Pythagoras: It actually set me thinking about bidding systems which you might use to bias the choice of game you might receive to hedge against games you don't like and for games you do ... but it all got too complicated.

I signed up for the competition too, fully knowing that I might get a White Maharajah (oh well, now I will you watch!) or to play grenv at dark chess (I'll get that too!). The reason why i think it would be fun as a team tournament is that it would help build team spirit in fellowships ... commisserating or extolling as was fit.

I guess Fencer is doing the same in Backgammon, Checkers, pente and the inline things, none of which I play.

WhisperzQ: No it's not a good idea What would happen if i had to play a Knight Relay Chess game or even worse a Maharajah game, or even worse a Maharajah with white game....?
But generally i find the idea good too.....

Fencer: Great idea ... this would be a cool idea for a team tournament too.

Fencer: Kudos for the creativity!

Fencer: I like the idea, this will be my first BK tournament !

Fencer: good you said yes, maybe you do to the thing something? Random games nice idea! If there is but rating which players should have in this random game type. would it be so that after the variation is selected some people would drop out? Maybe also challenging for random games for one on one will be soon possible?

Fencer: lol, i'm in. Some of these variants I've never played, so it will be interesting. :)

Wow intersting idea, although i suck at chess i'll give it a go lol

Any brave Chess players here?

Yes.

Salkkuman: Yes. Deleting a game like screenchess should be available before the pieces are set up, but not afterwards. At that point it is equal to resigning.

Salkkuman: definitely. and the same goes for the "delete game" techique!

Screenchesses if one resing after the first moves it should affect to BKR! The game is often ended after the pieces have putten on the board. What do you people think about it?

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=12856&tri=77645&trnst=0

David Pritchard: A link to a short obituary

nabla: Wow. I get the Variant Chess magazine (which is great), and I am crushed by this news.

I have sad news to report : David Pritchard, for whose second edition of the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants I collected games here, has died accidentally on December 11. A big part of the book was already written, but I have of course no idea whether someone will finish the huge work that he was doing. I will forward here the information I might get about that.

Among the great games collected here, a few of them may still be published in another way, either in the magazine "Variant Chess", either on my website. Again, if it happens I will inform the players who provided me the games.

Thank you one more time to all contributors.

Time to restart the quarterly tournaments.
Starts January 20th, 2006.

Two games switched colors, open to all. Good luck.

I might add some other variants, but the announcements will depend on board size. Extinction Chess is likely (8 × 8). The tournament board will have them. Maybe in a few weeks.
A link,
http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=12781&trnst=0

redsales: I thought Bird put the game and game pieces in the public domain in 1874? :)

too bad Capa can't sue him...

grenv: You can't do that in any case, Ed would bounce on you with a lawsuit.

mangue: Quite right, or I'll start promoting to an archbishop in regular chess!

No Fencer, it did not happened. And if it is not allowed, than it is good so, because the rules said, there is no bishop in the game.

Fencer: I think mangue was requesting an option to promote a pawn to a bishop - but if brainking wants to keep los alamos chess authentic then that shouldn't be an option :)

mangue: It should not be possible. Did it happen in a game on BrainKing?

posting in the 8x8 forum is definitely inappropriate, sorry. but thanks socrates for your opinion. So it does not make sense, and was not possible in the earliest version. But is it legal?

mangue: No

Walter Montego: You are right, for the reader to get a right grasp over Dark Chess, at least one game position should be shown in all three views.

Does it make sense to allow bishop promotion in los alamos chess, since there is no bishop in this game?

andreas: no, that's crazyhouse, or almost, because crazyhous has a different rule from loop chess concerning promoted pieces. Bughouse is very different, it's a 2 against 2 game played on 2 boards.have a look Here for the rules.

HalfPawn: It is called "Loop Chess" here.

nabla: For Dark Chess games to be shown in a book, you might want to advise him to show all three looks of the board on certain moves. I wish we had that option here for reviewing a finished game. Sometimes with the whole board shown the moves look ridiculous and you have to remember that the players can't see the whole picture.

grenv: Thank you for that game, it looks really great, and I advice everybody to ask for the PGN !
Total agreement with you, to make a game private is IMHO a feature which should not exist.

Pythagoras: I have no idea why it is private, I would never willingly agree to such a game, but I also don't check carefully apparently.

I messaged you the PGN. If anyone else is interested let me know.

grenv: and how about this Atomic game?

Wow it should be a nice game! Too bad we can't see it.......

grenv: Thank you ! I am all but expert in Dark Chess, but yes, I think that is what we are after. Unfortunately the Atomic game is a private one, so I would need the PGN score (here or by PM).

nabla: Here's a couple to get the ball rolling between Walter and I that I think are quite good. Is that the kind of thing you're after?

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=593132&i=1
http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=47630&i=1

and how about this Atomic game?

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=738624&i=1

Walter Montego: Sure that the king promotion would be a definite diagram in the book ! I would like to see it. Good Dark Chess games are also called for, I doubt that David Pritchard has any of them yet except for the one published in Variant Chess by the inventor.

nabla: Come to think of it, I've played some very good Dark Chess games. Too bad I didn't put stars next to them so that I'd be able to find them. I also came across an Extinction Chess game played by two other people that I'm sure your friend would include in his book. It involved promoting a Pawn to a King to win the game when the obvious move of promting to a Queen won't work. I wish I could remember where I saw that game. I'd send it right over to you. Perhaps one of the players invovled will see this post and remember the game. I'd like to check it out again.

WhisperzQ: All variants played here ought to be covered. Variants where games are less likely to be included are the ones where it is most easy to get good games elsewhere, I would say Fischer Random, Xiangqi and Shogi. And in games where only the startposition is changed (like Fischer Random again), miniatures will probably be preferred, as long games will just look like normal chess.

nabla: Do you have a list of the game variants which will be covered, or do we assume that it is all of them?

Hi variants players,

I am writing this for David Pritchard, who is close to finishing the second edition of his famous book "The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants". He is always looking for good sample games, and when I offered him to make this call on Brainking, he found it was an excellent idea. There are many variants played here and the turn-based type of play makes for better games than blitz.

The present message is a call for "best games" by the top BK players - I have no precise idea about what "top" means, but probably it should be thought as something like having been in the top 5 BKR in the variant played. Best games can be won, but also drawn or lost games. If you are interested that one of your games shows in the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, just submit to me your one or two best games in each variant. All I need is the game id (or the link to the game, which looks like http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=123456), given either in a PM to me or on that board.

The time delay for this is about one month. After that, David (and me!) will still be interested in seeing your best games, but he will not be able to include them in the book any more.

Thank you by advance for your inputs !

Salkkuman: I can undedrstand the many games at once frying your brains ... I expect even one game would fry mine now. Interesting comment about writing down the moves ... could you still see the moves as you went through the game? One of the challenges I always found was that at some point I would "forget" where a piece was and would have to reconstruct the moves from memory ... partly based on what I could remember and partly on what I expected they had been. This would, of course, be a lot easier if you could see a written record of the moves.

WhisperzQ: I have a long time played blindfold with my parents, so that they have pieces. And i have wroted the moves, just to remove mistakes. With my chess fellows i have played on car on walking trips on playing site or somewhere. It is fun. In russia playing simultaneusly many blind fold games was even illegal some point, because it can be dangerous to the brains!

Even though the game is clearly a win for white in Horde Chess, I'm willing to try out black side against anyone for fun. Any takers?

HalfPawn: White seems to have an advantage, but it doesn't seem to be overwhelming. I think the jury's still out though.

02i: I am no specialist of the field so I could be wrong, but from what I read it looks like about all games of the type "one against all" are forced wins for the player with the army - the classical example being "Fox and the gooses". The reason for it seems to be that if one of them wasn't, it would probably be a straightforward win by direct attack for the lone piece.
The lone piece being much easier to conduct than a set of pieces, such a game is more playable if it is unbalanced in favour of the army.