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Index page of The Chess Variant Pages. Our main index page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Congratulations to CVP upon completing ten yrs. Carrying on Sam Trenholme's tradition, CVP's first post was Jetan probably 15.1.95, this week. CVP's first 5 yrs. tilted towards serious alterations of standard western Chess: Fischer Random, review of ancestral mainstays Chaturanga and Shatranj etc. However, countervailing trend, oblivious to the idea of perfectibility, was already apparent. For close-to-FIDE forms, 8x10 became the favourite board size. Piece mixes were often unchanged from 400-yr-old Carrera's, yet never was there discussion of Marshall's(Chancellor's) being inherently flawed piece, detracting from both R&N. Another missed opportunity was when Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, but to this day orthodox world is also house divided about implications of computer dominance. The second 5 yrs. saw Ralph Betza defying the usual bell-shaped design trajectory in vanishing right upon completion of his 2-3 most prolific yrs. Since 2000 CVP games more often add bizarre rules hardly intended to be played, and blend Shogi-derived and Xiangqi-based pieces with western types, and thankfully(!?) no end in sight. So far nothing by Sam Loyd and very little T.R.Dawson or Martin Gardner, probably because David Pritchard in ECV overlooks them too. Almost all CVP-recognized games predate 1995, as do thousands of other curiosities not within its scope. Excluding those, the best form devised within CVP's domain during the ten yrs. 1995-2004? I vote Switching Chess and Rococo, appropriately one from each of the two schools, standard heterodox and free-form.
For those of you that look at 'What's New' in English you may have missed that Antoine Fourrière has been creating very nice pages in French. If you would like to see 'What's New' in all languages, look at this URL: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/whatsnewalllang.php
A newcomer would know nothing about the existence of Game Courier and find no listing at all on this main index page. So, shouldn't it be updated to include it?
you have to click on 'play' at the top of the page, but i agree, it doesn't stand out at all
Hi,
I just want to comment on such an informative Chess site....I have already referred several club players here.
Keep up the good work. Would like to see more active postings too!
Roger
www.secretsofchess.com
Bad Link: The 'Subject Index' link for 'Pieces' actually leads to the one for 'Puzzles'
Why is it taking so long to approve the member-submitted items?
A very nice webpage there! Best wishes, International Master Jovan Petronic FIDE Senior Trainer Chairman, FIDE Computer & Internet Chess Committee ASEAN Chess Academy Consultant FIDE Trainers' Committee member Kavala Chess Club Technical Advisor Federal Trainer, Greece Chess Federation Web: http://www.jovanpetronic.com Chess Software Reviews: http://www.jovanpetronic.com/chessreviews.htm
if you like please add http://www.madeinfirenze.it/chess_sets_e.htm to your links page thanks luca
Pages that link to other sites created using PHP script, such as many pages linking to the Zillions-of-Games site, are not functional at this time. We are aware of this problem. Thank you for your patience until it is resolved.
On some pages, such as the Xorix Shogi page, there are problems with entering HTML code and getting it back wrong when trying to edit it. If I give an example here, this page will also get messed up, so I won't. You can use the htmlspecialchars PHP function anywhere where a TEXTAREA tag is returned, to make sure it doesn't replace entities incorrectly and mess up when entering a ending textarea tag.
The new markers for variants based on Xiang Qi and Shogi are a great idea, they reflect a growing trend in inspiration. However, there are some notable omissions from those marked for Xiang Qi. This marker should be added to Fergus Duniho's Eurasian Chess, my own Anglis Qi (which is even in the Xiang Qi variants directory!), and my offshoots thereof, as all these have a River inspired by Xiang Qi.
David Howe wrote on Tue, Mar 21, 2006 02:20 PM UTC:Thanks Charles, I will update those pages. I am sure there are probably more that I missed, but I think I got the majority of them.
I want to suggest that an extra rating be added. In between 'Poor' and 'Good' the rating of 'Average.' There are cases when I think a variant is 'Average' but it would be too harsh for me to say 'Poor' too caring to say 'Good.'
Very good idea! I think a 1-10 scale would be even better.
I agree that the ratings system could use more options. In my view it should be possible to give a neutral rating, as Jeremy Good suggests, and to give a negative rating that is not the worst possible rating. I would like to see something like Awful, Bad, Neutral, Good, Excellent (with numerical values of -2, -1, 0, +1, +2) or perhaps even Awful, Bad, Poor, Neutral, Fair, Good, Excellent (-3, ..., +3).
Thinking about this gave me the giggles: -6 Beneath Contempt -5 Contemptible -4 Loathsome -3 Hideous -2 Miserable -1 Awful 0 Bad 1 Neutral / Average 2 Fair 3 Good 4 Excellent 5 Awesome 6 Incomparably Fine If one wanted to have additional layers, we could initiate additional categories, such as for 'originality.' A lot of games are original but have bad gameplay or unoriginal but with good gameplay (I am reminded of Ben Good's essay here about Omega Chess). Still other categories for 'fun-ness,' presentation, appearance. Categories could be optionally listed according to ratings and categories with overall negative ratings should perhaps be shelved into different sections of chess variants after each receives a fair number of votes from the community of users (as opposed to just members). There is one thing that disturbs me most of all about how people rate games and I fear that there is sometimes a tendency to judge games without playing them, trying them out. Sometimes, it is not necessary to playtest a game, but I think too often a game is judged too much by certain superficial aspects that have little to do with worth of gameplay (as with books by their covers.) If one has a separate category strictly for rating 'gameplay' (as opposed to other aspects), it could be a category that could only be filled out after actually playing the game. If nobody is willing to play a game, that would usually imply something about the nature of the game. I suggest that as long as a game maintains a positive gameplay rating, it not be shelved to the negative ratings section. Because a game can fail every other mechanism or gradation of analysis, but if people enjoy playing it, that's probably a pretty good test, in my opinion. 'Confusing presentation, ugly appearance, highly unoriginal concept, but amusing gameplay.'
I meant members as opposed to users, but probably there shouldn't be any restrictions on how a rating gets generated. I just meant mechanisms so that the value of a game isn't artificially inflated or deflated... By 'shelve' I just want to reinforce that I don't mean, be made unavailable, but just put in a separate section, and just as an optional way of listing according to rating.
i think the rating system in place is just fine, what is the point of 'neutral', what is that, it isn't even a rating, and isn't 'none' pretty much the same. i don't think it should be taken too seriously, if it is to be, non-members shouldn't be allowed to rate, and they are, which is fine by me too btw. to rate a game, as suggested a couple of comments down, as '-6 Beneath Contempt' and '-5 Contemptible' and '-4 Loathsome' and '-3 Hideous' and '-2 Miserable' etc etc is really bad taste, and i hope this site does not fall to this level. there are competitions to judge the best games anyway, or the games people nominate at least. who wants to rate a game 'beneath contempt' anyway lol
Like Christine, I think that Miserable and the stuff below is useless. What is the difference between a 'Hideous' and 'Loathsome' item? Is the 'Hideous' one better? I think both 'Hideous' and 'Loathsome' (and all those low rating) means that the item is has no value. If you think a submission is 'Loathsome', you should say what the problem is and so increase the chance that the next submission of the same inventor is not 'Loathsome'. Not add a negative atmoshpere by crying 'Loathsome!!'. About specifications like Playability: Neutral, Graphics: Good, etc. I think it is good enough if those specifications are said in the comment text. At least if I can say something between 'Good' and 'Poor', it should be fine. I think that ratings are less important than the comment text.
A link to SMIRF, developed by Reinhard Scharnagl, should be included under 'computer resources: programs that play chess variants'. SMIRF (English description) http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html
Thank you both for mentioning SMIRF here! It has become a free donationware playing some 8x8 and 10x8 variants, being supersets to traditional chess. But SMIRF still is in development. Reports on 'bad' experiences are welcomed if sent back directly to the author.
Hello,
Chesmayne Chess Dictionary link below...
http://homepage.eircom.net/~reidr1/index.html
Yours sincerely,
Raymond Reid [Dublin, Ireland].
PS: a link to the Variants web page has been included on the main index
page - enjoy! Yours is one of the best chess sites on the web!25 comments displayed
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