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This is the home page of my 10x8 Chess activities.

My various 10x8 Chess projects

I have created two engines that can play 10x8 Chess, Joker80 and Fairy-Max. They are derivatives of my normal Chess engines Joker and micro-Max. Fairy-Max is acually a more general variant-playing engine, which can be configured by the user to also play games on boards of other sizes, with user-definable pieces. I also adapted the popular WinBoard graphical user interface (GUI) for Chess to handle many variants, amongst which the Asian Chess variants Xiangqi and Shogi. Both my engines can play 10x8 Chess under this WinBoard_F, using normal WinBoard protocol to communicate with it. Several other WB 10x8 engines have become available since then. And alternative GUI that suppots WB protocol has become available as well (ChessGUI by Mathias Gemuh).

Besides that, I started organizing tournaments for WinBoard 10x8 engines. One of the aims of playing the engines against each other is to establish a rating list for them (the Carreblanca rating list). Accurate and credible determination of ratings is a major effort, which will also involve other people. I have opened up my PC at home (by configuring it as a web server), and developed a viewer in Javascript to enable live viewing of the games in progress by anyone in the world, using no other software than a normal web browser.

Detailed information on the various projects:

1. WinBoard_F, a variant-capable Chess GUI.
2. Fairy-Max, a general variant-playing WB engine, which can be configured by the user to play with almost arbitrary pieces. Its rating at Capablanca Chess is around 2000 Elo points, making it of intermediate strength.
3. Joker80, a WB engine dedicated to Capablanca Chess and its variants. It is much stronger than Fairy-Max, about 2400 Elo points.
4. ChessLive!, a HTML template, Javascript software and an instruction guide for making the WinBoard tournaments you conduct for testing your (or other people's) engine visible for live viewing over the internet.
5. Battle of the Goths, an automated computer-computer tournament for 10x8 WinBoard engines. During its conduct, it can be watched through above mentioned viewer.
6. The Carreblanca rating list, a project to determine ratings of 10x8 engines.
7. Smirfoglot, an adapter to have the Smirf 10x8 engine (which uses TMCI protocol for communication with the GUI in stead of WB protocol), connect to WinBoard_F.

A short history of 10x8 Chess.

Chess on an 80-squares board with two unconventional pieces, moving as Bishop + Knight, and as Rook + Knight, respectively, (in the same sense as a Queen moves like Rook + Bishop), was invented as early as 1617, by Pietro Carrera. He placed the new pieces in the opening array between Rooks and Knights. The game only became popular, however, after world champion Jose Capablanca started promoting it as the successor of modern Chess. Capablanca also proposed the names for the new pieces by which they are most commonly referred to today, namely Archbishop (A = B + N) and Chancellor (C = R + N). His opening array differed from that of Carrera, putting A and C between Knights and Bishops. Before that, in 1874, Brithish grand master Henry Bird had proposed a variant where A and C started between Bishops and King/Queen. Since then, many variants differning in opening array have been proposed. Most notable amongst those is the patented variant Gothic Chess developed by Ed Trice. It's opening array has the Chancellor standing between King and Queen, and the Archbishop on the other side of the King.

Other WinBoard 10x8 engines:

TJchess10x8, a strong 10x8 engine by Tony Hecker, also capable of playing Crazyhouse, and even a 10x8 variant of Crazyhouse!
Smirf, a Strong engine by Reinhard Scahrnagl, supporting both 8x8 and 10x8 Chess. (Needs Smirfoglot to play under WinBoard!)
BigLion80 and ArcBishop80, two rather weak engines by Mathias Gemuh.
TSCP Gothic, a derivative of Tom Kerrigan's TSCP, much improved, and adapted for Gothic Chess by Michel Langeveld. It is of intermediate strength.

External links

Gothic Chess Federation
A web server for playing Gothic-Chess games