be free if you like :)

You mean just sell a gui that does not play Gothic Chess, but has a complete database of the games?

Guess I would have to call that Gothic Vortex Copper Edition :)

Is it possible to unload the engine? Sometimes it's hard to not use it when it's available with just one click. I keep my chess engines including Fritz8 in a seperate place named mind viruses :)

What about a database program without the engine (and a little cheaper) ?

I like GothicChess very much , thanks Mr. Trice.

Yes. The Nuclear Version of Gothic Vortex will have it first, with over 4,000 games linked to the graphical user interface. As you look at any position during your game or just enter moves in human vs. human mode, it will build, on the fly, a dynamic list of every complete game that had the same position with the same side to move. You can then consult these games with one mouse click, and play through those games, with the list still being built dynamically as you do.

I think a "middle version" between Gold and Nuclear might have to be created. Perhaps a "Gold Plus" will be Gold + the database feature.

Is there such a program like chessbase for gothic chess?

Vortex Gold had a page missing, as George reported. It is up now.

Instead of 16.Bxg4 if white plays 16.exf4, black has 16...j5! which seems to hold. White can continue to be coy and let the Archbishop hang even further, but the threat of ...jxi4 starts to take steam out of white's attack. If black gets in ...jxi4 then a follow-up ...h5 would be very strong. The reason is, if white takes the en passant capture with gxh6 e.p., black still has the knight to recapture with ...Nxh6 since white did not play Bxg4.

My version of Vortex shows 17...i6 through ply 5 (0 seconds) and switches to 17...Rg8 on the next ply. It finds a mate in 9 due to all of the check extensions at only ply 10, so it switches to 17...h5 and sticks with it. Through ply 12 it thinks it can force a repetition draw, but at ply 13 it sees white can still break through and win material, but the play is much more complex and would be hard to find.