Comments by jean-louiscazaux

Joe, http://aworldofchess.com

Among the two I vote Manticore.

This page is nicely written. I answer to this: "I've referred to the Alfonso X text as the Libro de los Juegos, but I can't track down where I found that name and other sources call it different things; anyone (Jean‐Louis?) have any pointers re this?"

Indeed, the book has several titles, it is not like a modern book with a title on the cover. Moreover it is composed of several parts, which are called "libro" (book) themselves. "Libro de los Juegos" (Book of games) is correct however and can be used.

The WP page is good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_los_juegos) or there is also my website (http://history.chess.free.fr/acedrex.htm). An excellent page introducing to the translated text and the PhD of Sonja Musser is here: https://www.ancientgames.org/alfonso-xs-book-games-libro-de-los-juegos/

The Cavalier was not invented by Eric Greenwood in 1980. This name and piece had been borrowed from Mideast Chess invented before, in the 1960s, according to D.B.Pritchard's Encyclopedia ofChess Variants.

The name of Cavalier, as well as the one of Chevalier to name the Camel, was even much older than that. Chevalier for the Camel and Cavalier for the Giraffe were names proposed by Falkener in his book of 1892 while describing, Tamerlane's Chess.

Mideast Chess reported in D.B.Pritchard's Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (both editions) has a different Cavalier's move.

Instead of :"The cavalier first moves one square diagonally, and then an arbitrary number of squares horizontally or vertically, or it moves one square horizontally or vertically, and then an arbitrary number of squares diagonally. "

It is "The cavalier first moves one square diagonally, and then an arbitrary number of squares horizontally or vertically, or it moves an arbitrary number of squares horizontally or vertically, and then one square diagonally." Thus, the cavalier has a choice of two path to reach a square. It is the move of this piece at Renn Chess too, which is a follow up of Mideast Chess.

Maybe this difference could be mentioned on this page.

I wanted to see past games of Metamachy But the Related Pages menu is almost void on this page. Could it be corrected?

That page is fine. Just a detail when it is mentioned the Mideast chess account from John Gollon. As the matter of fact, Mideast C is not covered in the famous Gollon's book. It was said that this game and Pacific C. were detailed in draft from Gollon partly sent to Eric Greenwood in 1976; who communicated this to Hans Bodlaender in 1997.

I have never seen this draft. The source used by Pritchard was a correspondance between John Gollon and Philip Cohen. Was it the same thing? It could be.

I would be inclined to think that the good description was from Pritchard, which revised his text for his second book (Classified ECV), and that the text composed by Hans had an unwanted error.

I would be very interested to look at these correspondances if someone has them.

Interestingly, someone told me on Facebook that a piece playing as F then R and W then B was called a Godzilla by another inventor.

"I realized that the knight is stronger than a bishop." Do you mean that? I had the feeling that on a 10x10 the Bishop is the strongest.

I had not found that link on the bottom. Thank you Greg.

@Bn Em. I fear a miscommunication. Sorry, English is not my mother language, you sentence is long and not direct enough for my poor English >> I"m not sure about what you mean.

What I know or understand:

• Cavalier in Renn Chess, Greenwood: is F-then-R or R-then-F, but not an adjacent
• Cavalier in Mideast according to Pritchard: it is the same than above.
• Cavalier in Mideast according to Hans: is F-then-R or W-then-B, but not an adjacent

I said that Greenwood took the Cavalier from Mideast, and this is true only if Pritchard is right and Hans is wrong. Pritchard seemed to be quite certain of what he wrote because he said that then the Cavalier has always two paths to reach a square.

My point is not an offense to my friend Hans, of course.

Maybe worth to mention that there are two versions of the move depending on the source.

I make this announcement that would interest a lot of chessvariant lovers. After many years I finally got all booklets written by V.R.Parton. I have edited this work, adding a lot of illustrative diagrams because Parton was simply using a typing machine. I must thank a lot Peter Blommers (who corrected Pritchard's book) and Ulrich Schädler (from the Swiss Museum of Games) for their precious help in collecting the booklets that were not available before. Also Rick Knowlton and Paul Rapoport for their precious help in scrutinising the text to chase errors made by the scanning process. While Parton did not have the good fortune to see his works published, this volume endeavours to correct that omission. Some hard to find testimonies and correspondence are included to help better understand the complex personality of this inventor of games. Parton showed a sincere desire that his studies reach a broader audience, and this is what is accomplished by the present publication. At last, his creations are being made available to future generations, and will not be forgotten. This book (325pages) can be found on Amazon or better on Lulu.com:

https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/vernon-rylands-parton-and-jean-louis-cazaux/the-chess-world-of-vrparton/paperback/product-rw99wy.html?page=1&pageSize=4

A charolais is a race of cow, originally specific to Charolais, a small region of France. Stag is a better name for a 2,4 leaper. An ungulate is logical for this kind of piece.

What are you looking for? The French website is not saying much. There are no name of inventors, simply an address and a mobile phone at the name of 3D-Chess. The quality of the site is rather poor to my opinion. If you need to translate any part let me know.

I've detected a small error in the preset of Terachess II that I wrote. I corrected it but when I save, it fails: Failed to write to the file /home/chessvariants/public_html/play/pbmsettings/terachess_ii/Default-Alternate.php. Could you help me?

Yes the site describes the rules. As far as I can judge, those rules are the ones already reported in our page (made by the Michel G andJérôme C, the Jocly's people).

"L'espace3D" describes the board and the setup

"Les déplacements" describes the moves. The diagrams are not showing up in the French original page.

"Règles originales" completes the rules

There is only a mobile phone number to contact them. I'm a bit reluctant to do it because as far as I can estimate, it looks again to people thinking to have "invented" the next big thing, unaware of previous attempts. The site is made with no care, capitalising and fonts are random, it talks about "Stanton" pieces, etc. The subtitle is "The first variant of 3D chess which is really playable". There is no explanation why previous variants were not. Every time I got in contact with an isolated "inventor" and seller of physical sets of his invention it has been a complicated time, so I prefer not to do again. As they omit to say their name, I suggest that you refer to "Anonymous Equipe 3D-Chess, Paris". If they are people interested to chessvariants, I guess they will come to that page and will react in reading our discussion.

I have a problem with the Preset of Terachess II The White Missionary (Y) cannot move. I just need to add a "Y" in a string in Post-Move 1, I edited the file and added that character, but when I save it says it failed. Can someone help me?

A very old variant of mine. King can switch only with Prince, so unpromoted, not with Queen. So the player has to decide if he promotes his Prince or not.

Thank you for the notice. It is corrected now

Originally the Chariot is the sense of the Rook, it is still that sense in xiangqi (where the sinogram also means "car").

Would it be possible for an editor to switch Princess and Chief as indicated by Fredrik and to propose another set to play as the one proposed is nice to see but really discouraging to play. Either my renewed set that I sent to Greg I believe several weeks ago or Alfaerie would be better. Thanks

I have prepared a set of 16 icons to make a set of pieces for Jetan-of-Barsoom. Could an editor help me in making a set I could use to play this preset? Thanks a lot