How can a copy be obtained. Thank you for the kind remarks.

Well ted, welcome aboard! I produced the Gothic Chess Review magazine, so I know it well. I am winding up the last details on the December 2003 Special Edition, which is 84 pages. Lots of cool stuff in this one.

You will enjoy this site very much. There is a wide range of Gothic Chess talent out there. If you are a Class B chess player you will rise to the over 2000 mark here very soon.

I have played regular chess for about 21 years and am a Class B player.

Yes I have 2 Gothic Chess sets that were given to me for a Christmas present. I am 36 years old and live near Monroe,VA in Amherst Co. Some friends of mine and I play at each others house regularly. I also played a few games on the Internet VIA E-mail against 2 players from New Jersey and 1 from New York. I do not know their real names;only their Internet names if I can find them and did not lose them. I got a July 2000 Gothic Chess Review with my sets;this is how I learned to play Gothic Chess. Of course I have no way of knowing whether or not the games I have played are against good players. I have,however developed my own style. Perhaps I'll learn how good I am on this site.

Hello Ted,

First, take a look at this link: click here

It demonstrates some castling blunders, particularly on the queenside.

The most dangerous piece you need to worry about when executing a Queenside castle is the Archbishop. Even umoved from its start in the g-file, it can perform a solo checkmate under the right circumstances (namely, your own Knight not on c3 for white or c6 for black).

The Chancellor is less of a threat to a queenside castled position because it takes longer to infiltrate with an abundance of pawns still on the board (usually true when one has castled.) So, you only really have to be weary of one Gothic piece, and not need to neutralize both, as you have mentioned.

A typical motiff in chess is to play Kb1/Kb8 after 0-0-0 as well, so in this case it is not unique to Gothic Chess.

Where have you played your 250 games? Do you have your own Gothic Chess set?

How safe is Queenside Castling,as opposed to Kingside Castling in Gothic Chess? I have done this safely about 35% of the times I have done it. Of course,I have yet to try it on this Site. However, whenever I do it;somewhere between 30 and 40 times in over 250 Gothic Chess games I have played,I usually have to neutralize the 2 gothic pieces first and then play the King to the b file after castling or face a devastating attack. Is this normal or what? I would really appreciate an ittelligent reply.

From the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church, there are Bishops, Archbishops, and 'special Archbishops' that are candidates for becoming the next Pope called Cardinals. You can be an Archbishop and still not be a Cardinal, but all Cardinals are at least Archbishops.

I am not sure if that adds clarity or confusion.

A Chancellor should be easier to translate into German, since that is an official Title of State. A Chancellor in American lingo can also be someone of Academic importance at a University.

Okay,the abbreviations is an argument (many K`s),but then better for the Chancellor: "Marschall" = M,the other usual synonym for this piece and "Bischof" = B,or we use the more usual "Kardinal" and the abbreviation "C"

not good, think of the abbreviations for notation. how about Erzbischof?

Ich denke auf Deutsch doch einfach "Kanzler" und "Kardinal".

Is there any translation of new pieces names (Chancellor and Archibishop) in other languages? In particular, I am interested in German and Russian translations.

Yeah it is unusual to have the Chancellor so active early in the game. It is something I only have a chance to do against the weakest of players, and he surely goes to the top of my list in that regard.

thanks ... I saw the CxB move but it didn't register ... must be too late ot be thinking about GC now :)

After 8...Kf7 there is Cxh8+, taking the Bishop and forcing the black king to move again. 9...Kg7 attacks the Chancellor and white looks to be in danger with two pieces hanging (the bishop on g5 is also still being attacked by the black pawn on f6) but the whole point of this aggressive line was 10. Ch4! and now the black bishop is attacked. If 10...fxg5 then 11. Cxg4 leaves white with an easy win.

Just had a look at the game where D resigned after 8 moves ... if he moved Kf7 what your next move had been?

Actually, that person you mentioned, whose name I no longer bother to type, lost in 8 moves. Click here to see the loss in 8

And now here is the 5 to 1 lead in development where he said he was winning.

I don't think these games will go into the book. There is no need to showcase the very poor play made by him, I want the readers to see good games played by much better players.

Hi Ed,

There are some interesting miniature wins on here you might want to put in a separate chapter. When you beat Danoschek in 3 moves with your Chancellor, that should be called "The biggest blunder ever seen"! I also like how you had 5 pieces developed and Danoschek only had a mere Knight in play in your last game with him (remember the one he kept saying he was winning? He must think everyone is stupid). Make sure you include this in the "what not to do" section.

With the completion of the 84 page issue of the "Best of Gothic Chess Review", I realize this is really a small book on Gothic Chess! A few players have been asking me to write a book for a while, and now, by default, it looks like I am more than 50% done.

I would like anyone who is inerested in having their best games published in this book to send me a message. I will only publish games actually played here on BrainKing.

If you want to "nominate" some other player's game for inclusion in this book, feel free to do so. If you have any games on here that are personal favorites that you have seen, send me the game IDs and I will take a look at them.

why would anyone,but the people ed selects to be on cards,want to buy a deck of cards? Especially from someone who collected money from folks before...and had to be forced to deliver?

Yes Rob, I won that in 70 something moves, but as Cassias said, he knew he was lost about move 30 or so. The Chancellor and Pawn endings make Rook and Pawn endings look easy!

I am not sure why the other poster thinks Cassias won the game. I won the game clearly, as I have never lost on this game site.

Ed,

Thanks for cleaning up the posts. By the way, how many moves did it take you to beat Cassius? Isn't that the game where you mopped him up in a Chancellor and Pawn ending?

OK everyone, the quote is back from the printer! We can make the "Best of Gothic" deck for not alot of money.

So all the champions can email me their photos, and I will get you into the deck.

Congratulations to the top 52!

Aces
GothicInventor
ChessCarpenter
strydor
juangrande

Kings
Dredger
HerculesBeast
Fencer
Savage

Queens
nstre
matthewhall
Whisperz
grillyx

Jacks
anticonformista
JAGR
tonyh
GKChesterton

Start thinking abour your mugshots, gentlemen :)

So long as grillyx gets his act into gear and gets a few more points so that he can be a queen and I could be a dirty rotten knave LOL W:)

I see we have 34 active players who have completed at least 25 games of Gothic Chess on here. That is pretty close to 52, the number of cards in a deck.

So, the thought occurred to me, maybe we could make a deck of cards with everyone's pictures on them. Players 1-4 woud be the aces, 5-8 would be the Kings, etc.

Anyone interested?

At least you did not misspell misspell :) That would be an efficacious typo.

Dang...leave it to the English teacher to misspell 'Chancellor' at every opportunity!

Matt,

I had to go back and revisit that game. I forgot about some of the peculiarities in that one!

The first was here like you mentioned. Things got interesting and it seemed like minor + R for the Arch was sufficient as it made white's positon a little more uncomfortable than mine.

The next interesting part is here where I let the Chancellor get caught in exchange for your Archbishop, which was more powerful than my piece in that position.

These were part strategical decisions, and I will have to dig up my notes to figure out exactly what I was thinking at the time!

The poor Chancellor. As pawns come off the board, it's rook aura gains power, but its knight component loses power.

Since the Knight is the weakest of the conventional pieces once migrated to the 10x8 board, and the Rook is the piece that losest the least amount of power on the 10x8 board, it is hard to tell the net effect of the Chancellor's power change.

One thing that i s pretty cool...Archbishops dominate in the opening, Chancellors are wicked in the middlegame, and Queens tear up the endgame.

The question is....where do you excel, and how bad would you risk beating your opponent in the given stage of the game where the pieces will help you most?

I myself am a bit more weary of the Chancelor's late-game abilities than I am of the Archbishop's opening abilities...perhaps because the openings I favor lead to somewhat longer, stodgier games that tend to lead to endgames where having the Chancelor's rank and file solidity is an advantage. Like Whisperz, I will almost always trade my Archbishop for a Chancelor, and have not seen much opening play (against an equal opponent, Ed and Rob!) where I feel the Archbishop solidified enough of a tactical advantage to counteract the Chancelor's heavy influence in endgames.

Speaking of Archbishop piece value, Ed and I played an interesting game recently where the Archbishop was traded early on for a rook and a bishop...it led to an interesting, unbalanced position. The side that had given up the Archbishop won, but then again, it was Ed v. me.;-)

I think the Archbishop derives a lot of its early power from its knight's move ability to jump over pieces ... this is the same as a knight in conventional chess. On a really crowded board the value of a knight increases, towards the end game the bishop becomes more pwerful as it ususally develops a longer range as there are less pieces to interfer. The Chancellor, I find, als o grows in power through the game, but i am not sure why. In the early game I actually prefer the Archbishop but will always swap for a Chancellor because I know as pieces disappear the Chancellor rises.

I discovered something over the course of playing about 2000 games of Gothic Chess. The new pieces have a "dimension" to them that is not observed in the domain of regular 8x8 chess. That being, the value of the pieces vary as does the pawn population.

Consider this. Place a White Archbishop on a8. Place a White King on a1. Place a Black King on j8.

White to move will win, but it will take a very long time! With no pawns on the board, the Archbishop has "decayed" to being less important than a Rook. A Rook on the empty board mates much more quickly than the Archbishop.

So, should not the strength of the pieces become a function of the pawn count? I think so.

On a crowded board we observe Archbishops tearing down the house. So, in these instances, we rate it much higher.

excuse me!! I meant to say Gothicchess.org;not Gothicchess.com. in my previous message.

In the July 2000 article on the value of the Gothic pieces;you rated the Archbishop as being less than 1 pawn lower than the Queen. Why then on Gothicchess.com do you only rate it as slightly more powerful than a Rook. Of all the Pieces only The Archbishop has the ability to create an unassisted checkmate;did you in your figuring take this into account. Also with the possibility of an Archbishop Vortex;I really believe a constant should have been introduced to take this into account. I still prefer your origanal accessment of its value. This is why I wondered about this. Could you offer a simple explaination to my question;as I believe it would help my game?

It takes some getting used to, but the "developing without moving" Bishop, by just pushing the d-pawn, is a weapon black can use to NOT be behind by one tempo as a result of moving second.

You notice on the stats page that black has actually won more games than white. I think in the long term scheme of things, some players have stumbled onto the notion of how to use the diagonals to their advantage as black.

That is one of the reasons I find gothic weird. There is no "long diagonal", or if you want, for each side there are 3: for white it's a1-h8 to c1-j8. In chess, the point of the fianchetto is defensive as well as offensive, as in the sicilian opening. In gothic, you are on an offensive "long diagonal" as soon as you open the d pawn.

If you can't fianchetto with a Bishop, you cannot create one of the essential "fortresses" common to chess. Getting a Bishop onto a long diagonal that is also in the same file as a castled king adds a great deal of stability to the game.

When I first started playing regular chess, the concept of the fianchetto seemed foreign to me. Look at the players who molded it into a strategic weapon, the hypermoderns of the early 1900's. I think, by default, we are all "classic era" players, and only learn the finer points of the game after a longer period of exposure to it.

Just my opinion, of course, and each player's experience is undoubtedly different.

I do not see why not being able to Fiachetto is all that bad;otherwise I totally agree with Gothic Inventor. Capablanca chess is certainly flawed;whereas Gothic Chess is a much more balanced and preferable setup. It is the best of the 8x10 square setups;I prefer it to regular chess,which is far too drawish. However,I also like Janus Chess;even though the setup is strange.

Between Capablanca chess and Gothic Chess.

But first, the concept of an 80 square board is not unique to Capablanca. Capa looked at it in 1924 or 1925, correcting the English Master Bird from 1874. Bird also was not the first, as he improved on Pietro Carrera's setup from 1617!

The patent and the setup for Gothic Chess is not claimed to have been the first try at an 80 square board. In fact, in the patent, we acknowledge the predecessors and had to prove our setup is very different.

There are 6 reasons why the Capablanca setup is bad.

1. The i-pawns were undefended. The starting position was therefore unstable, and kingside castling was usually suicidal since the castled king would reside in the file of the undefended pawn.


2. The bishops are "shifted" inward one file each, which changes the color on which they reside. They cannot reach the "long diagonal" like they can in regular chess, so many popular formations, such as the King's Indian or the Reti Opening had no counterparts in this variation.

3. On each side of the board, there are three diagonal pieces in a row, all aimed in the vicinity of the weak i-pawn. There is no symmetry, and there is too much attacking power focused on an unprotected sector of the board.


4. After Nh3 the knight covers the h-pawn, blocking the bishop in. The king's bishop could then only deploy in one direction, that being towards the opponent's Queenside after the f-pawn is pushed to free it. This cripples the range of the bishop over an important area of the board. This is bad.

5. Attempting to fix item #4 by playing the pawn to h3 instead of Nh3 does not solve the problem. White's King's Bishop would be free to head to the right after the h-pawn is pushed once, but where can the King's Knight land on its first move? Playing Nj3 then Nh2 after Bi3 costs a critical tempo, and Black's e-pawn can make one move to threaten the Bishop on i3, a potential loss of another tempo. Pushing the g-pawn then playing Ng2 looks more promising, but without pushing the e-pawn, Black has ...Ci6 to hit on the weakened i2 square. Of course ...Ci6 could be answered with Ch2, but this cuts off the Bishop's retreat path and invites either ...Ad6 or ...c6 and ...Bc7 to chase the Chancellor. This is bad.

6. Pushing the h-Pawn two squares in Capablanca Chess, seemingly freeing the King's Bishop, Knight, and Chancellor, allows a violent attack against h3 and i2 by the enemy Archbishop, Queen, and Bishop, by lining them up onthe c8-j1 diagonal. White can try to do the equivalent quick kingside castle in Capablanca Chess, but there is a positional detriment imposed. After 1. h4 d6 2. Nh3 e5 3. Bi3 (protecting the h-Pawn since the Black Bishop on d8 is now attacking it) 3...Nh6 4. Ch2 looks to allow 5. 0-0 without breaking a sweat. However, Black has Nj5, attacking the h-Pawn twice and the Bishop on i3, detracting from the merit of the position for White. After 4...Nj5 and 5...Nxi3, White's Pawn structure is ruined on the kingside since 6. jxi3 is needed to recapture the Knight that removed White's Bishop. White cannot play in this fashion without surrendering the iniative. This is very bad.

All of this, and more, is explained on the website at this link for those that are interested.

And everyone knows edge = danoschek, someone who was barred from this site.

interesting reading thus has taken me to the conclusion Gothic lacking imagination changed order of four pieces of classic game capablanca to take credit for an entirely new creation.

wording on the gothic chess fiction site thus: Welcome to the Gothic Chess Federation. Gothic Chess is played on an 80 square board that is 10 columns wide and 8 rows in height. There are two new pieces added to the board. These pieces are called the Chancellor and the Archbishop.

new of course being entirely questionable after the creation of the great Jose Raul Capablanca. archbishop and chancellor are previously much tested members of the chess army in variations as demonstrated on chessvariations.com

firstly capablanca chess and further here capablanca's chess. comparably, borrowed ideas, credit taken for moving order of few pieces hence gothic chess

it remains a mystery why wishiwashi management allows for farcical gothic instructions always ... ~*~

the are statistically the main way which virii are spread.

I changed the Gothic Chess website around a bit. I finally got around to adding the Annotated Games section, by popular demand. The games there are posted in Word format, so you can download and print them, not just look at the html pages.

This is the link to that page. There are two cools games there currently, with more on the way.

In honor of the KM fellowship's "adopt a pawn" program,the winner recieves a 1 year rook membership to BrainKing.com.If the winner is already a paid member,they may sponser a pawn,to become a member.Have fun,and pawns please remember to leave enough openings for the tournament. :)

From: GothicInventor
Date and time: 19. November 2003, 10:38:46
Subject: Policy Change
This is not for public posting. As I can read all boards and everything
you write or have ever written here on BK, I strongly suggest you
consider this carefully.
There will be a policy change on BrainKing.
Everyone has a chance to start over with a clean slate, as if they have
just come from the Vatican, meeting with the Pope, and they never posted
anything on BrainKing.
Over the next 96 hours, review everything that is posted. Notify those
that you want to still be here if they have any negative posts. They
will be responsible for removing their own.
If they do, and the boards are free from meaningless diatribe, they can
stay.
If there are any negative posts remaining, those people will be
contacted directly, and asked to either remove it (or others like it) or
else be removed from BrainKing.
It is that simple.
These boards were made for meaningful discussions, and they are
degenerating into public smearing and gang sessions.
Fencer does not want to undertake such a policy or its enforcement, it
is not his cup of tea. I, however, have already agreed to take it over,
and I will enforce it.
I am not looking to go on a witch hunt, but certain members of the KM
have deliberately taunted me beyond reason. They will be gone, no doubt
about it, if they do not reform in 96 hours.
Those certain few KM members are being asked to make a private apology
to me, and I think you know who they are. This will not be posted or
copied anywhere. If they cannot, I will delete their accounts and
everything associated with their existence here on BrainKing within 96
hours.
Things have gotten out of hand. I am setting it straight by force. Don't
like it? Get the hell out of here and don't come back. There is no
longer a need for paying memberships, I will refund everyone 200% that
leaves.
Fencer will have a full time job forever, so will Liquid. There is no
collective bargaining power from paying members, since there will be so
subscritpion fees.
Want to play on a free site? Just hold your tongue. Feel infringed upon?
There is the door.
It's that simple.

Sure whenever you are ready. Choose your color as well.

Shall I send the invite? :)

no acidic remarks from me Ed ;0)
but I must admit your remark has me feeling as tho i have gathered something from "lichens"

yup....looks like 7.1 to me.

the "gothic Glitch"seems to be at it again.

I detect Litmus paper in the form of a Bernice post :)