New games! Oski and Shogi

Thanks Richard!

I second Ray's words: many thanks, specially for shogi the game that was in the top of my wish list! Indeed, many, many thanks

Wow Shogi!!! amazing, gogion to start playing rght now thnak you very much

I wish I had the time to devote to learn shogi well enough to enjoy it; maybe at some other point in my life.

In the man time, I wish we could play crazyhouse here. It's deep enough to benefit from a turn-based server, rather than playing it on fics, which I used to. It's has shogi's replacement of captured pieces, but is otherwise western chess.

Are the rules for OSKI explained anywhere?

Instead of crazyhouse, I'd rather have losing chess as a new chess variant... despite what one may think at first glance, it's a very deep game.

losing chess is a bit ambiguous. There are, at least, three different losing chess variants: a) a player must be checkmated to win the game; b) a player must be with a bare king or be checkmated to win, and c) a player must have all his pieces captured or be stalemated to win the game. In a and b variants, checks must be defended, while in c checks are ignored and kings may be captured; furthermore in b and c, captures are mandatory (except when in b, a player is in check and may not defend it with a capture), while in a, they are not. Variant a is almost always a draw, except when a player is much stronger than the other, and through large material advantage finds a serie of checks that the opponent must defend in such a way he ends checkmating the opponent (the last check is covered by a double check which happens to be checkmate). Variants b and c, although seemly similar, have very different strategic approches.

Anyway, I would be strongly in favor of having either variants b or c here.

I don't know variant b, and variant a seems rather pointless. I was thinking at variant c:

Kings become normal pieces that can be captured, and pawns can promote to kings.

Captures are compulsory (but one can choose freely between all possible captures).

No castling.

A player wins when he has no more legal move. Draws by triple repetition, 50 moves rule or agreement.

YES

OSKI rules: http://www.wyps.info/oski/

Thank you

Is minishogi and shogi going to combine ratings?

I'm grateful shogi was added. The notation is confusing, though. Usually the vertical columns are numbered and the horizontal ranks are lettered. Richard did it the other way around.

bump. Many thanks Richard.

OSKI is nice. :-) Thanks.

When asked to promote my bishop or not, it opens a new game window :(

It's an annoying minor bug.

But I'm so happy to play shogi in here!

By the way, do pawn drop restrictions of classic shogi (no checkmating drop, no both pawns on the same rank if belonging to the same player) apply in mini-shogi?

@Paul Gautherot: Which browser ?

@antony: Yes. Pawn is restricted (no two pawns in column, no checkmate drop)

thanks

On my Firefox 3.6.8 promoting opens a new tab.

@Richard firefox 3.6.8 too, with windows XP.

My Internet Explorer does the same thing! (new window whenever a promotion is possible)

I'd wish:

1. highlight not only the square a piece moves to, but also the square it came from, if it was not a drop.

2. make the "highlight" a bit less dark ;)

I'm already playing OSKI, thanks, Richard! :)

my Chrome does like a small (1" x 1" or so) floating window right where I played to select my decision, and once I select, it disappears. Just perfect.

i agree with Thomas ( "make the "highlight" a bit less dark" ) maybe by highlighting only the square, not the piece? especially hard to see newly promoted pieces.

We've had these games for some time now, but they still don't appear under "Games" together with the other games here on LG. Sure, they appear in the side-bar, but not on the "main page" when you select "Games", where you'd expect them to be. Maybe you could include them there too, Richard?