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

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Apr 19, 2010 03:33 AM UTC:
Might I offer the possibly sacrilegious comment that it's time to update Betza notation? As excellent as it is, time has moved on, and new pieces cannot be easily described using the current notation. Several people, including myself, have done some extension of this notation to describe our own pieces, if nothing else. 

Once upon a time, I would have proposed a project here to update the notation, bring it into the 21st century. I probably know better now. So I'll just ask for everyone who has extended Betza notation to let us all know what you've done, with at least a brief but thorough description and a link to the complete work. 

I would suggest that Ralph's prohibition on symbols can be relaxed now, as it's unlikely that even minimally careful use of standard typewriter symbols will cause that many problems on today's webpages. 

Was going to end here [many might wish that I had], but decided I'd throw my hat into the ring with notation I developed for shortrange pieces of varying complexity. I use this notation and associated icons extensively in my designs, having found it a very useful shorthand for this sort of piece. So I'm hoping that all those game pages won't have to be changed at some time in the future. And while I'm not overly optimistic this will wind up next to Betza's work, I'll give it a serious try with the following condensed discussion of the warmachine and its various possible moves:

DW
0] Combine the dabbabah and wazir into the warmachine. The generic
piece can be identified as 'DW'. This identifies the components
without specifying any particular movement pattern.

D/W
1] OR. The warmachine may move as either one of its components, that is,
like a wazir or a dabbabah.

D+W
2] AND (linear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It may not change direction during this move.

D +/- W
3] AND (nonlinear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It *may* change direction during this move.

D/W + D/W
4] And-Or (two-step linear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as either
of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again.

D/W +/- D/W
5] AND-OR (two-step nonlinear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as
either of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again. It *may* change direction during this move.

[D+W]/[A+F]
6] [AND]-OR-[AND] (compound two-step linear rider)
The War Elephant. This piece may move as either the linear Hero, as seen above, or as its diagonal analog, the linear Shaman.

http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/joe-s-strange-notation is the wiki page with illustrations and a companion iconology for identifying how the pieces move.

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.