I have to share something with everyone participating in this forum... because I found it to be completely mind blowing.
ChessConquest has now been operational for a good 10 months, when including the beta testing period prior to the launch at rAge.
Recently one of the Romanian players, quicklyKNIGHT, sent in a support email, in that there is a bug in the system. In one of his games the server kept on replying invalid move, even though it was a valid move.
I've learned to never ignore any support query, but must admit, with this issue I was a bit skeptical. How is it at all possible that after 10 months, and more than 11000 games, and with thorough testing, that there could be such a bug. Surely it is impossible that he is the first player to ever play the move Qa1 to h1 on ChessConquest.
And what a shocker when I found it to be an actual bug. (Not to worry, we've already fixed the problem), the point is that with more than 11000 games and 322280 moves in the database, the move Qa1 to h1 was made only once. (That makes the chance of a person playing Qa1 to h1 in a game 1/322280 = 0.0003%).
And then again maybe not. Earlier tonight I just happened to look at a collection of about 60,000 games using ChessDB. I don't have the facility to count how often the Queen moves between a1 and h1 but I am able to see where pieces like to go. For example, the White Pawn on d2 goes to d4 at some point in close to 89% of games. You could call it a creature of habit. The White Knight on g1 goes to f3 with the same frequency. That is a creature of habit too.
The Queens, on the other hand, do not have squares that they frequent habitually. However, I noticed that the White Queen does not like some squares: in that collection it arrives on the h1 square in approximately 0.5% of games, making it the least likely place to find it on the board. It arrives on a1 in about 1.79% of games. Other rare squares are g1 (0.87%), g8 (1.05%), h2 (1.19%), h8 (1.62%), f8 (1.62%) and b8 (1.99%)
The Black Queen is a rare visitor to both squares as well: h1 at 1.26% and a1 at 2.24%
The bottom line is that a Queen move from a1 to h1 must be a unusual simply by virtue of the fact that both squares are out of the Queens' comfort zone.
I estimate the probability of the Queen move from a1 to h1 therefore to be somewhere around 0.04%
Empirically, the chance of Qa1 to h1 appearing in a ChessConquest game is actually 1/(total number of games played) which at this moment is is 1/4022 or 0.025%, which is not that far less than I would have predicted. Besides, it is seems possible that someone else encountered the bug and did not report it.
The reason for the Queens visiting these squares so rarely seems fairly obvious: these are the corner squares, and so players usually post the Queens to more active areas. Besides, the White King is often castled King side. In these cases, the White Queen has no business hiding behind the King, and the Black Queen would first have to drive out the White King before being able to set up her throne on h1.
By the way, well done for maintaining such a stable, bug-free platform. Keep it up!
I can start spamming the forum if you want 