Bulldog Report - April 2018
I was thinking to post news update at the start of every month regarding what has happened in the previous month. Since this is the first one, I will include some info from previous months as well and this one will probably be bigger than future reports.
The first bulldog chess game started 11th December 2016 between @vickalan and @evert823. @vickalan invented the variant and it was played with 2 guards and 2 bulldogs, which is why the variant is called bulldog chess. After @evert823 won the game, they started playing a second game with 1 guard, 1 witch and no bulldogs. It was @evert823 that invented the witch and it has since become the most popular bulldog chess variant. The second game was also quite special, since it is one of the very few draws in bulldog chess. Only 4 games has ended in draws.
In June 2017 there were 7 completed bulldog chess games and @vickalan decided to start a tournament. 8 players entered the tournament and the winner would become the first bulldog chess champion. 3 months later @Junebug444 became the first bulldog chess champion after winning against @friedmelon in the final.
The first player to challenge @Junebug444 for his title was @evert823. @Junebug444 managed to win and defend hit title, but the second challenger @Martin0 took the title away from him. Since then @Martin0 has faced 4 challengers: @vickalan, @JohnHS, @evert823 and @Junebug444 (again), but @Martin0 has managed to defend his title by winning against all of them. Right now @captaintugwash and @HorribleTomato are playing a game to decide who should be the 5th challenger to face @Martin0.
In October 2017, @Martin0 published the first bulldog chess ELO ratings. Previously @vickalan had kept scores of all previous results and calculated the winrate for each player. At the time @evert823 was the highest rated player.
After the year of 2017 ended, a total of 37 bulldog chess games had been completed. Then in March 2018 the popularity of bulldog chess exploded. Before March, the maximum number of games completed in a month was 7 (tied between February 2018 and September 2017). March beat that record by completing a total of 18 (!) games. April had slightly less at 15 completed games, but still a lot. At the end of April a total of 82 bulldog chess games has been completed. During March a 16-player tournament started which helped quite a bit. The tournament is unrelated to the bulldog chess champion title, but still attracted a lot of interest. The tournament is still ongoing and 3 players has advanced to the semi-finals: @Martin0, @captaintugwash and @Junebug444. @HorribleTomato and @HorusTheThird is playing where the winner becomes the 4th player to advance to the semi-final.
In April 2018 @Martin0 posted some new colored pieces (link) that can be used for bulldog chess games. Most notably, it enabled us to use them in 4-player bulldog chess. A total of 3 4-player bulldog chess games started in April and most likely more will be started in the future.
At the end of March, the Bulldog chess club was founded and in April the Bulldog chess Federation was established. The bulldog chess federation consists of 6 members: @vickalan, @Martin0, @Junebug444, @aidanB1, @Fly-Eagles-Fly and @Waredude. No new members are admitted to the federation at the moment. The federation will decide things like what games count as bulldog chess games and how the bulldog chess championship is decided.
When it comes to the leaderboard @Martin0 is clear first with a rating of 1589 with his perfect 11/11 score. The competition between 2nd-10th place is very close. @Junebug444 is in second place with a rating of 1403 followed by @captaintugwash with a rating of 1388. @captaintugwash is a relatively new bulldog chess player that started playing in February and has a perfect 4/4 score. @Fly-Eagles-Fly is in 4th place after winning 3 games in a row (2 by no-show) and @evert823 is in 5th place. Full standings below:
Some interesting games to look out for:
The candidate game between @captiantugwash and @HorribleTomato (link) where the winner will face @Martin0 for the champion title.
A semi-final between @Junebug444 and @Captaintugwash (link) (#2 rated against #3 rated!)
A quarter-final between @HorusTheThird and @HorribleTomato (link) where the winner will face @Martin0 in the semi-final
The 4-player bulldog chess games (game1, game2, game3)
Was this an interesting read? Should this be a monthly thing? In the future the reports would most likely be shorter and focus more on the previous month. Not sure if I will write all reports or what will happen. @vickalan used to write news updates in the Top players forum previously. I'm more of the stats guy and won't post a lot of funny pictures. I might consider posting highlights from games played.
