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Comments by Ben Good
Chess Variant Set Construction. Describes a chess variant set made with ceramic tiles and wooden cubes.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The idea of using ceramic tiles for boards occurred to me many years ago, but I had never gotten farther with it than occassionally browsing the flooring section Home Depot. This will be very helpful to me when I actually get around to making my own boards and sets.
White Elephant Chess 
. Four variants pitting the white Elephant army against black with the normal FIDE array.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]the mammoth is programmed backwards from its description in the zillions file. zillions allows it to move diagonally backwards but not diagonally forwards.
Existentialist Chess. 10x10 board with many different pieces. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i can't judge a game this complicated w/o playing it first. i am looking forward to trying it tho. is anybody working on a zillions file for this game?
Griffon. Historic piece that steps one space diagonally then slides like a Rook.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]there is a remark on spelling. i consulted several dictionaries on spelling and i found virtually no indication that any particular spelling is preferred. i used 'griffon' because it's the one i've run into the most in my life. 'gryphion' does not show up in the dictionary i have here, altho it is not an unabridged dictionary, so i will have to check in another dictionary when i get a chance. i can add mention of hadden's games to the page. keeping track of what pieces appear in what games is an extremely difficult proccess.
currently in the piececlopedia, many of the pieces list all the games that use that piece, even if the piece goes by a different name in a particular game. for example, the piececlopedia page for chancellor - moves as R+N - lists the chancellor from capablanca's chess, the marshall from grandchess, the champion from carrera's chess, etc. i think this is a good idea to have as much as possible, but it also sounds to me like having an automated system for this is not worth the effort. i think we'll have to settle for pointing out any additions to the list to the piececlopedia editor whenever we see something missing.
84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i notice that if you go to the contest rules page, it says that all voters will be anonymous, but it doesn't say that the designers of the games will be kept anonymous during the voting period. i think this would definitely be a good idea.
well, it's not a big deal, but hiding the inventors' names helps prevent voter bias. to think that this won't occur seems optimistic to me. in addition to people who might deliberately vote for their friends and against anybody they don't like, it's also easy for people to honestly believe that they're not doing it and do it nonetheless without being aware of it, and somehow rationalize the results. when i judged to 40 square contest, there wasn't anybody i didn't like, but i had to constantly remind myself not to go easy on my friends. <P>
there's also the problem that an inventor with a reputation for excellent games may be judged more critically because people expect more from them - any musician or author who has had a bestseller is acutely aware of this problem. <P>
those of you who were around for the large variant contest and read the yahoo board may remember one of the finalists openly admitting that he simply had all his friends and family members vote for his game without even reading the rules. actually, hiding inventors' names wouldn't eliminate this problem, but it makes the point that honest voting does not always occur. <P>
fergus has largely eliminated this problem by requiring voters to vote on more than one game and to put in meaningful comments. it looks like fergus upgraded the comments requirement, possibly in response to the comments from the large chess variants contest. i read through the comments to this contest today and some of them are insightful but some of the commentators obviously couldn't judge their way out of a paper bag and don't understand the concept of objective judging. i looked at the 100 square contest comments too tho and they seem a lot better.
the problem with requiring everybody to play at least one game is that you may be forcing people to play games that are so bad as to be nearly unplayable. these are less likely to be submitted as large variants, but it's possible; i had several in the 40-square contest and i admit i either didn't play them or didn't finish a game. <P>
but i still stand by claim i made about judging to 40 square contest - the number one thing i learned from that experience is that you have to play the games. i am highly skeptical of any claim from anybody that they can completely, accurately, and consistently judge games in an objective-as-possible fashion without playing them. not only do you have to play them, you have to play them a lot. playing one game is like doing a national survey of one person - it's often not very meangingful. when i did the 40 square contest i had 'black holes' on 2nd place in my list for a long time; it was only by playing many times - i probably played about 30 games - that i was able to determine that the game was too likely to end in a draw. and realizing that, i then had to give the other games that i had in the top 5 the same treatment to make sure they held up as well.
in addition to what mike said, i know those links are in fact correct, rather than 'not going where they're supposed to go.' the webpages they are linking to no longer exist. at chessvariants.com, they usually put a note on a webpage that contains an outgoing link that it doesn't work anymore, but this can be difficult to keep updated on something as huge as chessvariants.com
84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]don't worry about not being a programmer. there's enough zillions programmers that the 84 square contest entries should be taken care of w/o much problem. (i'm not a zillions programmer either, unless you count the diagram-maker). for those who don't have zillions, there's a lot of good webpages on chessvariants.com on practical ways to construct your own sets.
I agree with Paul, the entry deadline and when they're posted by fergus afterwards are two completely unrelated issues. and if you're really interested in fairness, to say that extending the deadline for certain people can hardly be considered fair - people who submit later will simply gain extra time to playtest and improve their game, while those of us who made an extra effort to make the deadline may not have been looking at our game for the past week because we considered the deadline closed. my feeling is that if you can't come up with a chess variant in 7 months (the amount of time available to submit), then you can wait til next year's contest. i'm sure there'll be more coming.
Vyrémorn Chess. Large variant on two overlapping square boards. (Cells: 132) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]the links to the inventor's homepage for this one no longer work. anybody talk to nathan mcdonald lately?
I'd have to search around for games. off the top of my head, i'd also definitely recommend rococo and ruddigore by aronson. i also recommend schizophrenic chess, altho i don't know if we want to overlap this with the 84 square contest. i might also suggest my own game crazy38s. what else... captain spalding chess by betza. if we want a 3D game, i'd suggest millenium 3D by a'gostino or exchequer by hewson, since they can both be played in about the same amount of time it takes to play a standard chess game. i am also a big fan of rennaissance chess by eric greenwood. i also like the the commercial game quantum II, III and IV. i also like looneybird, even tho freeling is no longer big on it. sorry this message wasn't as organized as aronson's, nor does it link to the games.
Overby wrote: I don't think that any game being voted upon in 84-spaces should be eligible for this event. Even its presence in a poll to pick the games could affect the contest voting. <P>
this is what i was thinking also, so we should scratch my suggestion of using schizo chess. also, it occurred to me that those of us who entered will be playtesting all the games once fergus gets them up anyway, so we really don't need them in this tourney.
Zillions of Games
. Game package for Windows that allows you to play nearly any abstract board game or puzzle in the world.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i have almost no experience coding zrfs, but i do look at zillions' values, and altho aronson is correct in saying it's generally difficult to tell what the right numbers should be, i have seen some cases where clearly the zillions values are wrong. the most extreme example was one they discussed on the yahoo board, where zillions considered betza's piece the ghost - which moves to any empty square on the board but never captures - worth something like 9 queens, when in fact betza considered it worth less than a pawn. the problem is that zillions gives too much value to how the piece moves w/o considering how it captures.
caissa is a good game, it's fun and light and games don't take that long to play. freeling isn't so big on it anymore tho, it used to be on the mind arena and it's not anymore. but i still think it would be a good one for the tourney. flip shogi is a good one also. <P>
i'd recommend against rifle chess. i found it to be a very poor game. <P>
i'd also wondering about what we're going to do for time constraints. i know from experience that a general statement 'everybody should move as fast as possible' doesn't work; everybody moves as fast as possible until they're busy with other things in their lives, or the game gets to a complicated state. a move per day doesn't work either, too many people can't get online every day, nor does it give you extra time for complicated positions. i have to admit tho, that i don't have any good ideas for a solution right now. i'm now spoiled by richard's pbm, which clocks everybody's time and can be set so that each player has a total amount of time (such as 120 days) to finish their game.
i see quite a few things have been posted on this subject while i was out of town this weekend. i would also caution against too many large variants for the same reason that they take much longer to play. in a previous comment i listed a bunch of larger variants as possibilities, but i wasn't suggested we play all of them, just that they were all good possibilities. i would also be careful about small variants that are chosen. as both a game designer and judge, i know that designing a small chess variant is much more difficult than designing a medium or large one. i found very very few small variants that i was truly impressed with, and even fewer that were so well designed that they would not have been improved if the ideas had been extended to a larger game. even some of the games that ranked high in some of the contests i found to be quite weak.
Captain Spalding Chess. Find an Elephant in your Pajamas.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i think you may be misjudging the value of the great pajamas. in an endgame where the rhinos, headless rhinos, and great elephants have been traded off, winning with just an elephant and bats can be difficult. in such a situation, if you are the only one with great pajamas, it means you control where the dust demons appear on the board. since they are neutral, this is critical.
Captain Spalding Chess . Find an Elephant in your Pajamas.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]btw, i use this zrf only to keep track of games played by email with other human players. even at maximum strength, maximum variety, and 3 minutes a move, zillions played unusually poorly. some of its moves defied explanation. the game itself is quite good tho, you definitely don't want to use zillions play as a basis for judging how successful a chess variant is.
Ploy . Strategic Game of Maneuver and Capture, 3M Company - 1970.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]here's a case where the zrf should be tweaked to artificially adjust piece values. zillions considers the mono-directional pieces to be worth more than the bi- and tri-directional pieces, presumably because they can also rotate in the same move whereas the other can't, yet clearly they are by far the weakest pieces in the game. the result is that zillions make some extremely bad trades.
Tournoy. Pieces have orientation that can be rotated. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this is a very interesting game, and i'd suggest adding it the list of possibilities for the pbem tourney. it is quite clearly superior to ploy, and it is probably more interesting than rotary as well. <P>
for the record, i can't agree with the author's comment that the standard pawns in rotary are poorly inspired - i originally thought so too, until i actually played the game, they work quite well. my problem with rotary is that all the pieces are approximately the same value, a problem only somewhat resolved in tournoy. <P>
in tournoy tho, the probes make an interesting pawn front, and one that is more appropriate to the nature of the game. the hammer is a very neat piece, much easier to visualize than i had anticipated. i suspect it will work very well with more conventional chess pieces as well. <P>
the suggestion that comes to mind for this game is that it will probably make for a livlier game if pieces can rotate at the end of a move, rather than just rotating in place. i'm not worried that this will create pieces that are too powerful, it should balance out nicely i think.
New sets of Exchess (Superchess). Announcement of sets of chess variant pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]somehow the link on this page doesn't work? the superchess site is definitely up. altho i did not see any updates on the official site yet, altho i've also heard the exchess 2 set is coming out soon. <P>
i have the exchess 1 set and it is great, so i'm very much looking forward to exchess 2.
Xiangqi set. Photos of a figurine Xiangqi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have always really liked this set. The page doesn't give much info tho - where did the E and C pieces come from? did the author buy them somewhere or did he handcraft them himself?
Photo of Tamerlane Chess set. Photo of home made set of historic chess variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this one is interesting too, but there's almost no info provided. altho the pic is pretty sharp, it is difficult to tell what the pieces are made out of - they have more of a homemade look to them, so i'm guessing they are painted wood, but just from looking at them, they could be a variety of substances. the big problem with this page is that there is just one photo, we could use some closeups of these pieces. <P>
also, i am very curious about the board. is it homemade, or was it bought somewhere? i have had zero success finding a nice 10x10 or 12x12 wood board - or any other size other than 8x8, but 10x11 seems especially unusual to me.
John's way ahead of me, i was about to post the same thing. we couldn't find anything, i couldn't even find anything overseas - except the grandchess board on freeling's site, which, altho nice looking, is very expensive and has huge shipping charges. <P>
there was also the 12x12 quantum board, but i never saved the money to get a set, and reportedly the company no longer exists. <P>
george hodges sells vinyl 7x7, 9x9, 11x11, 12x12, 15x15, 17x17, 19x19 and 25x25, but again he is transatlantic and not inexpensive, and additionally the boards are uncheckered. <P>
i have found almost nothing on ebay either. <P>
i am mostly interested in a 10x10 for use with the exchess pieces. i hope to eventually make my own tile boards similar to the ones tony quintilla made, but it may be awhile before i have the time or the money to do this, and i'm not sure how well mine will come out. and i'm still interested in wood boards and exploring all options. <P>
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