My opinion is that opening theory is only destroying chess at the highest level. Admittedly, there are those instances where it somehow tarnishes the games of us non-godlike-beings, however I think they are few and in most instances theory actually helps a person to understand the strategies of an opening- theory in this sense being what it should: an explanation of the goals and strategies inherent in the openings with analysis, not just the analysis. However, even if it were the case that theory kills originality, Fischer Random provides for well over one hundred starting positions, each one with myriads of possible goals and strategies that you would never see in "just chess", making it necessary to develop your own theory in each game! In fact my favorite thing about one of my new favorite games is it enhances your positional evaluation skills, cause you need em!

mahavrilla: I do have. Similar thoughts
have been expressend in 8 decades without the
doom coming indeed. Creativity will prevail. ~*~

I am a supporter of the idea that if we do not evolve chess, it's only going to get worse. Opening theory is killing chess. After playing gothic and janus chess here, I am starting to conclude that standard chess is going to have to do more than shuffle the back rank in order to give it life. Anybody else have some thoughts here?

Hardly corner chess guys.

but this is where the link apparantly takes you to!!

bobwhoosta: I second ... ... ~*~

And guess what? I just went to start a new game, and the position was right before my eyes!!! Is there anyway to blank out dumb remarks??? = )

When a person picks up a Fischer Random game from the waiting games board, he is allowed to see the positioning of the pieces before deciding to accept the game. As the person creating the game has no option which position he gets, might it be more fair leave the position a blank before acceptance as to discourage "Window Shopping"? I have no doubts the positions are all equal, otherwise Fischer would have had nothing to do with the game, let alone have created it, but just in the name of fairness, which has a nice name btw. = )

well there are a few things that can be done.. give less rating points for wins with white... or give ZERO points for a whtie win. another possiblity is to start more black pawns forward. Its pointless to play with black and i have zero respect for a person who only plays white. The game is obviously flawed and jsut look at teh win % between white and black. do you see disparity? if so than it needs to be fixed. If we dont than i guess we all need glasses!

Well since last time nobody succedded, i will increase the prize..... So here is your chance to win a one year membership here, with a lot of effort of course........

The first one who will post at
Gothic Chess discussion board and only there, the correct answers to the above 4 questions, will win a 1 year Rook membership...........

The 4 questions are here.


***If there are no answers or any correct one until 10/02/2005, there will be no winner.......
***If someone posts more than 1 answer, then the accepted one, will be ONLY his last one. That means even if someone posts a correct answer before everyone, but posts another one later, not correct this time, he would not win as the accepted answer will be the last one. Even if anyone else hasn't answered correctly.......
***In the extremely rare case when there will be 2 or more correct answers at the exactly same time, the winner will be the one whose post will appear first at the Gothic Chess discussion board.
***I will post if there is a winner or not at 10/02/2005.

I think I might get hooked on this chess, and fight my way to the world championship!! (Do they have one yet? Maybe I'll set one up. = )

looking forward. your call
and don't forget - any "invincible" position
for black can't be too bad for white either ... ... ... ~*~

http://brainking.com/game/Tournaments?tri=14869

Round 2 has finally started. Winner gets a one year Rook membership. The money is in Fencer's hands waiting to be awarded. :) We have three people that I've played few times, one that knocked me out of the tournament, and two players I've never played. It looks like a good competitive round for all involved. Good luck to all of you and I hope for good games. After the tournament is over, I'll let Fencer know which of you wins the prize. If this rounds somehow ends in a tie, I'm not sure if the tournament will go to a third round or not. If it doesn't, those left in the tie will arrange a playoff of our own. If it does continue, then we'll await the results of such a round if it proves necessary.

Once again good luck to all, and bring extra batteries for your flashlights. :)

I don't see how not seeing your opponents piece setup can be a bad thing. If you know the rules beforehand you can adopt that into your strategy. Plus if you set up your pieces to fight for certain squares, while making sure you have no obvious or identifiable weaknesses, then if your opponent is attacking or fighting for those same squares you have an offensive/defensive scheme already in place, and if they are not you completely dominate those squares without a single move. The give/take is that your opponent gets other squares. Knowing this you c_a_n set up a formation that provides for offense and defence without seeing your opponents setup beforehand.

Yes it can. Into, out of and through check are all possible. Clearly into would be a mistake

Yes and in fact it's very easy to mate. Yesterday, it was 3:00 at midnight when i posted that it's a draw so i didn't know what i was talking about obviously, now that i see it again........

A question/clarification: If a King is threatened by a piece, then it can castle or not? As there is no check i assume it can right......?

hi guys!are you furious of allways losing suicide chess games against arimakat (as me ;-) ) ; do you want to enhance your anti chess abilities?
Then, feel free to join the "team game" i gonna set up against arimakat; i wait a little to start it, its gonna begin in about a week
message me if interested!

The example was K vs K-Q-Q which, as you say, is a win for the two queens if played accurately.

is only a draw if the single King can be positioned next to the other King ... in the open the queen will round up the King and kill him. Interestingly, if there are opposing blocked pawns they can, in most cases, be used by the K-Q to manuouvre the opposing King into a detonating position.

K vs K-Q-Q can always be made into a win for the dual Queens.

Why not 2.Ka3! ?

In fact when i posted this i was not sure about what i said, and i will look at it tomorrow.........

Chessmaster1000: Not so. With 2 Queens it is simply a matter of forcing the white king to move away from the black king. In this situation:

White king is forced to move
1.Kb2 Ka1
2.Ka2 Qb2 (the one in unspecified pos)

Now white has to move the king away... QED

Oh, a black Queen! Yeah, now that makes sense. Then white would be stalemated..........

I have to add that the previous Qb2 move of black wasn't a bad one, since the game was draw anyway......

In the example of redsales the queen of b1 is black. The only piece of the white is the king. White king is in a1 and he is surrounded, so the king in atomic can´t capture and he hasn´t any legal move.

redsales:
>stalemate is possible, though unlikely. Eg white king on b2, Black king on a2, queen on b1, another queen somewhere. White to move, if white moves to a1 and black moves the other queen to b2, white is stalemated. Black would have to be pretty dense to do that though!

I don't understand. Why white "can't physically move..!" ?
For example Qb1-g1. Why not........?????

I read all rules before playing a game and my natural ability of instantly finding logical holes in every statement, says for this case that there is not stalemate in this variation as described in Brainking rules......Am i wrong.....?

With stalemate i don't mean there is no draw of course.
Stalemate definition: Stalemate is a situation that a player has no legal moves and he is not in check, and as in this game there is no check, stalemate is a situation that a player has no legal moves.

hello!im wondering if we may play a team game against arimakat ;i think it would be a great opportunity to improve ourselves, providing arimakt's ranking!
everybody is welcome, but experienced players would be better;cu!we will discuss time controls later if enough people interested

human error ;-)

you can't because d1 (target suare for R) is not free

Sumerian: My king and rook are side by side,my opponant was able to..but I cant.I sent the game to Fencer..I'll post the results

to bwildman:
The problems which had occurred in a game of mine have vanished.

bwildman: What problems?

anyone having problems castling?

oXYgen CZ: hi

hi

There are games where an acceptable "move" is a pass, where the board doesn't change at all... and it is still called a move.
This case is not so radical: the piece does move. Philleas Fog did "move" around the world, even if it ended up where he started ;)

Pafl: I don't see why pgn-programs would have a difficult time with that (but then again I've never used one and am not quite sure even what is is for). I mean, if they're flexible enough to allow moves over the side of the board why not a move to the same position? :) (que ! was not part of the notation, mind you - just my way of showing surprise). Do these programs do any type of validation on the moves made?

Serious issue. Is a "move" the act of moving itself or rather a process of changing place ? I would think the second option is more correct.
Anyway, the pgn-reading programs will have a difficult time with that problem, I am afraid :-)

Interesting. I think it´s a legal move because the piece does a move around of the board. The definition of move is independent of the initial and final square but i have never tested it here.

In a book about games I found this cylinder chess problem:
-------------
White: Ra5, ph6, Kc3
Black: Kb1, pa6, ph7
White to play, mate in 2
-------------
The proposed solution is
1.Ra5-a5! Kb1-c1
2.Ra5-a1++

I haven't tested if this move is possible here at BK yet. My feeling is that it isn't... Truth be told the rules don't exclude the possibility that a Rook (or a Queen for that matter) loops around the board to finish the move in the same position it started in.
Nowhere on the web where I found rules for cylinder chess is this option discarded (nor noted) either.

What do you all think? And if it isn't possible in BK, should it be?

thx grenv, can you wait for me? i'm still a pawn, but i can't wait until 2010 either :)
i'll try to pay up today :)

Off topic, but anyone playing a game with 'ustica' watch out. He was about to bring me my first loss in this game. Glad I could end the game in a draw. Have a look:

http://brainking.com/game/ArchivedGame?g=597205

I just started an Atomic tournament that should decide the best player when it finallly finishes in about 2010.

Instead, if anyone wants to join mine, it should be over very quickly - one day per move, all welcome. I'll wait for quite a few entrants before starting.

Quick Tournament

looks pretty drawish to me! no sac opportunities left.

In this game with Alex we agreed draw. But we are discussing if I had a chance to win. What do you think?

castling, ironically, still has its use as a "suprise move"!

In fact castling doesn't even connect the rooks, since they are right next to each other to begin with. Castling is almost never a good move I would think.

I agree g3(or g4) is good for releasing the bishop. c2 is not as weak because a3 is a legitamate spot for the knight.

I think the "classical" attack is still a good weapon here, especially when targeted to h7 (h2) because you can use the diagonal f1-g8 (f8-g1) - such as here .
This is obviously true only when the opponent has castled king side - for some reason, all my oponents do. I do not castle at all.

Can Horde Chess be salvaged? Personally, I think not. It's not about statistics: it's just about strategy.

White's winning strategy is simple. In essence it's all about deflection and sacrifice. Bear in mind that black's pawns stay on the files they start on unless white allows them to move somewhere else. White needs to clear a path to get behind black's pawn to start eating from the back. So White has to sacrifice to cause those deflections.

White's opening moves setup and execute sacrifices. If the sacrifices are not accepted then captures can force the same thing. Noth these deflect black's pawns diagonally off to both sides of some chosen file. This causes that file to be become more thinly populated by Black pawns. Also pawns on adjacent files need to be deflected away or encouraged to advance so that they no longer protect the pawns (especially the back pawns) on the chosen file and the total number of defenders on that file is reduced. Once the file is chipped away enough, the heavy pieces infiltrate straight along the file - perhaps with final sacrifices to get the queen to the back. It is then a simply mopping up operation working from the back of the horde forwards, just making sure that pawns are picked off in a reasonable order that doesn't allow black any chances of queening or stalemate.

The number of defenders on each file are 3-6-5-7-7-5-6-3. The f-file is my favourite to target though and I may get the h-file en route instead.

Can this strategy be stopped? I don't think so, not with the existing rules.

a castled king, which is attacked in "classical" way - g4, h4, opening a line, queen, rook - can be defended by rooks at the "other side (a7, a8) or queen.
i tried sometimes such an attack, but often failed.

there are no edges. assume the king is on a safe side from the beginning, then a4/h4 is the center.

I often use moves like a2-a4 or h2-h4 (for white), even though I am not really sure about their value ... the pawns are taking some squares from the opponents pieces and they can make the edges of the board a bit less trespassable ... but maybe it just makes me look like I am the active player and that's all :-). Is there anyone else doing these movements ?

I think that both for white and black the fianchetto opening b3/b6 is very good, because this way they fianchetto the bishop that is on the opposite colour squares from the queen, while the same-coloured bishop can be later used to attack the point h7 (h2) together with the queen (thus this bishop enters the game through the center after e3 (e6)).
Overall, I think the h7 (h2) square becomes a big weakness in cylinder chess, a bit similar to c7 (c2) in standard, for instance. I often attack it with a knight too, after Nh3 followed by Ng5 or Na5.

I posted nine of them with a two day time limit. Play one game color your choice, or two games of each color. Good luck.