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#Post#: 217--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: chilipepper Date: January 24, 2018, 10:52 am
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First, congratulations to GothicChessInventor for winning the
U.S. Championship in 2000 of Gothic Chess. I'm sure there was a
lot of spectacular play in those competitions.
Also, congratulations to McGoohan for the 2017 tournament win in
Knights And Queens! Another superb performance which is very
noteworthy in the variant world!
And thanks everyone for the other comments - this is awesome!
It's exactly the type of information I was hoping to collect and
gather in one place. As McGoohan says, I hope this list will
help chess variants to become more popular.
Current and new players can use this as a resource to see who
are the stars, even if the competitions are still at an amateur
level. It can also serve as a resource for players who want to
consider competing in a new discipline - maybe trying a game
with more pieces, or a larger board.
The information provided by everyone is excellent. It's not too
much to summarize in a single list. I'll keep working on it -
just let me have a few days between each update. If it does
become too cumbersome due to length then I might cull or filter
out some info if necessary (based on some criteria). But we're
not anywhere near that point yet. Obviously variant chess is not
as popular as the classical game of chess by any measure. This
is the place where people can learn about it and see if it
grows!
Remember, the game of baseball was once played on a poorly
marked field with little or no audience, and some games did not
even have a home run fence. There was no official "ball" and
pitchers would arrive at games with their own hand-crafted
inventions. But somewhere, over time, the ball and rules of the
game became formalized. Information was spread in newspapers, on
the radio and by trading cards. Eventually the stars of the game
were born. I believe variant chess will grow in a similar
fashion. We just have a different medium than radio and playing
cards!:)
#Post#: 218--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: HGMuller Date: January 24, 2018, 11:11 am
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My main gripe with that is that there is no guarantee a player
is any good if he beat one or two others in a game no one else
is interested in playing, and his opponents just learned the
rules a week in advance. Most Chess variants are pretty much
alike, and if you would be good at one, you would be good at
many others. 'Superchess', for instance, is actually a family of
variants that (much like Musketeer Chess) use different
substitution pieces. So one year the 'championship' can be
played with a certain set of pieces, the next year with another.
Yet the same person, who happens to also be a FIDE IM, tends to
win it.
I have been watching one of these games going on at the
chess.com, and the play was awful, hardly above the level of a
random mover. One player didn't even seem to be aware that when
an opponent trades a piece, it is usually good strategy to
recapture. Being able to beat such opponents isn't really worth
mentioning. How strong can play really be in a variant where the
rules are only decided upon days before the match? If the
players were all super GMs, perhaps I would believe it. If they
are rated, say, 1500 at orthodox Chess, of which they have known
the rules incredibly much longer, well....
#Post#: 219--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: chilipepper Date: January 24, 2018, 11:23 am
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That's an interesting point of view, but the way to be a
Champion is to play games and win. Using the baseball metaphor,
some players of the early 20th century are long forgotten. They
were superseded by better and more skilled players. It's not my
goal to discern "best" possible play for any particular game,
and compare players with theoretical play. One of my objectives
is to give attention to players who play games and win. That's
the pinnacle of game-playing. :)
#Post#: 220--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: GothicChessInventor Date: January 24, 2018, 1:21 pm
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We also had "computer world championships" for Gothic Chess, and
H.G. ran a few "battle of the Goths" tournaments with programs
that could interface with his Winboard protocol.
[attachimg=1]
Maybe we could compile a list of computer programs as well.
There were entrants from 3 different decades in our first Gothic
Chess computer event! One was a DOS program "CapaGNU" that could
also play Gothic Chess with a slight modification to the piece
placement at the start. There was a "Zillions of Games" entrant,
Chess V, TSCP Gothic (from the Netherlands based on Tom's Simple
Chess Program), S.M.I.R.F. (programmed by Reinhard Scharnagl of
Germany, may he rest in peace) and Gothic Vortex (my program,
built on a Crafty framework with the help of Gil Dodgen, may he
rest in peace) so it was an interesting event.
[attachimg=2]
Brian Colgan operates the SMIRF program against ChessV
#Post#: 221--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: HGMuller Date: January 24, 2018, 1:40 pm
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Indeed, the Gothic tournaments were great. The last Battle of
the Goths event is already quite some time ago, but as far as I
know there has been no development of engines that could play
Gothic Chess at all, since then. Bihasa won the last tourney
convincing. (But of course only WinBoard-compatible engines
could compete, so Gothic Vortex wasn't there.)
BTW, I am in possession of the source code of TSCP-Gothic. For
the "Battle of the Goths" events, which also used other starting
positions (to get more game diversity), I had hacked TSCP-G,
overwriting the startup FEN with a hex editor. (It did not
support the WinBoard command for setting up a position.)
#Post#: 222--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: GothicChessInventor Date: January 24, 2018, 1:45 pm
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[quote author=chilipepper link=topic=43.msg217#msg217
date=1516812756]
First, congratulations to GothicChessInventor for winning the
U.S. Championship in 2000 of Gothic Chess. I'm sure there was a
lot of spectacular play in those competitions.
[/quote]
I thank you kindly. And we did have tremendous battles in that
tournament. My favorite was the game that clinched it for me. I
had black in this game, Bryan Peckjian vs. Ed Trice
[attachimg=1]
Black to move after 1. d4 h6 2. h3 d5 3 Nc3 g5 4. g4 c6 5.
f4?! gxf4 6. Bxf4 Cf6! 7. Cf3 Aj5 8. Ah2?! Bxg4! 9. Ce5 Cxf4+10.
Axf4 Bxe5 11. Axe5
The unexpected move I made: 11...Qc8! to make the game ever more
complicated. The game was over on move 39 in a time scramble
where I delivered checkmate with less than a minute on my clock.
#Post#: 226--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: ebinola Date: January 24, 2018, 4:05 pm
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Shogi - Meijin is the closest you have to a 'world champion,'
currently it's held by Amahiko Sato.
Chu shogi - chu shogi has a few organisation in Japan, I don't
know about the titles and title holders, if there are any.
Thai Makruk/Xiangqi - I don't know much about them to really
say, is anyone able to give a rundown?
Chess 2: The Sequel - There's no world champions but the one
player who regularly plays and retains his 'Grandmaster' title
is gbeastlord. I've come pretty close to beating him, though -
one game I was Reaper, he was Nemesis, and there was a really
long endgame that of course ended up in him midlining.
#Post#: 227--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: chilipepper Date: January 24, 2018, 5:16 pm
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[quote author=GothicChessInventor link=topic=43.msg222#msg222
date=1516823115]
...I had black in this game, Bryan Peckjian vs. Ed Trice
Black to move after 1. d4 h6 2. h3 d5 3 Nc3 g5 4. g4 c6 5.
f4?! gxf4 6. Bxf4 Cf6! 7. Cf3 Aj5 8. Ah2?! Bxg4! 9. Ce5 Cxf4+10.
Axf4 Bxe5 11. Axe5
The unexpected move I made: 11...Qc8! to make the game ever more
complicated. The game was over on move 39 in a time scramble
where I delivered checkmate with less than a minute on my clock.
[/quote]
Appears to be a great move (without me being an expert in this
particular game). You have an excellent pin on the h3 pawn, and
rather than retreating the bishop you defended it with Qc8. The
bishop in turn pins White's e2 pawn on his queen, forcing
White's d4 pawn to remain isolated. I love this point in games
where the board is still crowded and there's lots going on. Well
played! :)
#Post#: 228--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: chilipepper Date: January 24, 2018, 5:20 pm
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Here is an update on some of the star players based on
information posted on this thread. I didn't yet add the
information from ebinola's post, but plan to do so soon (within
a few days). :o
[attachimg=1]
#Post#: 229--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who are Today's World Champions in Variant Chess?
By: GothicChessInventor Date: January 24, 2018, 8:23 pm
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[quote author=chilipepper link=topic=43.msg227#msg227
date=1516835808]
Appears to be a great move (without me being an expert in this
particular game). You have an excellent pin on the h3 pawn, and
rather than retreating the bishop you defended it with Qc8. The
bishop in turn pins White's e2 pawn on his queen, forcing
White's d4 pawn to remain isolated. I love this point in games
where the board is still crowded and there's lots going on. Well
played! :)
[/quote]
Yes and note after ...Qc8 he can't capture my Bishop with his
Archbishop. If AxB? then QxA since, again, the pin is there. He
started to reach towards his Archbishop in the game, then froze
mid-move. I love when my move has this effect on players :) That
means they didn't even consider my move as an option because
they thought it was unplayable.
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