Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 08:43:24 01/07/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 07, 2004 at 10:09:06, Sune Fischer wrote: >On January 07, 2004 at 09:43:13, Tord Romstad wrote: > >>On January 07, 2004 at 08:40:50, Michel Langeveld wrote: >> >>>Hello all, >>> >>>Somehow I like the Gothic Chess variation of Ed Trice. Not because of the money >>>but because this is a thinking game a la Chess but complexer as plain chess. I >>>like it more as FRC because there are 2 new pieces and the board, and the board >>>is bigger. >> >>Hi Michel, >> >>I have similar interests. Like you, I am not very interested in FRC, >>which makes the existing body of opening theory (which, to me, is an >>important and interesting part of the culture and history of chess) >>almost irrelevant without adding anything substantially new to the game. > >Removing the huge body of opening theory is exactly the point of FRC. I know that this is the point, I just don't agree that it is a good point. More about this below. >Too much time is spent by many players on memorizing long (boring) opening lines >which can last deep into the midgame, but the essence, the soul of the game is >in the _tactics_, the fierce king attacks the spectacular sacrifices and wild >combinations. > >So naturally some are bound to feel, incl. me, that the opening theory is an >unfortunate side track and the game would be more enjoyable without it. But what we call "opening theory" is not really theory at all. It is a mixture of tradition and educated guesses, nothing more. There is lots of scope for creativity even in the first few moves of the game of chess, as is proven by all the novelties which keep appearing even in the most popular opening lines. If you don't like to follow the book lines, just play something different. You will not automatically lose the game or end up with an inferior position. The only phase of the game where we have any precise knowledge is the endgame, which, ironically, is exactly the same in FRC as in normal chess. In contrast, by introducing new board shapes and/or pieces, you immediately get entirely new and unexplored endgames. You probably won't find any books which teach you how to mate with king and two knights against king in hexagonal chess! >For me the game simply doesn't start until both players are "out of book". :) > >>Unusual board shapes and pieces are much more interesting. > >I agree, partly. > >The problem is that a game without players is no fun, there is just no >competition. This is the really big problem, of course -- but it applies to FRC as well as much as most other chess variants. >>But in my opinion, Gothic Chess, though clearly an interesting game, is >>not the most interesting chess variant out there. These days, I am >>adding support for Glinski's hexagonal chess (see >>http://www.chessvariants.com/hexagonal.dir/hexagonal.html) to Gothmog. >>This is an extremely fascinating game, tactically more rich and challenging >>than normal chess, and where the different geometry of the board presents >>entirely new and challenging problems to the players. >> >>I use a straightforward extension of the xboard protocol when adding >>hexagonal support. I have simply extended the list of variants to >>include "glinski", and use normal SAN or coordinate notation (there >>is already a standardized notation for hexagonal chess) to communicate >>the moves. It is also straightforward to extend the "setboard" command >>to the new board, although I haven't done so yet. >> >>Of course I agree that it would be nice to see support for unusual >>pieces and board shapes in the popular GUIs, but I'm afraid it is >>too much to hope for. I'm writing my own xboard-compatible GUI >>with square and hexagonal boards for Gothmog, but unfortunately it >>will only run in Mac OS X. > >It's a shame, it would be nice if xboard supported more games. It would, but I'm afraid it will never happen. There are simply so few people who are interested in such extensions ... >For me to get interested there would have to be a GUI supporting it, it's just >too much trouble to have to build everything from scratch. > >But once there is a GUI I probably would be tempted :) When my Mac OS GUI is finished, I will consider if it is feasible to use the GNUstep tools to port the GUI to Linux and Windows. I have no idea how difficult this would be, because I have never used GNUstep and therefore don't know how much it resembles the Cocoa frameworks in Mac OS X. Tord
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