My final response to gbtami in the locked thread

@gbtami said in #22:
> This forum is not for bug reports. Use github.com/gbtami/pychess-variants/issues please. Thx.
I thought that you would discuss about my posts #19 and #20 in 'New variants and unplayed tournaments' thread. Instead, you just replied to #21 and closed that thread. I agree that my post #21 in that thread is a bit off topic for the forum and if I had not posted that in that thread, then you would have discussed about my posts #19 and #20 in that thread.

I am not reporting the bug in the Github page, because I am pretty sure that the bug is not new. Many players using Pychess all over the world would have faced it before and it would have been already discussed several times in Discord. The issue may already have been open in Github and just it would be too difficult for Pychess developers to figure out and fix that bug. I cannot browse through each of the Github issues and find out which one matches with that bug.

As I reported about that bug in Discord yesterday to CouchTomato87, NM Visualdennis replied that he had also faced that bug several times both in normal games and tournament games and in Kyoto Shogi tournaments that had been held last week. He had to occasionally refresh the website to see opponent's moves if they had not been received for a long time and guess at times whether his moves have been sent or not if his opponent's moves had not been received for a long time.

He also said that it affects many games and user experience and it would be one of the major things to work upon at the earliest. Pychess developers have also said quite several times in many different places that developing Berserk feature for the arena tournaments is among one of the top priority things to work upon at the earliest.

I just prepared to write about that bug, in the middle of the Shinobi Shield arena tournament yesterday, along with playing games and in spare time that was available between games, first in text editor and then posting that in Discord because CouchTomato87 paused his games later on and did not come to chat with me for discussing with him in next game in that tournament later on.

My last post in this forum. I thought that I would share this to people who have not seen this before. I post this in an isolated place and not in Discord where other important active conversations would go on or in Pychess Lobby which is not good for long discussions and which does not support image posts.

I already shared this with Jocly community Google groups, in which gbtami and some other players of Pychess may be members of, and to Chess.com forum for chess variants. I do not know who all saw my post there.

groups.google.com/g/jocly-community
groups.google.com/g/jocly-community/c/7Z7SSzjTHr4
www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-variants/what-is-the-best-chess-variant

One of the most bizarre places to use with chess and chess moves is to play with chess moves on a Scrabble board.




Scrabble3D application, only for PC and not for mobile devices, available from sourceforge.net/projects/scrabble/ supports that.
Board sizes in 2D can be varied upto 48×48 and games can also be played in 3D. Players can also create their own dictionaries and play with them.
Letter distribution, points for each letter, number of tiles in each of player's racks and number of blanks used in game can also be customized as per player's wishes.
Small percentage of all tiles can also be tiles which are randomly picked up by the computer from the letter set.

I ask everyone to use github.com/gbtami/pychess-variants/issues to report bugs, because I have limited free time, and browse and search 4-5 different places to collect information for the same issue is the latest think I want to do in my life.

Regarding #19, scheduled tournaments I agree with your suggestion, but unfortunately we are not there yet.

Developers agreement on new board and piece themes is usually easy. @couchtomato87 creates them and we fall in love with the result. Just joking :) Usually we criticize his first versions and after several iteration they got their final shape.
If you want to participate in these processes I really suggest to join our discord discord.gg/aPs8RKr

I thought that developer agreement would be something like agreeing with every contribution would be my own work or work that is taken from any public domain that is either available on the Internet or available offline and to agree that all of my contribution would be open source and none of them would be used for any commercial purpose and so on. Is that not the developer agreement?

Thank you for your response to my posted message in this thread in this forum and thank you for clarifying about my doubts and my questions to me.

Sry, I was thinking you asked about how devs make agreement on what to add and what to not add.
But yes, that kind of agreement you described is necessary as well of course.

In my post #20, I was just asking about the developer agreement that you had mentioned in your post #18 in the closed thread of 'New variants and unplayed tournaments'.

Just another important clarification. In Sittuyin, in order to avoid endgame draws against opponent, it is written that
King + Rook should checkmate lone King in at most 16 moves.
King + Silver General + Ferz should checkmate lone King in at most 44 moves.
King + Knight + Ferz should checkmate lone King in at most 64 moves.

www.pychess.org/sWmhuj8J
www.pychess.org/XLKwE72M

In Makruk and Ouk Chatrang, these move counts do not appear in the endgame near the move list as Sittuyin, but is internal counting going on and leading to a draw when the move limit is reached? The move counts do not appear in the screen when the game is in progress or when the game is completed for Makruk and Ouk Chatrang, but they are shown when loading a already completed and stored game from the profile page.

I doubt it for Makruk and Ouk Chatrang, because the move count went to 76/64 and no draw was automatically declared after the 64th move limit was reached.

www.pychess.org/i92vKfTD

Also, by the way, the 64 move limit is for King + Knight + Ferz against a lone King. In the above game, the end game was King + Ferz + Ferz against a lone King. I think that King + Ferz + Ferz cannot force checkmate on a lone King, although if some player foolishly traps his king himself in one of the squares on the edge, then it is theoretically possible to checkmate with King + Ferz + Ferz against a lone King. So, the move count option of 16 moves, 44 moves or 64 moves does not apply for this endgame. In the above game, under time pressure (which was 10 minutes of initial time with no time increment for each move), my opponent made moves quickly in the endgame after finding an option of forced checkmate and played upto 76 moves before hanging one of his Ferz for my capture and ultimately ending in a draw. I think that it would have been good to agree to a draw for a King + Ferz + Ferz versus lone King endgame as soon as all the other pieces have been captured and that position has been reached.

Although my opponent played moves in the endgame in that game in lightning speed with premoves, I captured one of my opponent's Ferz after 76 moves and that game ended in a draw. It was possible for me to defeat my opponent on time because the move limit before ending in a draw was not implemented at all for Makruk and Ouk Chatrang, although I decided not to end that game with that technique. This was a good proof of testing that move limit before ending in a draw was not implemented at all for Makruk and Ouk Chatrang.

By the way, why should lone King + Rook force checkmate on opponent's lone King in at most 16 moves very tightly, in order to avoid a draw? Why cannot it be a little more flexible, say 25 moves or 30 moves? In western chess, 50 moves are allowed.

King + Archbishop versus lone King endgame should be much more easier than King + Rook versus lone King endgame for people whoever are used to it.

www.pychess.org/ztmy3NG1

King + Chancellor versus lone King endgame should be much more easier than that, and can be done in a similar way like that of King + Rook versus lone King endgame for all of types of experienced chess players whoever are used to it.

Also, what is the minimum number of games to be played at Pychess until which the rating is provisional? I have some chess variants with 15 games played and rating is not provisional and other chess variants with 20 games played and rating is provisional. Why is that?

If my user name and rating is to enter the top 10 spots for that chess variants, then less than 15 games need to be played and rating can also be provisional. Isn't it? Why is that? But it should also be at least an adequate number of games played and not just 1 game. Isn't it? Just curious, what number is that? Let me know about that also. Is that number fixed for all of types of chess variants, all of types of average opponent's ratings for many different chess variants and for all of types of game progressions or is it variable?

Pychess site uses glicko2 rating similar to lichess. See lichess.org/faq#provisional

On pychess now at least 5 rated games required to be on leaderboards. We will raise this requirement later for sure.

Counting rules are different in Makruk and in Sittuyin. See www.pychess.org/variants/makruk and www.pychess.org/variants/sittuyin
Implementation of these rules on pychess are courtesy of www.pychess.org/@/furumin999
You can find her as Ada on pychess discord. She is native Thai, so can answer your questions for sure.

@gbtami said in #18 in 'New variants and unplayed tournaments' thread:
> Because of limited developer resources, mobile app is not planned at all. We try to make the site to be as responsive as much as possible to be usable in mobile browsers instead (help is always welcome to fix issues of course). Engine development is ubdip's work and is totally independent from the site. I mean it is used by other sites like lichess.org, lishogi.org, xichess.com as well. See github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfish

It seems that xichess.com does not work properly for me. Does it work properly for others, or is it a typo by you? Perhaps, you meant chess.com or something else?

I am looking forward for a Hoppel Poppel arena tournament some time this week.

In Pychess list of tournament winners, the winner Morlockk of the first Crazyhouse 960 tournament has been removed. Why is this? Is it because it was played only for a short time without good number of points by victories and draws by the tournament winner or is it because it was decided that only the winners of latest 3 tournaments for a given chess variant will be displayed in that page?

In Pychess list of tournament winners and shield winners, will the list of winners be shown only for the latest finite number of tournaments for a given chess variant or all of the past winners will be shown a couple of years later on? If it is only the latest finite number, then what number will it be? If the list of winners will be shown only for the latest finite number of tournaments for a given chess variant in Pychess list of tournament winners and shield winners, then it is not possible to view old tournament data with links from anywhere on Pychess unless such links are stored in anyone's personal computer as new tournaments are held because even tournament page stores the link of only 20 latest tournaments that are starting soon, now playing or finished.

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@furumin999: It seems that you are not a member of Pychess tournaments team at Lichess yet, but that I have a question for you in #6.

www.pychess.org/i92vKfTD

Is the counting rule truly relevant for Makruk and Ouk Chatrang and whether is it properly implemented in Pychess for Makruk and Ouk Chatrang?

In the above played game of Makruk, the move count went upto 76 moves after a King + Ferz + Ferz endgame was reached and there was no declaration of draw after 64 moves, as per the rules that are written in the Pychess rules page for all of the chess variants that are available there or as per the rules that are written elsewhere on the Internet.

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By the way, shouldn't Pychess rename Gothic Chess to Trice's Chess, the new name that was adopted in 2020 in order to avoid confusion with the same name of a medieval themed 8×8 chess brand?

In the Pychess rules page for Orda Mirror, it seems that the Falcon has not been replaced with the new icon that has been designed and that has been available everywhere else in that same Pychess rules page for Orda Mirror and in the 8×8 board, in the main 8×8 board image.

@ramanvis1988 This behaviour looks like it's caused by a regression in the Pychess server or round controller code, or changes in Fairy-Stockfish. The counting rules was working properly at the time I implemented it.

Also, I recommend not to contact me from here since I rarely visit lichess. You can tag me in the Pychess Players discord (as Ada) or github (as Fulmene) instead.