I’m done with chess variants

Taking chess too seriously

Years ago, I went to a local club where I would meet people and hang out with friends. Among other things, we have a couple of cheap $5 chessboards like what you buy at Wal*Mart and Target and people would sometimes play chess at this club.

Tired of getting my butt kicked all the time at this club, I bought some chess books, started studying them, and looked up and joined a local US Chess Federation club with stronger players. Pretty soon, I had very strong chess players teaching me how to correctly develop my pieces and I was winning instead of losing games at that local club where people played casual chess games.

One time, while playing a game at the local club, there was a position where I was winning the game and my opponent (who beat me countless times before I learned how to move at that USCF club) made a move where my best reply was to capture his pawn using an unusual move called “En Passant”. Well, since he was a casual player, he didn't know about this rule. We ended up having an argument over it and ending the game over the argument.

Looking back, I was in the wrong. Yes, at the local USCF club, any tournament director would have told him that en passant was legal and forced him to accept the move. But, we weren't at the USCF tournament. We were at a local club hanging out and playing a casual game of chess. I was taking the game of Chess far to seriously at this point and didn't get a chance to finish a game I was winning because I was acting in a manner appropriate for the local USCF club but inappropriate for a friendly Chess game.

Well, once I was able to beat all of my buddies who used to kick my butt at the casual club, I realized that Chess was only a game and I was working too hard to get good at something without any real-world use. I started concentrating on improving my computer skills instead and soon had a good job in the computer industry. I also let my USCF membership lapse.

Chess Variants

It was around this time that I got interested in Chess variants (ways of changing the rules of Chess). I was studying the opening in regular Chess, and it really amazed me how people went to so much effort trying to evaluate a move in the opening, but I was disappointed in how they only looked at the opening of one game, when regular Chess is a subset of an infinite number of possible Chess games.

What I really wanted to see was people start studying the opening in depth of a different Chess game; once people felt that opening was studied, I wanted to see people study the opening of yet another chess variant. The Chess we know is just one grain of sand in the infinite beach of possible Chess games, and I wanted to see more of the beach explored.

This wish finally became last last couple of years possible because of some programs made or hacked by a talented programmer by the name of H.G. Muller. I was able to use his software to play tens of thousands of my single contribution to the world of Chess variants (which, ironically enough, is one of the relatively few Chess variants to be mentioned in the Wikipedia, albeit as a single one-line mention). After studying the opening, I realized that Schoolbook Chess (my one Chess variant) was a bit unbalanced in favor of white, but my research also showed another similar setup is a more balanced game, with white only having a very slight advantage.

Once I was finally able to do this research, my interest in Chess variants waned. I realized that the infinity of possibilities only exists in the abstract. Most Chess players will be perfectly content playing only regular Chess for the rest of their life; the very few people who are open to playing variants haven't played a single given game enough to make studying its opening worthwhile or even feasible in any manner besides using computer simulations. One community, looks at a given variant, plays at most a dozen games with the variant, and moves on to the next variant.

Chess bores me

I realized, while doing this opening research, that the results of opening research bore me, as well as actually playing a Chess variant. I just don't enjoy Chess any more. It was only a fun game for me in the context of that club many moons ago and having something to do with my buddies. It hasn't been a fun game for me for over a decade, when my last casual buddy got sick and tired of me beating him all of the time.

The only thing about Chess variants that interests me today is studying the opening and developing opening theory. Even that is not too interesting; I seem to be the only person in the world who likes the idea of studying a Chess variant's opening in any amount of detail.

In addition, there isn't anyone out there who appreciates the effort I went in researching my one chess variant. So, not only is it no fun, but there isn't any demand for the work I did researching chess variants.

It's time to move on. That in mind, not only will I no longer visit Chess-Variant related web sites, I have deleted my webpage with all of my Schoolbook-related files (A chess variant I invented). I'm keeping the ChessV webpage around, for the simple reason that, if I delete this webpage, Greg's ChessV program will no longer be available on the internet, and there has been interest in this program.

Actually, I wish someone else would offer to host ChessV so I can let go of it too, but I can host it until we find another host.

C-Evo 1.1.1 on one floppy

In my last blog entry, I noted a number of games that fit in under 7 megabytes. One of the games, C-Evo, I noted fitted in about 2.5 megabytes.

Actually, it fits on a single 1.44 meg floppy. Two if you want sound. What I have done is take the C-Evo installed files, remove the AI development kit (this is only useful if you're both a Delphi developer and have interest in developing an AI for C-Evo), and split off the sound. I then made two files; the core C-Evo game that is perfectly playable, albeit without sound, which compresses in to a 1,384,627 byte 7-zip file, and a file with all of the sounds for C-Evo, which compresses in to a 924,045 byte file.

If you need 7-zip to decompress C-Evo 1.1.1, that will also easily fit on a single floppy. Who needs CD-ROM drives anyway?

Speaking of floppies, the last version of Slackware that could be entirely installed from floppy was Slackware 3.4 from 1998; the last version of Slackware that could have the base system and networking utilities installed from floppy (installing the rest over the network) was Slackware 7.1 from 2002. A base Slackware 2.1 system (1994) fit on four floppies; the entire system only used 70 floppies. Yes, I remember, back in 1995, giving my roommate an entire floppy tray filled with 70 floppies so he could install Slackware on his computer. The base system for Slackware 7.1 needed 16 floppies; at that point it no longer made sense to use floppies any more.

Recently, an artist made artwork showing you would need hundreds of floppies to fit a modern Photoshop install. But, good software doesn't need that bloat. C-Evo shows that a compelling and addicting game can nicely fit on a single floppy; MaraDNS can also easily fit on a single floppy, complete with source code.

Zillions of Games can also easily fit on a single floppy; I have a version thats 400k in size that supports Chess and a couple of Chess variants (notably Capablanca chess). The majority of the space in the 20 meg install file for Zillions is for all of the graphics for all of the abstract games supported by Zillions.

Some other games that easily fit on a single floppy: Cultivation, Andy Noble's remakes of classic games

For people who want to look at the files showing C-Evo 1.1.1 on a floppy, go here:

http://www.samiam.org/cevo/

Games that fit in under seven megabytes

One project I do is fitting as much useful stuff as I can on one of those business card CDs. A business card CD is a credit-card-sized CD that fits in a wallet; because of the small size of the CD, only 50 megabytes of data can be stored.

After adding the entire text of the Bible, some music I like listening to, a few applications (most notably 7zip for decompressing files), as well as having it be a bootable CD with a memory tester, I'm left with about seven megabytes (7,000,000 bytes) for games.

What compelling games fit in this very small space? Quite a few. Last time I mastered a Desert Island CD, in June, I added Doom with a random map generator, as well as a small game for playing Gin Rummy. However, since my fiancée doesn't like seeing me play Doom, there are a number of other games I am considering for the next release of the CD. Here's a list of some of the more compelling tiny games out there; I'm looking for games with a high replay value (random map generators are a must for anything using a map):

• Doom, as mentioned before. 5,692,780 bytes in size with a modern engine using 3d acceleration (Doomsday 1.8.6) and the Doom1 wad file (7zip compressed); 6,203,357 bytes if we include a random map generator.Pros: The first-person shooter that created an entire genre of games. It's all here: Single player, deathmatch, cooperative play. Even a random map generator.Cons: Violent and disturbing imagery in the game; a mouse is needed to fully enjoy the game.
• David Teach's Gin Rummy. 1,643,935 bytes if we include the full installer, 108,886 bytes for a 7zip compressed minimal version of it; however it's not possible to change the game settings in the smaller version of the program.Pros: Classic card game in a tiny package. Cons: Dated looking user-interface
• FreeCiv 1.14.2. This is an older version of FreeCiv; newer versions use GTK-Win32, which is a bloated pig. A 7zip compressed copy of the full version of FreeCiv 1.14.2 is 1,872,461 bytes in size; it's only 906,762 bytes in size if we remove all of the languages except English and Spanish.Pros: Network play; highly customizable using the server command line.Cons: No diplomacy at all with AI; no full-screen mode; outdated version of game
• C-Evo, another open-source (public domain) Civilization clone, has IMHO more compelling gameplay than the older FreeCiv. It's a little bigger, however: 2,521,088 bytes for the most recent version (self-extracting archive)Pros: Fullscreen mode; Good graphics; compelling play.Cons: No network play: the only multiplayer mode supported is hotseat and play-by-email is difficult because only the first player can save the game.
• Chess variant-playing engines. Engines that can play Chess variants are remarkably small and lightweight if I minimize the number of games supported; if only Capablanca-type variants are supported (8x10 board, rook + knight and knight + bishop added to the standard array of pieces), the tiny version of ChessV 0.9.0 is 174,059 bytes (7zip compressed, as well as all other Chess variant playing engines), Winboard Fairy can be squeezed down to 386,278 bytes, and Zillions can fit in only 394,318 bytes. Zillions needs a registration key; the other two are open-source programs (and play Capablanca chess better than Zillions).
• People's Tactics is a very enjoyable free war simulation strategy game with a random map generator, play-by-email, hotseat, and single-player support. The binary weights in at 6,083,408 bytes.Pros: Excellent tiny little empire-building hex-based wargame. Cons: Can't be played on netbooks; 1024x768 or better resolution needed to play.
• Another idea: Including an emulator and a number of games for a 1980s game console. Pros: Lots of different games in a small package Cons: There are serious legal issues with most game image files
• No list of small games is complete without Kkrieger. More a proof-of-concept than a playable game, Kkrieger is a complete first-person-shooter in only 100,185 bytes (yes, a tenth of a megabyte). The executable is 96k in size, but the zip file also includes directions for playing the game. Pros: Beautiful graphics. A full First-Person-Shooter with a number of different weapons, monsters to zap, and compelling music in a fraction of the size of even Doom. Cons: More a proof-of-concept than a real game; the only supported mode is single player and the game can be finished in 15 minutes. The game also has a low framerate on anything but the highest-end computers.

Final Schoolbook opening research for 2009

OK, last night I finished up my opening research for Schoolbook. I’ve been spending the last two weeks researching Schoolbook chess and similar chess variants, and discovered the following:

• White has about a 7% advantage in Schoolbook
• Of all six Capablanca chess setups in the form RXNBXKBNXR, the Aberg setup, RANBQKBNMR is the most balanced; white only has a 3% advantage in this setup
• Black can minimize white’s advantage by replying to 1. e4 with 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6; 1. f4 is handled with 1. f4 c5; and 1. c4 is handled with 1. c4 Mh6(!)
• I’ve found over 100 pretty mates (mating positions where one side think they are ahead, then the other side finds a mating combination

For people who want to see the research determining that the Aberg setup is the most balanced, or want to see those pretty mates, they are here:

http://www.samiam.org/schoolbook

For people who are wondering what I’m talking about, some helpful links:

• Schoolbook chess
• Wikipedia’s article on Capablanca Chess, which gives the historical background behind this class of Chess variants

OK, I’m done with chess variants for 2009. Next: Get proficient at C++ and object-oriented programming, so I can update my job skills.

Du for Windows and other tidbits

While MSYS offers the majority of the classic UNIX command line to Windows, one utility it does not have is du, which lets me see how much space a given directory takes up, and which files are hogging up hard disk space.

I have been using Cygwin to run “du”, but starting up a full *NIX environment (complete with X) to run that one command MSYS neglected to include is a little excessive.

While MSYS doesn’t have du, Microsoft has a free download of du for Windows. Its output is not quite the same output as the classic *NIX du, but it’s good enough for my purposes.

Another option I haven’t looked in to is the GNU coreutils for Windows, whose du output should be more UNIX-like.

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In the early 1990s, people began to realize that floppy disks did not have enough space to store anything besides text documents and small images, so work began on making an affordable removable media with more space than a floppy disk.

One of the more successful attempts to do this was the Iomega Zip drive. Zip drives were quite common in the 1995-1999 timeframe, depending on your definition of “common”. They were common in the sense your average geek would have a zip drive, but not common in the sense that, when you bought a computer, it was a given it would have a zip drive. Zip drives were successful because you didn’t need a special connector to use them; you could attach it to the parallel port almost all PCs had in that time frame (or the SCSI Zip drive if you had a Macintosh or, in my case, used Linux before the Paraport driver was made). They were used a lot until compact disc recordables got affordable (hit the $1 per blank disk price point) around 1999 or 2000.

I used Zip drives and Zip disks for storing data offline from 1996 until early 2001, when my buddy Leo started letting me burn CDs on his CD burner.

There were competitors, such as the SyQuest EZ 135 Drive, the LS-120, and higher priced higher capacity options like the Jaz drive, the Orb Drive, the SparQ drive, among others. I actually got an Orb Drive and a few 2.2 gig cartridges for backing up the server we had at work back in the dot-com days.

Iomega still makes high-capacity removable drives and media. Their current technology is something called an REV drive, which uses 120 gigabyte cartridges (about $60 per cartridge). There’s another removable media technology called “RDX” with media up to 500 gigs in size (for $300). With this type of technology, you’re paying for convenience; a terabyte-size notebook hard disk is $127 at Pricewatch right now and a 100-pack of DVD-R (not +R, since -R stores seven more megabytes) media is around $25 at Meritline right now (you can store 500 gigs in 107 discs).

These days I use DVD-Rs to store data; my burner doesn’t support dial-layer blanks, so I just burn single-layer 4.7 gig disks for backups and what not.

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My chess variant research continues. I have been doing a lot of computer simulations of various openings in my “Schoolbook” arrangement of the Capablanca pieces. White starts with a 7% advantage, so I’ve been looking for openings where Black can minimize that advantage. 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 looks to equalize things for black, 1. f4 c5 appears to give black a strong advantage, and I’ve been spending over a week looking for Black’s best reply to 1. c4; right now 1. c4 Mh6 looks to be Black’s best reply, but I need to do more research on this.

Chess variants are one of those things where it’s trivial to “invent” a variant but difficult to research how to play the variant in question. There’s a reason a lot of strong chess players resist any attempt to change the rules of chess; people have spent centuries in to finding the best moves in chess, and any change, even one as simple as rearranging the pieces in the opening, throws out a lot of that study.

Capablanca opening setup research

I have done some research about which Capablanca arrangement of the pieces is most ideal.

In the 2000s, we have had many discussions on the Chess Variants server about what makes for the best Capablanca setup. It has been asserted, for example, that all of the pawns need to be defended in the opening setup, and that any opening setup with undefended pawns gives White a sizable advantage.

What I have done is research a subset of Capablanca setups to see if this is true. Since there are some 126,000 setups where the Queen is to the left of the King and the bishops are on opposite colors with the Capablanca pieces, I have reduced the number of setups to six thusly:

• The rooks must be in the corners. The king must be in the F file. This is to accommodate the software I used for my testing, which only allows castling if these conditions are met.
• The knights must be in the C and H files, and the bishops must be in in the D and G files. The thinking is this: Since the knights are weaker in Capablanca setups on a 10x8 board than they are in FIDE chess, placing the knights relatively near the center makes them more relevant in the opening and midgame. The bishops are placed near the center just like they are placed in FIDE chess; this is done so that natural pawn development moves (e4, f4) do not hamper the development of the bishops.
• The Archbishop (Knight + Bishop), Marshall (Rook + Bishop), and Queen may be placed anywhere in the three remaining files.

Here are the six possible resulting setups:

• RMNBAKBNQR (I call this arrangement “Notetaker’s Chess”; all pawns are defended in the opening array)
• RQNBAKBNQR (“Schoolbook Chess”; again, all pawns are defended)
• RANBMKBNQR (I call this arrangement “Narcotic Chess”; the B pawn is undefended in the opening array)
• RQNBMKBNAR (I call this arrangement “Opiate Chess”; the D and I pawns are undefended in the opening array and White can threaten mate on the first move with Md3)
• RANBQKBNMR (“Aberg Chess”; the B pawns are undefended)
• RMNBQKBNAR (“Carrera Chess”; the original 10x8 setup from the 1600s; the B pawns are undefended)

I ran at least 1,000 games for all of these setups. Only games that ended in a Checkmate or a draw were counted; I made sure to have Joker80 play enough games until each of these setups had 1,000 complete games. Here is the win/loss/draw ratio for White with all of these setups:

Setup	Wins	Losses	Draws	Games played
ranbqkbnmr	46%	43%	12%	1010
rmnbqkbnar	47%	42%	12%	1017
ranbmkbnqr	49%	41%	10%	1002
rqnbakbnmr	48%	40%	13%	1006
rqnbmkbnar	50%	38%	11%	1004
rmnbakbnqr	53%	37%	10%	1011

Numbers may not add up to 100% because of rounding

Since we played 1,000 games with each variant, the scores may be off by as much as 2% or so.

In conclusion, we can see that whether or not all pawns are defended is not a relevant factor in White having more of an advantage. The setup with the lowest White advantage (ranbqkbnmr, White advantage 3%) has one undefended pawn in the opening array for each side, and the setup with the highest White advantage (rmnbakbnqr, White advantage 16%) has all pawns defended in the opening array.

ranbqkbnmr appears to be the most balanced setup (3% White advantage); this is followed by rmnbqkbnar (5% White advantage). ranbmkbnqr and rqnbakbnmr both have an 8% White advantage; ranbmkbnqr has fewer draws, however. Both rqnbmkbnar and rmnbakbnqr give White a considerable advantage (12% and 16%, respectively); I am not surprised rqnbmkbnar has a considerable White advantage, since the D pawn near the King is unprotected, and since White can threaten mate on the first move with Md3. However, it is a mystery why White has such an advantage with the rmnbakbnqr, since all pawns are defended in this setup. It would appear undefended flank pawns don’t give White any significant advantage.

For people interested in this research, I have made a 4-megabyte archive with all of the games played in the course of this research here:

http://www.samiam.org/schoolbook/

I would like to thank H.G. Muller for modifying Winboard and creating Joker80; this software made this research reasonably straightforward to perform.

Edit: Corrected number of undefended pawns in Carrera and Abera opening setups.

ChessV 0.9.4 released

ChessV is a program written by Greg Strong that can play Chess and a handful of Chess Variants that I’ve been hosting for the last month or so. Since having the program available online has made people interested in working with its codebase, including having Muller convert it to work with Winboard, Greg Strong has worked on the code again and has just released ChessV 0.9.4, which is a bugfix release. The only new feature this version of ChessV has is a special binary that can interface with Winboard.

It is available here for download:

http://samiam.org/chessv

Explanation of Schoolbook 2009 results

Due to an error in how I set up the time controls, Joker80 played very poorly. Joker80's performance in this tournament does not accurately reflect its true playing strength.

I will, for Schoolbook 2010, set up things to have more fair time controls. Right now, I'm looking at doing 40 moves in 20 minutes, with 30 seconds a move for engines that can only do "X seconds per move".

Schoolbook 2009 tournament

OK, never say never. I told myself I would put Schoolbook Chess, a variant I invented back in 2006, to rest. Well, while taking a break from Deadwood development, I discovered there are a number of computer chess engines out there that can play my chess variant, so I got permission from three makes of chess engines to enter the 2009 Schoolbook Chess computer tournament; the tournament was a six-game double round robin. The final results were:

ChessV 0.9.0 with time handicap: 3
TJChess10x8: 3
Joker80: 0

The games were Game/15 (all moves in 15 minute) games done on a Core 2 Dual 1.5 ghz laptop processor. A reasonable, but not extensive, effort was made to make sure no other processes were running during the tournament. Both engines played (and pondered) at the same time on the same computer.

TJChess and Joker80 played at Game/15 in WinBoard. ChessV 0.9.0 was given 30 seconds to make a single move.

Joker80 lost all four games it played, giving TJChess10x8 and ChessV 2 points each. In the ChessV-TJChess10x8 games, TJChess10x8 won once as white, as did ChessV.

I observe that Joker80 is usually stronger than TJChess10x8, but plays Game/15 very poorly.

In both TJ-vs-ChessV games, ChessV made a castling move TJChess could not recognize (in Schoolbook, it is legal to move the kind two or three squares while castling, and four squares while castling on the queenside). When this happened, I stopped the clocks, set up the board to have the castling move be done, restarted WinBoard, and gave TJChess10x8 10 minutes to complete the rest of its moves.

The actual games, including Zillions of Games save files of all games, are available at the following location:

http://samiam.org/schoolbook/

As an aside, people can download ChessV here:

http://samiam.org/chessv/

For people who do not have Zillions of Games, the save files are in a format that looks like a normal Chess score.

OK, I'm done with Chess variants for 2009. We'll see if I have a 2010 tournament.

Time to go back to developing Deadwood.

samiam.org and blog comments update

I'm just letting people know I am doing a year-end cleanup of samiam.org, getting rid of a lot of outdated software and what not. As a general rule, I am removed links to versions of programs that are not the last release of a given program. With ObHack, I have made sure the last 002 and 003 releases are available, in addition the the final 004 release, so people can check out the subtly different maps each version of ObHack makes.

I have also deleted all of the Chess Variant-related stuff from the site. I have decided that Chess Variants are simply a waste of time; I have better things to do with my time. People who want to see my work in this area can download my Schoolbook file from the Zillions of Games website (look in "free games", then look for "schoolbook").

In terms of support, the only geek project I have done over the years I still use today is Deadwood (code that will someday be MaraDNS' next recursive resolver). Other projects are not supported and blog comments asking for support for, say, ObHack, will probably not be posted.

MaraDNS, of course, is still supported, but the only changes I will make in 2009 are critical and security bug fixes. I do not support non-security issues in MaraDNS anywhere except on the MaraDNS mailing list. Again, blog comments asking for MaraDNS support in 2009 will not be posted.

Deadwood is the only project I still find useful and support. People are welcome to download and use any other open-source code I have, but please don't ask me to solve your problems for you. Be smart. Learn to troubleshoot and figure out issues on your own. It'll make you a more mature, responsible person.

Capa opening setups

(Disclaimer: All of this material I have previously posted in a thread at chessvariants.org, but I am reposting it here so it's available in a more convenient form)

One popular branch of chess variants is Capablanca Chess. Originally proposed in the 1600s by Carrera, and proposed again in the 1800s by Bird, and propsed yet again in the 20th century by Capablanca, this is one of the more popular types of chess variants that people have proposed versions of.

There are some 126,000 possible Capablanca opening setups, where the bishops are on opposite colors, and where the queen is to the left of the queen. However, looking at all of the Capablanca opening setups which have actually been proposed, I have observed that:

• All of the opening setups have the king and a powerful (R+N,B+N, or Queen) piece in the center files
• All of the proposed opening setups are symmetrical with the rooks, knights, and bishops
• All of the proposed opening setups have the rooks either in the corners, or one file closer to the center than the corners.

As it turns out, there are only 72 possible Capablanca opening setups that follow all of the above rules. Of these 72 opening setups, I find that only 15 have been formally proposed as starting setups:

Here is a list of proposed Capa chess setups I know about:

RANBQKBNMR      Aberg
RMNBQKBNAR      Carrera
RNBMQKABNR      Bird
RNBAQKMBNR      Capa 1 (1.Mh3 mating threat)
RNABQKBMNR      Capa 2
RBQNKMNABR      Grotesque
RBNMQKANBR      Univers
RBQNKANMBR      Landorean
RNBQKMABNR      Embassy
RQNBAKBNMR      Schoolbook
NRMBQKBARN      Optimized  
RNBQCKABNR      Gothic
MRNBQKBNRA      Paulowich 1 link
ARNBQKBNRM      Paulowich 2 link
QRNBKABNRM      Paulowich
RNMBQKBANR      Nalls link
RNBQAKMBNR      Teutonic link (1. Mh3 mating threat)

Any without a link here are listed on on the Capablanca Chess Wiki page.

And some more proposed opening setups, since not nearly enough Capa opening setups have been proposed :)

RNBQKAMBNR      Consulate
RNQBKMBANR      Finesse
RQNBKABNMR      Notebook
QRNBAKBNRM      Closebook
RNQBMKBANR      Blackbook
NRABQKBMRN      Nightwink
RQNBKMBNAR      Narcotic

Setups which suffer from white being able to threaten mate on the first move:

RQNBMKBNAR Md3
QRNBMKBNRA Md3
RBNQKMANBR Mg3
BRNQKMANRB Mg3
QRNBKMBNRA Mg3
BRNAQKMNRB Mh3 (Capa 1)
RNBQAKMBNR Mh3 (Teutonic)
BRNQAKMNRB Mh3
RABNQKNBMR Mh3
RQBNAKNBMR Mh3

So, for aspiring Chess variant inventors, that leaves us with the following possible Capa opening setups:

QRBNAKNBRM RQBNMKNBAR NRBQAKMBRN RBNQAKMNBR NRBMQKABRN BRNMQKANRB RBNMQKANBR QRBNMKNBRA NRBQKMABRN RMBNQKNBAR ARBNQKNBRM RQBNKMNBAR BRQNMKNARB RBQNMKNABR NRQBMKBARN NRQBKABMRN RNQBKABMNR NRBAQKMBRN BRQNKANMRB BRANQKNMRB RBANQKNMBR BRNAQKMNRB RBNAQKMNBR MRBNQKNBRA QRBNKMNBRA RQBNKANBMR BRMNQKNARB RBMNQKNABR QRBNKANBRM NRBQKAMBRN NRQBAKBMRN BRNQKAMNRB RBNQKAMNBR RNQBAKBMNR BRQNAKNMRB RBQNAKNMBR NRBQMKABRN NRQBKMBARN BRQNKMNARB BRNQMKANRB RBNQMKANBR

Final release of Schoolbook Zillions file.

As I mentioned in a blog entry from a year ago, I have had a lot of interest in chess variants, and have worked on and off on making a "Zillions" file for a variant I "invented" over two years ago, Schoolbook Chess.

Well, this variant never caught on. Only two or three games of this variant have been played where I wasn't one of the players of the variant, and only about two dozen human-vs-human games of this variant have ever been played. I went to a lot of work on this variant; I used computer-vs-computer games (having the computer play itself a number of times, using a couple of programs that can play Schoolbook) to come up with a number of mating positions. I did some opening analysis. I added some annotated games. No one was interested; chess players are averse to the idea of changing the rules of chess, and people in the chess variant community are too interested in their own "invented" variants to pay serious attention to other people's variants.

So, I am putting Schoolbook chess to rest. I have made a final version of the Zillions file for Schoolbook; I added four more mating positions (with one exception, all of these are from computer-vs-computer games played in August of 2007), made a PDF file of all 20 total mating positions, and this will be my last release of the Schoolbook zillions file.

The file is available here:

http://www.samiam.org/chessvariants

Now that this is released, I am declaring Schoolbook dead. I have other geek projects (MaraDNS, ObHack) that have generated more interest and that I contribute more to the world working on.

- Sam

On Chess Variants

I have had a long-term interest in chess variants. Chess variants are various ways of changing the rules of chess to make a slightly, or, at times, very different game. My motivation in interest in Chess variants is summed up in an article in this zipfile:

One of the nice things about chess variant design is that it opens up new fields of opening study to explore. In FIDE (orthodox, western) Chess, any move on the first half-dozen turns that is not an outright blunder has already been throughly studied and explored. Many opening lines are 20 or 30 moves deep. There are little, if any, interesting new frontiers to explore.

Chess variants, however, make it possible for someone to be a trailblazer again, exploring openings that have never been studied before.

I have been studying a chess variant which I "invented" back in 2004 (and published in 2006) called "Schoolbook Chess".

There are a couple of things a chess variant inventor can do to help people play their chess variant. One thing they can do is make a game courier preset. This is a web service where one can easily add new chess variants. Most presets do not enforce the rules for the variant. The preset I made for Schoolbook chess, however, enforces the rules simply because I was able to easily modify another preset that is identical in all aspects except for the opening setup of the pieces.

Another thing someone can do to play chess variants is to make a Zillions of Games rules file. Zillions of Games is a proprietary program for Windows (runs well under Wine) that can play a large number of Chess variants and other abstract strategy games. My zipfile is an implementation of Schoolbook chess for Zillions of Games. However, it also has ChessV rules files for Schoolbook (not that they are needed; ChessV has had the ability to play Schoolbook since the 0.9.0 release a year ago). In addition, it has some documentation for Schoolbook, including opening analysis, annotated games, and a few mating positions.

What I was doing all weekend was updating this zipfile. First of all, ChessV has moved since I last released a Zillions zipfile. I also updated a couple of other links.

Second of all, I added four mating positions (maybe I should reword those last two words) to the zipfile. This was the lion's share of the work. I had to make sure the positions were indeed mating positions, make two screenshots for each position (we use a different black and white color scheme when printing the page), create and verify the solutions to the mating positions, and then integrate the positions in to the list of 12 mating positions we already had, double and triple checking to make sure I did not introduce any errors. This took hours.

During this process, I submitted some of these new mating positions that have not been submitted to the chess variants page before, which also took some work.

Once that was done, I had to modify the zipfile a little (removing some "no commercial use" graphics) in order to make the zipfile suitable for submission to Zillions of Games. I then submitted my submission via email.

This took all weekend to do. Far longer than I thought it would. All for a game that has only been played about two dozen times, mostly me-vs-some other chess variant inventor (the mating positions and opening analysis come mainly from computer-vs-computer or some of my computer-vs-human games). Needless to say, I don't think I will revise this game at all until 2008.

- Sam