Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Jeremy Good wrote on Sun, Aug 19, 2007 01:07 PM UTC:
I want to note that I prefer a panel of judges be instituted and the proposed nominated judges be voted in to the panel and that those judges not submit entries. I think this will add a lot more professionalism to the design contest. For one thing, it will ensure that every one voting on winning designs will have actually gone to the trouble of playing the games out and as we know, there is all too common a tendency for people to judge games subjectively, on a very superficial basis without ever plunging in and trying them, playtesting them.

Frequently, for me, the value of a game doesn't become clear until the third or fourth time playing it. I noted that Gary Gifford didn't enjoy his first game of Tripunch but did decide he liked Tripunch very much after playing it twice. I think we should make a requirement that each person judging a game play two versions of it, one as black and one as white.

Of course you do have your occasional variant that is not even meant to be played, but the inventor should specify that he doesn't care whether the game gets played before being judged.

I think this phenomenon of judging games without playing them is usually mostly unfair, like someone who says they don't like chess itself at all, but has never even bothered to learn the rules or play any games of it. A lot of people don't learn to like chess itself until a year or two of trying to figure out how to play it. Like my 8 year old daughter. It's a process.


Edit Form

Comment on the page 2007-2008 Chess Variants Design Contest

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.