Check out McCooey's Hexagonal Chess, our featured variant for May, 2025.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Sep 19, 2009 06:52 PM UTC:
OK, sounds good. Did you consider SMIRF? It can play under WinBoard with my Smirfoglot adapter, and I am pretty sure it should be able to do Schoolbook. In last years 10x8 tourney I held, SMIRF finished between Joker and TJ. But I think TJ has been much improved; I was playing 0.96 last year, and now we have 0.121.

The past day I have been playing Joker80.np vs TJchess10x8 0.121 at game/15 min in Schoolbook. That is, to make sure I got all different games, I started from the Schoolbook opening, and then 16 positions that had a (different) first move made by white. Each engine played each position with white and black, for 34 games in total. Joker80 beat TJchess10x8 by 22 vs 12. 

Most games were very exciting, lots of fireworks. (There were only 2 draws.) Interesting is that the engines differ very much in evaluation for most of the game, usually by 3-4 Pawns, so that they can each think they are 2 Pawns ahead! If you are interested: the PGN file can be downloaded at:

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/Schoolbook.zip

From watching the games, it seemed to me that the Schoolbook opening array is a bit awkward; in many games the engines had grave difficulty developing the Queen. Often this was the decisive factor leading to their demise.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Schoolbook

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.