The 38 challenge: The winners
In the fall of 1997 and winter and spring of 1998, a contest to design a
chess variant was held on the Internet. The challenge was:
Design a chess variant on a board with 38 squares.
Seventeen games, invented by sixteen different chess variant inventors
from all over the world (and many different ages and occupations) have been submitted.
The submitted games were very diverse, with boards in many different
shapes, rules of great ingenuity.
To all who submitted a game or helped in other ways: by commenting on
the games, voting on them, playing them: many thanks!
A special thanks
goes to David Howe, who helped with making the html-files
and organized the tournament where the submitted games were tested out
in actual play (by email.)
The votes
The winning games were decided by voting. Every reader of the Chess
Variant Pages could vote, using an email-form or sending a normal email
(which one reader did.)
In total, fourteen votes were received. Perhaps not many, but the winner
could clearly be determined from these votes.
Voters could give 2, 1, 0 or -1 points for a game: a 2 for an excellent
game, a 1 for a nice game, a 0 for a game that was so-so or when the
voter had no opinion, and a -1 for a game that was flawed in some sense.
Two games received two -1 scores, and four games received one -1 score.
All but one game received at least one 2 score.
The final scores were:
- 17 points: Crazy 38's. By Ben Good.
- 14 points: Flip Chess and Flip Shogi. By John William Brown.
- 13 points: Amoeba. By Jim Aikin.
- 12 points: Quad-Square chess. By
David Howe.
12 points: My38 Chess. By Dave Hogarty.
- 10 points: The Last Mourning. By Lester Jones.
- 9 points: The Weak Square of the Jumping King. By
Joao Pedro Neto.
- 8 points: Hans38 Special. By Eric
Greenwood.
8 points: The Royal Standard. By Alexandre
Muñiz.
8 points: Peanut Chess. By Philip John Brady.
8 points: Hourglass Chess. By Uri Bruck.
- 7 points: Pirates-Henge-Ho. By R. Stephen Chafe.
- 6 points: Small Spherical Chess. By Andrea
Mori.
- 5 points: Hans38 Chess. A form of Limited Square Chess. By
Ralph Betza.
5 points: Guschess. By Gustavo Vargas.
- 4 points: Cube+. By Jim Aikin.
- 3 points: Chego and ChessNim on four special boards. By
Alfred Pfeiffer.
Congratulations to Ben Good for his victory! Also, congratulations to
second place winner John William Brown (who's book had inspired me to
this contest), and Jim Aikin for the third place of his Amoeba.
Many of the games were experimental and not really tried out yet: those
who proved in actual play to be less nice games than others received
less points, while some games may have suffered from being tested by
email games, while they may be better to play face to face.
The special categories
Votes could also nominate games for most original game, best game
design, and best game playability. (Not every voter nominated a game in
every category.)
Ben Good's Crazy 38's also was the winner in two of these categories.
Here are the nominations:
Most original game
Crazy 38's (4 votes); The Royal Standard (2 votes); 1 vote each for:
Chego & ChessNim; Pirates-Henge-Ho, Small Spherical Chess, Hans38 Chess,
The Weak Square of the Jumping King, Amoeba, and Quad-Square Chess.
Best Game Design
Crazy 38's (7 votes); Flip chess and Flip shogi (2 votes); 1 vote each
for: My38 chess, Guschess, Amoeba, and Hans38 Chess.
Best Game Playability
Flip Chess and Flip Shogi (2 votes); Guschess (2 votes);
The Weak Square of the Jumping King (2 votes); 1 vote each for:
Hourglass Chess; Crazy 38's; PeanutChess; Amoeba.
Prices
Ben Good, inventor of Crazy 38's chess, will receive a copy of John William Brown's book: Metachess, and a
copy of the Chess Variant Pages Offline CD-rom.
John William Brown and Jim Aikin both receive a copy of the Chess
Variant Pages Offline CD-rom.
Thank you and see you with the next contest!
Thanks again to all participants! I hope you will try to compete again
in the next contest. I know there are already people designing chess
variants on boards with 39 squares, and we cannot disappoint them, isn't
it?
Another contest, with a different challenge is also in discussion by the
editors of the Chess Variant Pages.
I think this contest was a lot of fun, and I hope to see your inventions in a
later contest.
Written by Hans Bodlaender.
WWW page created: April 21, 1998.