Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Think about what ?

Anything.  I am trying to measure how much interest there is.

Hello Greg.

Please sign me in at the event. Certainly Symmetric Chess is the variant that I would propose as my favorite.

Thanks for the organization!

I'd play but I was thinking about choosing just a few games and have 3-4  separate tournaments of some of those games. Not that my  way is better :(!

I would love to be a part of this event. My favorite variants that are currently on the list are (in no particular order) Sac Chess, Colossus, Opulent Chess, Gross Chess, and Hectochess. Also, on a side note, I tend to not favor games that are not much like chess, escpecially if their rules are complicated like they are in Decima or if their presets don't contain full rule enforcement.

Participants confirmed so far:

Greg Strong
Adam DeWitt
Carlos Cetina
Aurelian Florea

An important thing would be to have only enforcing displaying presets.

We don't know which games will be included yet.  I do not want to exclude games that do not have a rule-enforcing preset at this time.  If games are picked that do not have them yet, I will see if one can be made.

Thank you to those who have expressed interest, but the tournament is cancelled due to lack of interest.

I may try again in a few months to see if there is more interest.

OK. No problem. Thanks.

It's ok, not your fault Greg. I would have liked it though :)!

I'm sorry to hear that, I'm always willing to be cannon fodder ;-).

But seriously, the last tournament gave me an idea of who plays at my level.

I was surprised that Shako or Metamachy wasn't picked for Cazaux's game since those are the ones on Jocly and in his book. And I realize that my game/games are not suitable for tournament play since mine purposely don't have rules enforcement, so they can be played with different rules.

Isn't it too early to cancel the tournament from a lack of interest? I haven't even seen a call to sign up for it yet. At present, I have just been waiting for the final lineup of games to take shape.

Ok, certainly willing to wait as it seems there is more interest, and perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear.  Anyone who is interested in playing, please post.  This is not an absolute commitment since I can't really stop anyone from changing their mind.  Also, as mentioned on the game page, there will be a verification email sent out to everyone before the tournament starts to make sure all participants are still interested, still available, aware the tournament is actually starting, etc.

Regarding game selection, waiting for the game list before throwing your hat in the ring creates a chicken-and-egg problem.  My plan is to have the would-be participants vote on the games from the list.  If someone is really unhappy with the results, they could always drop out.  As for changes to the list before voting, that is possible but there hasn't been much feedback until John's comment, which I will now address...

Regarding Cazaux's game, I skipped Shako because it had already been featured in a Game Courier tournament and I was giving preference to games that have not.  That said, if people want it changed, that's fine with me.  Metamachy doesn't appear to have a preset, rule-enforcing or otherwise, but it looks like a good game.  I should make at least a simple preset.  Final note on this, if Jean-Louis Cazaux himself weights in, he has the ultimate say on which of his games is used.

And, John, we can certainly add a game of yours.  I know I like Grand Betza, and there is an unpublished preset for it.  I can publish it if you like.  I know you have at least one other game, but if I've seen it I don't recall. As I've mentioned, rule-enforcement is NOT strictly necessary, but I will try to rule-enable any games we select if not too difficult.  Grand Betza would not be a problem except the Rhino might be a little tricky.

I'm interested. I was also thinking about going with Metamachy instead of Perfect 12. It seems to be a more recent evolution of Perfect 12. Perfect 12 does not appear in the "Chess Variants on very large boards" section of Cazaux's website, and that section begins with the statement "I consider that these variants are now surpassed by METAMACHY." So, I expect that he favors it over Perfect 12. Although he does not list it in his Favorites section, we have already done Shako as you mentioned, and the other two were for design contests with unusual board sizes. There is already a bare preset for this game, but I could make one that enforces the rules.

I am interested in the tournament also.  Adding my two cents .... What about Shako-Balbo for a possible Variant?

Excellent.  Perfect 12 has been replaced with Metamachy.  Thank you both for the insight.  Although I certainly spent some significant time picking contributers and games, I knew there would be gaps.  I feel a little bad about picking representative games for other inventors, but for those that are no long active, I think it's better than just omitting them. Maybe gone, but certainly not forgotten ...

@wdtr2, yes, Shako-Balbo was already on the list.

Tentative player list:

Greg Strong
Adam DeWitt
Carlos Cetina
Aurelian Florea
Fergus Duniho
John Davis
wtdr2

I had made a non rule-enforcing preset for Metamachy (https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DMetamachy%26settings%3Dmetamachy), but I don't know how to make for it to appear in the menu and the index.

@Greg,

As you had assumed I'm still in.

I think presets that are rules enforcing and move displaying should be mandatory mostly because otherwise how you would notice errors made by both players? There are other issues easier to spot. But these would fall on you as organizers and who else would like to help as an serious tournament should first and foremost be fair. Also I'd help with such error detection tasks but isn't that a conflict of interest?

Also where that list of games can be found?

I'd be interested in joining up. And any game works for me. I don't even mind if there's no rule enforcing preset as long as the rules are available on the site or something.

I might be able to play...

Since I cannot imagine anyone actually voting to play TessChess, maybe I'll put forward Tim's 3D Chess; it's 3D, so may tempt folks to try other 3+ dim games like Tess, it's not 4D itself, and it's a little slicker IMO than Raumschach with the two kings.  I should be able to adapt my Raumschach rules-enforcing preset for this, if someone can help me figure out how the two royal pieces should be done.  [If not, maybe I'll just pick another from my Favorites or Recognized.]

@Aurelian, the list of games is on this page we're commenting on.
I think if both players miss an illegal move, then that's still "fair"; however, it sounds like there are several people ready to work on rule enforcement on presets, so hopefully this will be moot anyway.

Ok!

I see :)!

RE: Rule-enforcing presets - I just don't see this as a big issue.  Games reasonably like chess will have rule enforcement.  For more radical games, even where rule-enforcing presets can be made, the chances that those will have bugs is significant.  There have been cases where games have been played many, many times before a bug in a preset has been found, but when it is discovered, the whole game comes to a halt until the creater of the preset can fix it.  I think the chances of time getting eaten off one's clock due to a preset bug is greater than the chances of both players failing to follow the rules.

We've had several tournaments here, often without rule-enforcing presets.  The only incident I know of is a game of Rococo where there was disagreement about what the rules actually were in an unusual case (the game description wasn't 100% clear.)  Rococo is fairly popular and still doesn't have a rule-enforcing preset.  It probably never will as I bet it would be shocking difficult to write.  I would not want to see Rococo forever excluded.

Of somewhat greater concern, though, is instances of strange movement/capture where you need to actually type the moves (Odin's Rune, I'm looking at you...)  But even this is something that we have lived with for a long time.  Gifford's Dimension X was played in Game Courier Tournament #3 and every turn had to be entered manually.