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

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Robert Shimmin wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 09:39 PM UTC:
Betza's Funny Notation has its merits, but it also has its weak points. 
It's great at concisely describing combination leapers, and OK at
describing the simpler types of riders, but as one begins to contemplate
the vast variety of fairy pieces (take a look at the glossary of
Problemesis for inspiration sometimes) that have actually been used in
games or problems, it becomes obvious that describing them all accurately
requires an enormous supply of modifiers (far larger than the number of
letters in the alphabet).

As an example, just look at some of the modifiers that Jorg Knappen had to
invent to describe the various crooked nightriders used in Nachtmahr.

I have begun a time or two to formulate a more general notation, but every
system I have come up with simply requires too much effort to decode. 
Quite simply, it is less effort for someone reading the rules to read a
natural-language description than it is to decode a sufficiently
complicated compact notation.

The Funny Notation is wonderfully concise and easy to decode for the those
pieces that it was originally designed for.  But the ad-hoc piling on of
modifiers can only be taken so far before it is no longer easy to describe
or decode pieces, and I think it's pretty close to that point at present.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Betza Notation

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.