MindSports

Hi Christian and Ed!
Thank you for the great site! I sincerely congratulate you for your achievements in the endeavors of inventing new games and improving old ones.
BTW, I’d already read the article “Defining the abstract” by J. Mark Thompson you link in your home page. I love his comment on chance: “In fact a strong element of chance is desirable in a game for children because without it they would have no chance of winning when playing against their elders, and so would not learn the attraction for games that every civilized person should feel.”
So, I’m an adult now and of course I’m always trying to remove chance from games I’m invited to play (whenever is possible). That’s why I've never been fond of backgammon. Yesterday, just when I was finishing reading some pages in your site, the thought of a way to remove chance of this game crossed my head. I searched the net because it appeared obvious to me that someone else would have thought of it. And I found this: http://www.m-hikari.com/ijcms-password2007/17-20-2007/cagmanIJCMS17-20-2007 .pdf. Do you think Backgammon could be improved this way? Or it simply is not worthy?
Thank you!
Antonio

Hello Christian and Ed!

This is the best webpage dedicated to abstract games I know. I enjoy reading your chapters about strategy&tactics, analysis, examples...I have always interested on studying strategy, tactics, depth, replayability of games (in fact I spend more time studying games than playing them!).

In my opinion Go is the most complex game invented. Go is more about long-term strategy than about tactics/combinations, but it is so deep than even its tactical complexity is not far than chess.

According to your concep about Strategy/Tactic scope of a gme, if we rate a game purely strategic as Hex with a '5', and a game near purely tactical as Othello with a '1' (Are you agree?), how would you rate next games?:

Classics:

Chess
Draughts
Go

Your designs:

Grand Chess
Dameo
Hexdame
Bushka
Emergo
Havannah
The Glass Bead Game

And in term of depth/complexity? If we rate Go with a '5' (the most complexity level), how would you rate them?

Thanks in advance!

Norber

Hi Christian & co,
I hope it's not too late, anyway it's the first entry for 2010:
Happy New Year!!

And I hope someone will make a Havannah program that can challenge you...

Regards, Paul.

nice website!

Sry typo in link.

http://www.everydaystart.com

Hi,

Do you want a link exchange with http://www.everydaystart.com

Thanks,

Bart

Hi Christian...

Quoting from the rating system faq:

"MindSports uses a rating system based on the Internet Chess Server (ICS) system, brought to my attention by Richard Rognlie's PBeM Server.
When a game finishes, each player gains or looses points the amount of which depends on the difference of their ratings."

If the final sentence were clarified, would it be thus:

"When a game finishes, each player gains or looses points the amount of which depends on the difference of their ratings, as their ratings were at the start of the game"

or

"When a game finishes, each player gains or looses points the amount of which depends on the difference of their ratings, as their ratings are at the end of the game."

? Just wondering thanks.

t.

Bericht voor Christiaan Freeling.

Wij zie "homepage" zijnop zoek naar oud Fashion, Trap en Babylonbezoekers Hengelo.
We kregen een tip dat jij daarbij hoorde?
Met vriendeljke groet,
Jan de Vries

Here is how castling is logical in chess 960. It is a king safety transposition move to enable the king to be placed in the c or g files, and the rook next to it on d and f. Thats it. Its like a safety bunker. You are looking at it as a King jump 2 square move, and only in that context is it illogical. If you take a piece of paper and mark 2 points on it. These are your destination points. Then mark a point in any any other position. You should be able to transpose the point to the destination point.

In a similar vein one can even devise move that simply requires the king to jump to a certain destination. - i believe your grand chess would benefit from that.
Not to mention the ability to promote to any piece on the 10th rank.
In fact your game would be greatly improved with some sort of kings leap to safety rule AND a much more logical pawn promotion (that is to ANY piece) on the 10th rank. You can however keep the weird "promote to captured piece" on 9 th rank because that seems to add to the game.

Another thing -

You do realize that castling is not just to hide the king in the wing do you? Its a very logical move in chess and in 960 just as logical . I suggest you read a beginners chess book and see why castling is important.
Also you dont HAVE to castle!