Ratings & Comments
I have made Game Courier's delay in checking for your opponent's move more variable, depending upon the time controls. I have replaced 7500 with a variable called delay, and I have set it with this PHP code. Note that the time controls are in seconds, and the delay is in microseconds.
$totaltime = $gracetime + $opptime;
if ($totaltime > 24*3600)
echo "var delay = 7500;\n";
elseif ($totaltime > 3600)
echo "var delay = 4000;\n";
elseif ($totaltime > 1800)
echo "var delay = 2000;\n";
elseif ($totaltime > 900)
echo "var delay = 1000;\n";
elseif ($totaltime > 0)
echo "var delay = 500;\n";
else
echo "var delay = 7500;\n";I got a pair of questions from a Canadian chess governance person, on our chess federation's website:
1)"Do any of these sites have "no castling" chess? I guess you could agree with your opponent before the game that you can't castle."
2)"Can you think of any positions in which castling would be the only legal move (illegal in a no-castling variant)?"
I'd add that former world chess champion Kramnik has tried "no castling" chess (whatever this CV is officially called) against an engine, maybe to see what it plays like when out of it's book (if not programmed for it yet) - I would think that taking away castling rights might favour White a bit in general, as he often gets to develop and attack first.
https://playstrategy.org/variant/noCastling
PlayStrategy supports it as a separate variant.
Thanks Lev. Here is what I just posted in regard to my governance friend's second question:
"Regarding your second question, even if a player is on the edge of being mated in some random position where he's down to almost nothing but an unmoved king and rook, if castling were legal then so would be moving the king sideways one step, I'd think."
@ Fergus:
If the change works well, maybe some change to the documentation in the following link (or elsewhere on CVP site) might be worthwhile, to advertise that there is server-like speed on GC if desired:
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/userguide.html#timecontrols
Well, providing one understands what is written there. It is so complex, I read this part tens of times and I still don't catch nothing at all. Not sure it will be good for advertising...
Maybe a [new??] suggested GC blitz time control of 5 minutes per player might be offered, if possible? Game Courier already allows for something like Increments, so Fischer or Bronstein Delay blitz time controls might be options, too (I don't know if chess servers offer such these days - I only ever used a chess server once, briefly, decades ago, after a friend gifted me a chess server's gift card he won as a [door?] prize at a chess event, that he didn't really want, and my internet was dialup then, and I constantly lost my connection...).
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Feb 8 10:04 PM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from 08:50 PM:2)"Can you think of any positions in which castling would be the only legal move (illegal in a no-castling variant)?"
It is pretty obvious that castling is never the only legal move: if you can castle you are not in check, and you can move the King one step towards the Rook, and the Rook anywhere between Rook and King. Unless you are talking about Chess960 and Fischer castling:
Maybe a [new??] suggested GC blitz time control of 5 minutes per player might be offered, if possible?
Do you mean for the whole game?
Game Courier already allows for something like Increments, so Fischer or Bronstein Delay blitz time controls might be options, too
Game Courier has complex, configurable time controls, but I'm not familiar with the time controls you mention.
I suppose for games with Blitz time controls, I should also make the invitations expire much sooner. It wouldn't do for someone to accept an invitation to a blitz game when the person who issued it was asleep or at work or something.
It means that it normally checks whether the opponent has moved every 7.5 seconds, but when tighter time controls are set, it will check at smaller intervals, ranging from every 4 seconds to every half second, depending upon how quickly the game is supposed to go.
Yes, I meant for the whole game (standard meaning of blitz time control in chess). For Fischer increments a 2 second bonus can be added after a player makes a move in a blitz game, for example. Bronstein Delay I'm less familiar with, but it can be Googled I guess.
Yes, having blitz games (the usual choice of chess server players, though they can use longer time controls on at least some servers, as an option, say for a tournament) might be a serious problem if there is no way to ensure both players are online and on Game Courier when their game begins.
edit: A Google blurb:
Bronstein Timing is similar to Fischer Timing. Players have some time at the beginning of game and then after each move they receive a bonus of a few seconds (let's assume 3 seconds for now). The difference is that if you use less then 3 seconds (the bonus), you receive back only the time you used for your move.
edit2: I think 'receive back etc.' is a poor phrase for it. Instead it should just say you receive no bonus on that turn whatsoever, if you use less than 3 seconds before making your move.
I've edited my post I'm replying to, in case anyone missed it.
Does anyone wish to make a Rules Page on CVP site for this variant (No Castling Chess), which Kramnik invented (see the wiki link I added to my post I'm replying to)? That's assuming there's no copyright issue that I don't know about. Such a Rules Page might have a photo of Kramnik on it in the Introductory part, if the one who makes it knows how to upload a [large] photo. A rules enforcing preset would be a snap to make for it, say with the Play-Test Applet.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Feb 9 06:08 AM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from 02:35 AM:It is not a variant. It is just orthodox chess played from a different starting position, a position that already is in the game tree of orthodox chess. Tournaments of such games are known as thematic tournaments, where you are obliged to play a certain opening line.
We are also not going to make pages for a 'variant' that only differs from FIDE by the Pawns in the King file starting on e4 and e5.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Feb 9 06:38 AM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from Thu Feb 8 10:29 PM:I am not sure what you mean by that last sentence. If you would think 2 sec in a 3 sec Bronstein game, your clock will not advance. So I would say you did receive a bonus of 2 sec in that case.
In Bronstein TC the clocks just start running after a delay, each move.
I thought 'No Castling Chess' might seriously qualify as a 'Modest Variant' (the link for that on the Topics Index Page is broken, by the way). There are Pages for those. Anyway, when a world chess champion makes a chess variant [attempt], we have pictures and well-done Pages for their games, in the case of Fischer Random and Capablanca Chess.
For a Modest variant, No Castling Chess also has an interesting story behind it, judging by the wiki I gave.
I'm not sure who should judge if something qualifies as a CV, for this CVP site at least. It belongs to Fergus, so maybe he should be the final arbiter(?). In the case of my Throne Chess, there is only one difference from chess, yet it was published on CVP, for example.
One other issue may be that Kramnik, unlike Fischer or Capablanca, may object to our using his photo, if we do. It would be a similar story in the case of Seirawan Chess, perhaps.
No H.G., I think I am right about my interpretation (which is just making sense of Google's poor wording). Otherwise there would be no difference essentially between Fischer Increments and Bronstein Delay. Long ago I played both at my chess club, before I stopped going there, and vaguely recall the difference. Maybe you can find a link that supports your viewpoint(?) [edit: apologies H.G., it seems you are correct, says the wiki - I missed the shrinkage of the bonus effect that happens at times:]
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Feb 9 11:47 AM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from 10:51 AM:Well, it seems to me it should be quite obvious that the Queen's Gambit, or From's Gambit should not be considered chess variants. So I don't see any reason why this No-Castling Chess (not to be confused with the No-Castling Chess that has existed for many decades on servers like FICS and ICS, which is a shuffle variant) should be considered one. It doesn't bring anything new compared to orthodox Chess, much unlike Capablanca Chess, which is totally different in character, and the indeed more dubious case of Chess960, where at least most initial positions are not reachable from the FIDE position, so that it makes sense to have a separate server for it. But this No-Castle Chess can already be played on any server in the world that features normal Chess, most of them far better than Game Courier.
Although I can decrease the delay in checking whether one’s opponent has moved, the server-side nature of Game Courier still slows it down. Ideally, fast real-time games could be handled by a JavaScript interface that works without needing to reload the whole page. But because rule enforcement is handled with a server-side language, JavaScript could not handle that part. But with better modularization of the code, it might be able to pass a move through the script with just the rule enforcement code and change some JavaScript variables. But there is still the matter that when someone makes an illegal move, Game Courier normally handles this with the die command, which exits the script with a printed message. I can see what I can do, but before I begin on this, I want to complete its support for navigating through past moves with JavaScript. This feature is currently not available for hexagonal, circular, and spherical games, but I can fix this by adding css rendering methods for them that place individual piece images on generated empty boards.
Well, if neither player can legally castle (as here) that makes a lot of difference, especially to the opening sequences that may be playable for one side or the other. Indeed, that may be one thing typical about chess variants, even those on 8x8 with standard armies - openings used in orthodox chess cannot be followed by one side or the other very deep into a typical game being played of them. [edit: in that way my own 8x8 modest variant 'Throne Chess' is different - the difference with standard chess possibly shows up only in the later stages of a game being played of it.]
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Feb 9 01:14 PM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from 12:08 PM:It also makes a lot of difference when you have to continue a game after 1. e4 c5 or after 1. d4 d5. That doesn't make the Queen's Gambit and the Sicilian different chess variants. It also makes a lot of difference whether you get 90 minutes or 2 minutes or 30 days on your clock. Not every difference, no matter how large, creates a new chess variant.
Throne Chess has different rules from orthodox Chess. In fact so different that at no time you can enter the game tree of one from a position in that of the other. The more the game progresses, the more this difference will be felt. (Like in the more popular King of the Hill, based on a similar idea.) This in contrast to, for instance, Seirawan Chess. Where after trading Hawk and Elephant you just end up in an orthodox game. Even from Chess with Different Armies you can eventually convert to an orthodox Pawn ending.
So you should not be fooled by the term 'modest'. That term means something very specific here, and in any case not that the change in rules cannot have huge impact. If I am not mistaking, even Ultima and Arimaa count as a modest variants, because they can be played with an orthodox Chess set on an 8x8 board. (Of course I take the position here that they are not even Chess variants...)
The setup board for Impossibly Complicated Chess. ;)
To be fair, after trading Hawk and Elephant off in S-Chess, it's still a slightly different game since players can promote to either of those piece types if they wish. Same story for CWDA.
Getting back to No Castling Chess, at least it's impossible to get the same setup as the one for in chess (i.e. still have castling rights there). Play 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 Ke7 3.Ke1 Ke8 in chess and you have the same position in No Castling Chess as after 1.e4 e5 there, for example, but no experienced players would do that voluntarily.
It all depends if you somehow can find plausible moves to get from a game of No Castling Chess to a standard chess' same position, with no castling rights in the latter case that are left - hardly always a likely story, for games between experienced players at either game.
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This is what people call a 'turn-based server'. Which is fine for correspondence chess, but incomparable to a real-time server like FICS or LiChess. People play bullet games there, meaning 2 min per game per person, and sub-second recording of thinking time. To play such a game you need to have deposited your move about 1 sec after your opponent did. (And that should then be mostly their own thinking, not the roundtrip delay of the network...)