Ratings & Comments

Rook-Level Chess is a very nice idea. Of course, the Queen isn't
R-level...

As for K+ND versus K, confining the K is tricky but it can be done.

Example: BKb8 WKc6, White ND e4, Black's move 1...Kc8 2. Nd6+ Kb8 3. Kb6
Ka8 4. NDc8+ Kb8 5. NDc6+ and 6. ND a6 mate.

Dear 'Editor in Yellow',

Programmers who have junketed to i18n fora know that col[u]rs have various
meaning in various cultures. For example, in Italian, yellow is the color
of mystery.[1]

http://www.panix.com/~gnohmon/nemofull.html is a text which should be added
as a supplemental and corrective link, but not just yet. My apologies for
having made so many errors and rewrites and addenda.

http://www.panix.com/~gnohmon/nemofull.html should be read and criticized
by our critical public until a critical mass of agreement is reached, and
then the editor should step in, whether yellow or dark sea green 3.

http://www.panix.com/~gnohmon/nemofull.html should soon be on the cv pages,
but first the multitude should fish in it for errors and omissions. 

http://www.panix.com/~gnohmon/nemofull.html should someday be
authoratative, but meanwhile, please allow me to grovel and cringe, O great
Editor who knows not his ablative from his elboh, may I humbly beg you to
please change for me one great omission in the original Nemoroth file?

As stated in http://www.panix.com/~gnohmon/nemofull.html, repetition of
position is forbidden! Your humble supplicant is humbled with shame, how
can I have omitted to say this? I be so ipse dissed that I'd almost seppuku
but no, so much better to tofuku. I have disemboweled a bean curd to
express my embare-ass-ment.

By all means, treat http://www.panix.com/~gnohmon/nemofull.html as
authoritative, and please accept from this humble supplicant a case of root
beer, or if you prefer, a single bottle of Hennepin.

Various and sundry ideas about calculating the value of chess pieces.

First off, it is quite interesting to instead of picking a magic number as
the chance of a square being empty, calculate the value for everything
between 32 pieces on the board and 3 pieces on the board.  Currently I'm
then just averaging all the numbers, and it gives me numbers slightly
higher than using 0.7 as the magic number (for Runners - Knights and other
single step pieces are of course the same).  One advantage of it is that it
becomes easier to adjust to other starting setups - for Grand Chess I can
calculate everything between 40 pieces on the board and 3, and it should
work.  With a magic number I'd have to guess what the new value should be,
as it would probably be higher since the board starts emptier.  One
disadvantage is that I have no idea whether or not the numbers suck. :) 
Interesting embellishments could be added - social and anti-social
characteristics could modify the values before they are averaged, and
graphs of the values would be interesting.  It would be interesting to
compare the official armies from Chess with Different Armies at the final
average and at each particular value.  It might be possible to do something
besides averaging based on the shape of the graph - the simplest idea would
be if a piece declines in power, subtract a little from it's value but
ignore the ending part, assuming that it will be traded off before the
endgame.

Secondly, I'm not sure what to do with the numbers, but it is interesting
to calculate the average number of moves it takes a piece to get from one
square to another, by putting the piece on each square in turn and then
calculate the number of moves it takes to get for there to every other
square.  So for example a Rook (regardless of it's position on the board)
can get to 15 squares in 1 move, 48 squares in 2 moves, and 1 square in 0
move (which I included for simplicity, but which should probably be left
out) so the average would be 1.75.  I've got some old numbers for this on
my computer which are probably accurate, but I no longer know how I got
them.   Here's a sampling:

Knight: 2.83
Bishop: 1.66 (can't get to half the squares)
Rook: 1.75
Queen: 1.61
King: 3.69
Wazir: 5.25
Ferz: 3.65 (can't get to half the squares)

This concept seems to be directly related to distance.  Perhaps some method
of weighting the squares could make it account for forwardness as well.

Finally, on the value of Kings.  They are generally considered to have
infinite value, as losing them costs you the game.  But what if you assume
that the standard method is to lose when you have lost all your pieces, and
that kings have the special disadvantage that losing it loses you the game?
 I first assumed this would make the value fairly negative, but preliminary
testing in Zillions seems to indicate it is somewhere around zero.  If it
is zero, that would be very nifty, but I'll leave it to someone much better
than me at chess to figure out it's true value.

'Yellow is the color of mystery in Italy' is an arcane little i18n joke. A
paperback pulp mystery story is colloquially called 'un giallo' (a yellow)
because of its yellow cover. Even the publisher Mondadori uses the term, as
its series is titled 'Il Giallo Mondadori'. Number 1331, 'Quella Bomba di
Nero Wolfe' (Please Pass the Guilt) was published in 1974 and it is weekly,
therefore the series began around 1948; but it also says 'new series', so
the usage of a yellow in this sense may be older.

This is *not* the sort of color usage that can get you into i18n trouble,
though it sounds like the typical 'White is the color of death in China'
warning, and that's the little joke.

For true madness and horror, you should look into the methods of
internationalization that were used in the days before the current
standards existed....

'First off, it is quite interesting to instead of picking a magic number
as
the chance of a square being empty, calculate the value for everything
between 32 pieces on the board and 3 pieces on the board.  Currently I'm
then just averaging all the numbers,'

I've done that, too. The problem is, if the only reason you accept the
results is because they are similar to the results given by the 
magic number, then the results have no special validity, they mean
nothing more than the magic results. So why add the extra computational
burden?

If, on the other hand, you had a sound and convincing theory of why 
averaging the results was correct, that would be a different story.

'This concept seems to be directly related to distance.' Actually, I
think
I'd call it 'speed'. I'm pretty sure that I've played with those numbers
but gave up because I couldn't figure out what to do with them. 
Maybe you can; I encourage you to try.

I am attempting to locate one variant from the Sung Dynasty China (0960),
Which has an extended king row, forward of which are two rows of pawns,
forward are two major power pieces  [ either named lance or archer] ,
forward of the archer is yet another row of pawns. Any info you might
have
on this game would be greatly appreciated.
			Thank You