Ultima is a very good chess variant that was invented by Abbott in the early 1960s. It is has been one of my favourite variants of the past two decades. I would love to see the game at this site, possibly with a tweak or two in the rules. I have some very good suggestions as to minor rule changes, having played hundreds of games of this variety. Is anyone else interested in seeing ULTIMA at brainking.com?

Walter Montego: That would be even better indeed.

joshi tm: I like the border as it is. The name of the type of game that you're playing is right next to the border.

Why not have it so each of us can choose the color of the border that we want for each game? Just like how we can choose the size of the pieces or the type of them in some games, such as Shogi?

I know it was asked, I know it came, and I know is was gone due to the ugly (inhuman) color, but please Can there be another border for Extinction Chess? Please, In Ext. Chess I play moves I would never do in regular Chess, and vice-versa.

Cubs93: You are talking about random screen chess games ... yes?

I'll do that :-)

Cubs93: There's a rule that capturing the king is a draw????????? Surely you jest.

Perhaps if you posted the game position we could help. And in future don't play hidden games.

ah, forget about it... i can't explain it any better, it's just a rule of the FIDE, the world chess organisation

Cubs93: I still don't understand why capturing the king would be considered a draw.

in a real life game a draw means: if you are playing real, so you can see your opponent...

Cubs93: What does "in a real life game a draw" mean? Surely losing your king is either not allowed (can't move into check) or a loss (e.g. in Dark Chess). But never a draw??

I've never played crazy screen chess, but I assume from the rules is is possible that black starts in check, therefore the code probably has to allow for it, which means having your king captured would be a loss?

Cubs93: I would take a look at it, but you have the game as private. One of many reasons not to do so.

Fencer might be able to help you out.

Scherm Schaken (qik_ - Cubs93) my king is captured. that can't... then it's in a real life game a draw. but brainking said i lost. why???

The Topalov vs Kramnik world championship match is starting soon, see
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3349

Any predictions? I just hope that Kramnik's health stays intact, so that it will be a fair contest. If both players are on top form I think it could be the highest quality match ever. It is a shame there will be only 12 games though.

You are cordially invited to join the new tournament of the fellowship "Oriental games" opened to all.
The supported games are:
Chess, Chinese Chess, Japanese Chess, Loop chess, Ambiguous Chess, Reversi 8x8, Go, Go 9x9 and Go 13x13.
You can be registered to the adress:
Oriental Games (15. Septembre 2006, 06:56:47)

plume: You are welcome.

naughtypawn: Thanks naughtypawn. This is my first game of Fischer Random so I just wanted to try the castling to see where the King would end up. Good info in your post --- I am a beginner at Chess so I have alot to learn.
Thanks

plume: You can´t castle right now. You need to move your bishop and your knight to do a h-castle (your king will be on b and your rook on f). And to do an a-castle, you need to move at least your rook that stays on d. Or... you have a castle already (king on c and rook on d) ;)

http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=1918631
In this game shouldn't either player be able to castle now or even as the first move? the computer won't let me move the king yet. I use webTv ---not sure if that makes a difference.
Thanks

Marfitalu: i have but that's the problem, there are not enough teams out there the Wombats have disappeared and there are only 4 other teams

where are all of the Atomic Chess teams from fellowships we need more competion

BlueJ: A move must be finished by marking a square for your own piece.

I already let Fencer to know this bug. But FYI also.

When opponent piece is about to be promoted, I can select pawn, I can select the piece that it will be promoted to. But then I can not finish my move. J

Chicago Bulls:The program(Scid) has nice graphics for itself. I was lazy so didn't upload them or didn't modify the produced file to do your suggested trick. It's the normal start position.

chess database programs does a fine enough job with ambiguous chess

Oh OK. And one note: The pieces from the site http://h1.ripway.com/sanjaab/bitmaps/ do not appear at all, so in the page you provided for Ambiguous Chess statistics i can't see a board with pieces. I suggest you to put the pieces from the following site(do not click it as nothing will happen):
http://www.marochess.de/php/chesspieces/

And you can choose the desired piece to include in your code for the board position with the following way:
After http://www.marochess.de/php/chesspieces/
put CPn.gif
With:
C = W or B for white or black color piece
P = Q or K or R or B or N or P for Queen or King or Rook or Bishop or Knight or Pawn.
n = a number from 1 to 8 for each piece set that matches your size of the board. Of course if you use 1 for example for black rook then you will have to use n=1 for all other pieces too.....
n=1 is a good choice by the way.....

For example http://www.marochess.de/php/chesspieces/WQ1.gif produces the image of the white Queen from set 1.

Chicago Bulls: Sorry, it's generated by a filter to just include the games of 10 current top rated(provisional or stablished) ambigous chess players on this site.
just 159 games and 51 are nabla's games

And where exactly are the top 10 Ambiguous players in that page? LOL!

For statistics lovers:

Top 10 ambiguous players

All

Chicago Bulls: OK I understand, I suppose that this has be done for chess openings database, but I had never seen it before. Now, it seems clear that it requires a great number of high-level games, and I don't think that we have either of these in Ambiguous Chess yet.

nabla:
It's simple:
Take for example the line after After 1.d4 d5:
2.c4 games played = 30, Percentage wins = 93%
2.f4 games played = 6, Percentage wins = 50%

It is not clear at all that 2.c4 is the better move here. You will say but why? It has won for white in the 93% of the games! A huge difference over 2.f4 that wins on only 50%. But this may be completely deceiving.

Consider for example that after 2.c4 and for simplicity's sake, that there are 2 responses to this:
2...X1 that has been played 26 times with a devastating score of 95% in favour of white and 2...X2 that has been played 4 times with a bad score for white of 25%.
2...X1 was the move all people played some time ago, until the new move 2...X2 discovered and been played with a good success for black.
That means we possibly have a refutation to 2.c4 since 2...X2 brings good results for black! Although statistics say 2.c4 has a good %, since many games were played with the bad response for black 2...X1.

The bad thing is the refutation may be deep in the openings-data tree or there may be another refutation to the 2...X2 move later in the tree so 2.c4 is good after all! To solve all these a complete examination of the whole opening-tree should be done starting from the leaves of the tree and going up all the time until we end to the starting opening moves. In that way going backwards(that's the meaning of backsolving) we find the best value(+-,-+, ++-, --+,etc) of each node.....

nabla: Myabe something like BKR averange of players who used this move and their performance BKR. If you look these too you could at least tell something.

Chicago Bulls: Thank you for this work !
What is backsolving ? How would it tell which moves are better ?

Note that these statistics should not confuse us about what is better to play or not. I mean that after 1.d4 d5 for example, when we see 2.c4 with a win=93% while with 2.f4 with a win=50%, we should not been deceived and believe that 2.c4 is much better or even better! This may not be the case! In order to know for sure a backsolving procedure should be done.... But i don't have right now time for this. Later....

nabla: .
.
.
Yes unfortunately i didn't know that when i downloaded all the Ambiguous Chess games those currently played was included too....But after a clearance and a re-generation we have these:

For example:
After 1.e4
1...e5 Win%=44 means that black has a score of 44% against white when he plays 1...e5

Starting move
Move Games Win%
1.e4      321      45
1.d4      114     61
1.f4         70     53
1.c4        66     64

After 1.e4
Move Games Win%
1...e5    125      42
1...c5     74       66
1...d5     49      71
1...e6     36      62

After 1.d4
Move Games Win%
1...d5     61      31
1...e6    17       55
1...f5     13       61
1...c5      9       50

After 1.e4 e5
Move Games Win%
2.c4       24       70
2.d4      23        63
2.Qh5   17        58
2.c3      13        38


After 1.e4 c5
Move Games Win%
2.Bb5     15       60
2.c4        10      40
2.d4         6       33
2.b3         6       16
2.c3         6         8

After 1.e4 d5
Move Games Win%
2.exd5    25       24
2.e5         8        75

After 1.e4 e6
Move Games Win%
2.d4      22        36
2.c3       5         40


After 1.d4 d5
Move Games Win%
2.c4      30       93
2.f4        6        50
2.e4       5        60
2.g3       5        40

After 1.d4 f5
Move Games Win%
2.c4        6        33
2.Bg5      2        50


After 1.d4 e6
Move Games Win%
2.e4         7        42
2.Nc3      3        50
2.g3         3        33

Chicago Bulls: That is very nice, good job ! But the numbers make me suspect that you counted unfinished games as draws, because at the moment I write this message the counters show only 726 finished games.

For example:
After 1.e4
1...e5 Win%=44 means that black has a score of 44% against white when he plays 1...e5




Starting move
Move  Games Win%
1.e4       634       47
1.d4       245       56
1.c4       144       58
1.f4        131       56


After 1.e4
Move   Games Win%
1...e5     255      44
1...c5     140      61
1...d5      85       65
1...e6      64       60

After 1.d4
Move   Games Win%
1...d5      123      36
1...f5         34      66
1...e6        31      54
1...c5       17       47


After 1.e4 e5
Move   Games Win%
2.c4         50      66
2.d4        43       55
2.Qh5     30       60
2.c3        30       46


After 1.e4 c5
Move   Games Win%
2.Bb5     22        54
2.c4        21       40
2.d4       15        43
2.c3       12        25

After 1.e4 d5
Move   Games Win%
2.exd5     42        32
2.e5        14         64

After 1.e4 e6
Move   Games Win%
2.d4          34         36
2.c3            7         42


After 1.d4 d5
Move   Games Win%
2.c4         59         79
2.f4          11        45
2.e4           9        61

After 1.d4 f5
Move   Games Win%
2.c4         16        31
2.Bg5        6        41

Chicago Bulls: It's not different at all, in fact why would anyone consider exd5???, it loses the game immediately. Why allow stupid mistakes?

Chicago Bulls: I fully agree that my first suggested option would make the game less interesting because defence would superseed attack.

Chicago Bulls: In your example, grenv would probably like 8.exd5 to be rejected by the system as illegal.

grenv: So you say that in Atomic Chess 8.exd5 should not be allowed for white or even worse 8...Qxd2 with win, should not be allowed for black?

1. Nf3 f6 2. Nd4 Nh6 3. f3 c6 4. e3 d5 5. Nb5 cxb5 6. Bb5 Nc6 7. e4 Ng4 8.exd5 Qxd2 0-1

But that would just be another variation of Atomic Chess different than that we have here.....

grenv: If my question wasn't, your answer was very clear :-)
Making moves that leave the king in check illegal is indeed an alternative formulation in my personal ruleset ( http://www.pion.ch/echecs/variante.php?jeu=ambigus&rubrique=regles&changer_langue=E ) . Basically it doesn't change the game at all (except for the stalemate, but I like the fact that stalemate is a win), has the advantage to cut off silly mistakes, to make the game more chess-like, but the disadvantages to make the rules more difficult to understand, three times as long and more difficult to implement.
The last reason is enough to make any programer prefer the simple no-check no-mate formulation, and even if I supported your proposition, I am sure that Fencer would not. He didn't implement checks in either Atomic Chess or Extinction Chess, and rightly so imho.

nabla: In the first case the game would be inferior i think, while in the second it's pointless since it's just a delay of the loss....

nabla: I didn't really understand your question, but what I meant was that moves leaving the king in check should be illegal.

Atomic chess should be the same, except that "check" should mean any situation where I can blow up the king.

e.g.
1.Nf3 f6
2.Ne5+

or
1.Nf3 a6
2.Ne5x

grenv: That is something that could be said about Atomic Chess by someone playing his first game, giving an orthodox check, and seeing his opponent answering by ignoring the check and blowing his king up !
Did you mean that one should disallow to choose a move leaving the opponent in check, or only redefine "checks" so as to avoid that a player can lose his king in one move (that is, making those moves illegal instead of losing) ?

grenv: I do not see the point neither why check and mate do not exist.

grenv: Knight Relay Chess is the game!

I played ambiguous chess a few times, and I have to say i think introducing check would make it a better game. Either way it's pretty silly.

sewzay: It should be a draw, but I think the players would have to agree, i don't think it's automatic.