Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

[comment deleted voluntarily]

Now I think this rules page is ready for review.

The generated GAME code by default applies the 50-move rule. You can change that by appending a line

set rulemoves N;

to the Pre-Game code, where N is the number of half-moves. (So by default N=100.)

I believe at one time there was a rule that in cases where the theoretical distance to forced mate was known, you got 1.5 times that number of moves, if this was more than 50. They stopped doing that when solutions for larger end-games were calculated, and sometimes would require hundreds of moves to force the win.

Whether it pays to increase the number of moves where a draw can be claimed depends on how important the affected end-games are for the variant. In general drawishness is seen as a bad thing, so you don't want to increase the number of draws by making frequently occurring endings that could have easily been won in a larger number of moves draws instead. OTOH you don't want to force players to play exhaustingly long games when their opponent is too stubborn to accept he cannot win.

On a larger board games are naturally longer to begin with, so one can assume these are played by patient players, who do not mind to spend a little more time in the late end-game. In Team-Mate Chess I increased the limit to 64 moves, even though it is just 8x8, because the 3-vs-1 end-games you could get in were the crux of the design. So I did not want those to be spoiled by too tight a limit. In orthodox Chess most games would end in KQK, and that can be won way faster than 50 moves. I am pretty sure the choice for a 50-move rule was based on 1.5 times the number of moves needed foor KBNK.

@ H.G. (and others):

For 10x10, the Checkmating Applet gave NA plus K mating lone K in under 65 moves in one (worst?) case. I haven't checked carefully, but I'm not sure if the Play-Test Applet's Game Code (that is generated for a given CV) always includes code for enforcement of the 50 move drawing rule, or whether that can optionally be excluded by a user at this point in time. I already made an Applet generated preset for Hybrid Decimal Chess, but I suppose I could redo it if I or editor(s) felt I should do away with the strict 50 move rule I have chosen at this point for this CV.

This brings me to my second topic: whether extending the 50 move rule is a good idea (in the quest for a few more decisive results) in general. For relatively small boards such as (8x8) chess itself uses, the 50 move rule is generally sufficient. In the case of chess, exceptions were found late in the history of the game that made the governing body, FIDE, decide to extend the 50 move rule for certain cases (e.g. R+B+K vs. R+K, or, worse still, many specific 2N+K vs. P+K positions that are arguably hard to recall)), making the limit 100 moves just for these special cases. I have felt this was an ugly kludge. An alternative is to extend the 50 move rule to 100 moves in all cases, which is arguably even more terrible. Or just keep it as 50 moves in all cases (my preference).

On much bigger board CVs, maybe having a 75 or 100 move rule in general is much more comfortably justified - depends on the size. I think that for boards that are, say, 100 cells or less, having the general limit as 50 moves is definitely fine still. For 10x10 Hybrid Decimal Chess, I kept the limit as 50 moves in all cases for the sake of simplicity, alone - and maybe a defender could mercifully get a break for a change, too, in any freakish cases requiring more than 50 moves for a (very!?) skilled attacker to deliver mate.

I think this rules page is ready for review.