From: Bernhard März arcor de> Date: 14 mar 2007 Subject: Shogi22680 Hi, Because of my bad ability in English language, I decided to keep my=20 homepage in German only. For those of you able speaking German, you can look here:=20 http://home.arcor.de/Bernhard.Maerz/Shogi22680 All other (interested people) can read my English words here. Inspired by Fischer Random Chess (also called Chess960 and its variant=20 Chess480) I thought about this variant in shogi. Look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 This Variant Shogi22680 is played with the same shogi-rules and only the= =20 starting position is different, means it's randomly. There are exactly 22680 possible positions for the first row. So it's understandable, that I named this variant analog "Bernhard=20 Random Shogi", also called Shogi22680. (I hope, that nobody before me have had the same idea and gave an other=20 name.) The idea behind it (read the article about Chess960, please) is, that=20 the knowledge about opening (simple learning) should be less important=20 than tactics and ideas during game. There are many variants possible, like: - mix only the first row - mix first and second (Bishop+Rook) row - makes the position symmetrical by point or by line - gives each player own random positions In my eyes, symmetrical positions by points seems to be the variant I=20 like most and which I have tested already a little bit. I played some games, where I have mixed only the first row, also I=20 played games where I mixed also the second row. I have written a small program, which generates such positions in=20 CSA-Format. You can download some sample positions (CSA-files) here:=20 http://home.arcor.de/Bernhard.Maerz/Shogi22680/CSA.zip With it, you can easily test Shogi22680 with your preferred Shogi=20 playing program if it can read CSA-Files. So you can use at least=20 Bonanza and Spear. And the next step is, to work about a handicap system for Shogi22680.=20 ;-) But first I'm interested in your opinion about it. I wish you fun and I hope that at least a few of you will give it a try=20 and tell your opinions. Thanks, Bernhard --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: = shogi-l shogi net EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2i6Ys.= aB5TiY.= c2hvZ2kt Or send an email to: shogi-unsubscribe topica com For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=3DTEXFOOTER --^----------------------------------------------------------------