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Comments by GregoryStrong
Fischer Random Chess. Play from a random setup. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Jan 14, 2005 04:29 PM EST:<p><blockquote>On contrary, a Grandmaster forced to play a lot of Ultima, Maxima, Chess-Different-Armies may never rise above Class A 1999, however calculated.</blockquote>
Is this statement based on some research? I find it counter-intuitive that simply playing the games you mention would reduce or limit someone's skill at Orthodox Chess.</p>
Kamikaze Mortal Shogi. Send your Kamikazes on suicide missions in this Shogi variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Jan 18, 2005 04:22 PM EST:The 'Motif Shogi on Wood' piece set doesn't seem to have a piece for the Kamikaze. If you could add it, that would be great; I really like that particular piece set.
Jumping Chess. Pieces capture by jumping. Board has extra edge squares making it 10x10. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Jan 23, 2005 02:12 PM EST:I think Jumping Chess is flawed in favor of defense. Since you can't jump over two adjacent pieces, all you need to do is make a mass of pieces in the middle, and they can't really be captured. In order to attack, you need to split up your mass of pieces, and I think that's a big mistake. Unless someone gets too aggressive, I think it's a sure stalemate.
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jan 24, 2005 12:30 PM EST:You make a good point that because of the ring-board, the corners will still be vulnerable to capture. However, the opponent will have to move his pieces onto your side of the board to do it, and enter the ring-board, which brings its own (somewhat scarry) must-capture restrictions. I look at it like this: since two adjacent pieces can't be captured, adjacent friendly pieces are stronger than pieces which are split up. In order to attack, I have to split off pieces. Or, alternatively, I could just wait for my opponent to attack and then pick on those pieces of his which straggle onto my side of the board. As you point out, I can't ignore the attack entirely; I must respond. But I will surely wait for him to initiate it, because I believe any significant attack of his will give me the upper hand. Perhaps I'm wrong in this assumption; my first game is still ongoing (against Carlos Carlos.) Perhaps he will lash out in attack and prove me wrong ... If I am correct, however, than neither player should ever attack.
Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Jan 26, 2005 09:18 AM EST:Fergus:
<br>Is the putting-messages-on-hold-while-I-check-with-the-subject service you
have just given Ed a courtesy you will be extending to all of us who come
under attack?
<p>Ed is implying that Mark Thompson is an irresponsible poster because he's
supposedly posting incorrect information. Actually, he says it isn't even information - it's just something incorrect. But it was Ed who misquoted
Mark, even using quotation marks, before jumping on him for his opinion.
Mark's post saying XYZ 'looks intriguing' was obviously an opinion.
<p>So, it seems unreasonable to me that Ed can make aggressively-worded
rediculous posts, but gets to have a veto power over comments posted by
others.
Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Feb 3, 2005 01:14 PM EST:I will be participating. Any time controls are fine with me, although I don't see why things need to be any different than the last one. Although I didn't participate, I can see how long it took to complete, and it doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Regarding Chess with Different Armies: This could be handled in a lot of ways, but it what might make sense it to have each participant select which army he wishes to play (out of the supported four) before the tournament begins. Army selections probably should not be made publicly available ahead of time, or people might want to select late and try to meta-game with their selection. I look forward to the start of this epic struggle, in which I will likely be defeated by decisive force! P.S. I'll send the money shortly :)
Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2005 06:44 AM EST:Roberto: Thanks for paying my fee! Chess-with-Different-Armies: I do not really like the Paulowich plan, because White gets to see what army Black chooses before making a decision. I think this gives White an additional advantage. You could argue that this system actually gives Black the advantage, because they get first pick, but I would disagree. I think second pick is better unless one army is definitely better then the others, and I don't think that this is the case. I think each player should have to select army without any knowledge of what he is facing.
Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2005 12:14 PM EST:Yes, Balanced Marsellais, please; otherwise White has a huge advantage.
Archchess. Large chess variant from 17th century Italy. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2005 07:02 PM EST:Good ★★★★I have played this game many times now, and consider it to be very good. It would rate 'Excellent' compaired to other CVs of its era (I like it better than Carrera's Game.) I think Archchess would be even better, though, on a 10x8 board.
Omega Chess. Rules for commercial chess variant on board with 104 squares. (12x12, Cells: 104) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2005 07:08 PM EST:I've played a couple of games on GC now, and I have mixed feelings. The games tend to be longer than I'd like, and much of the midgame doesn't seem to feel very tense. I wonder if this game would be better on a 10x8 board (+4 corner squares). I noticed in the GC logs that someone has tried this. Anyone have any comment?
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2005 07:16 PM EST:George Duke: you are doing some cross-thread posts, and I am curious to know what you are doing (so I can make similar posts.) Is there some cross-thread capability on this site, or are you just adding a prefix to your messages? And what's the difference between 'ABCLargeCV' and 'DEF,LargeCV'? Thanks!
Courier 'de la Dama'. Courier Chess with a Modern Queen and other changes for more dynamic play. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2005 07:41 PM EST:Good ★★★★I had not noticed this page until George Duke's recent post. I like the alterations made here (at least in the first game.) I will add it to ChessV shortly, because it already supports Courier Chess, and this is an easy addition. I also like the 12x8 board, and suspect that it may be a great board for CVs that has not been adequately explored. As for the second game, I have not played a game with a crooked bishop, so I can't speak to playability. I can say, though, that I am not sure at all how to program such a piece into ChessV in any 'good' way. For what I mean by good ways vs. bad ways, I will need to get into some detail about ChessV architecture. I will start this (complex) discussion on the ChessV thread sometime in the future.
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2005 07:47 PM EST:Ohhhh, I see! I was thinking 'DEF' was short for Default... not letters D, E, and F... :) As a programmer, sometimes I read too much into things.
Courier 'de la Dama'. Courier Chess with a Modern Queen and other changes for more dynamic play. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2005 09:45 PM EST:I find the Sissa incredibly confusing. The Crooked Bishop a little less so, but only a little. The raven is straight-forward enough, and perhaps similar to a Sissa in strength ... From a programming perspective, Knight-riders are fairly tricky, and you incur a significant performace penalty when you generate moves for them. Multi-path pieces incur a *huge* penalty in cost of computation, even well beyond that of Knight-riders.
Omega Chess. Rules for commercial chess variant on board with 104 squares. (12x12, Cells: 104) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Feb 11, 2005 07:34 PM EST:Ohh, I'm eager to see your entry! I think that having the Grand Chess army plus Omega Chess's extra leapers on a 10x10 would be a good amount of material and an interesting piece balance for an exciting game that's not too long. Omega Chess just goes on too long without enough tension ...
Paloma Chess. Game with Royal Queen, promotable Kings, and an unusual array. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Feb 12, 2005 05:53 PM EST:The picture shows a Bishop at g1, where there should be a Knight ...
21st Century chess 
. A Zillions file to play an updating of Chess for the video game generation, on a 10x8 board with Barons and Jesters.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 13, 2005 01:27 PM EST:So? This is your reason for rating a game 'poor'? Chess and Shogi are poor too, I assume?
Alapo. Game with abstract pieces. Reach opponents first row on 6 by 6 board. (6x6, Cells: 36) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 13, 2005 02:05 PM EST:<p>Derek Nalls says:
<blockquote>With only 36 board spaces and 12 pieces per player starting, this is obviously a trivial (i.e., solvable) game.</blockquote>
I <i>completely</i> disagree with this notion. The typical, well-played game of Alapo lasts almost exactly 20 turns. The branching factor (average number of legal moves) is definitely greater than 10. That's at least 10^20 continuations to consider (e.g. clearly not solvable.)</p>
<p>ChessV is very, very good at this game. If you want to test your hypotheses about white's advantage, try playing white against ChessV. If you give it enough time to calculate to any reasonable depth (I-depth >= 8, which should only take about 15 seconds on a modern computer) and manage to defeat it, I will be extremely impressed!</p>
<p>P.S. If you do accept the challenge, and manage to defeat it, please send me the save-game file :)</p>
21st Century chess . A Zillions file to play an updating of Chess for the video game generation, on a 10x8 board with Barons and Jesters.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 13, 2005 02:11 PM EST:Yes, Chess is a tragicly flawed game, but the problem is the large number of stalemates at the highest levels of play. I don't see how that has anything to do with any lack of east-west symmetry. Furthermore, your statement that without north-south and east-west symmetry you have 'abstract junk every time' is pretty remarkable. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I would point out that by making this statement, you are calling the great majority of the games invented by everyone in this community 'junk.' That's pretty strong.
Contest to design a 10-chess variant. Cebrating 10 years of Chess Variant Pages with a contest to design a chess variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 14, 2005 08:34 AM EST:I've got a ten-square game that I think might be pretty interesting. I'll try to post a quick description in the next day or two.
Symmetrical Chess Collection Essay. Members-Only Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
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Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Feb 20, 2005 10:14 PM EST:I'm supprised that there have been no new signups in two weeks ... Still at seven participants. Anyone out there forget to register?
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Feb 21, 2005 07:15 PM EST:Chessgi and Shogi have the highest resistance to computer analysis because the drop rule gives them a HUGE branching factor, at least in the mid-game, once several pieces are in-hand. Most would probably suspect Chessgi to have a larger branching factor than Shogi, because the Chess pieces are so much more powerful, and thus have many more possible moves. I suspect that Shogi, however, actually has the larger branching factor due to the fact that the board has 81 squares instead of 64. In any case, these games won't be 'digestable' by computers for several decades at best, in my opinion. They are both still easy to analyze very deeply in the opening, though, with Shogi being a little more so, because pieces aren't usually captured quite as early as in Chess. Shogi is a wonderful game to be sure; I haven't played Chessgi, but I suspect it is wildly more challenging (for a human) to play than Shogi. An interesting question would be how resistant to computer analysis Marsellias Chess (or other double-move games) would be. ChessV doesn't support any double-move games at present, and I must confess that I am not at all clear on how to program such a thing efficiently. I have found no technical writings on the subject. The only computer program I know of that plays such games is Zillions-of-Games, so the Zillions team might well be the only people on the planet who know anything about it. And their solution wouldn't really be directly applicable, anyway, even if they wanted to share it. Although I know none of the technical details of how Zillions is programmed, I am quite certain that it is of a radically different design than ChessV. This is primarily because the two programs were written with a very different design goal. Zillions is designed to play as many games as possible (currently hundreds, if not thousands, but many are played very poorly.) ChessV is designed to play as many games as is possible to play with a very high level of skill (presently about 35; will be hundreds, but many chess variants will NEVER be supported.) I will investigate double-move some day, but I have about a thousand other things I want to do first. Now, the super-computer resistant game is Go, with 19 x 19 = 361 legal opening moves ... Ok, you can divide by four (at least) because of the symmetry, but after a few moves, the board will be asymmetric, and the branching factor will still be 300+!!! Computers play Go very badly ... I got the best program I could get about 3 years ago and was able to beat it, even giving it quite a long time (which is scarry, because I'm really not very good; about 15 kue at best.) I'm sure programs have gotten somewhat better, but I know for a fact that there are literally thousands and thousands of kids living in China/Japan/Korea less than ten years old who can easily defeat the best technology has to offer.
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