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The Burmese Elephant is an interesting piece deriving from Burmese Chess. It can move one step diagonally in any direction, or one step straight ahead. It has about the same value as a knight. Although it is a slow piece it also has a big advantage: together with a king it can give mate to a lonely king. Neither the bishop or knight can achieve this. Applied to regular chess, this has great impact in endings with pawns and light pieces. When the opponent has an elephant left, the drawing motif of sacrificing a light piece for the remaning pawn no longer holds water. Unlike the bishop the Burmese Elephant can reach all squares of the board. I tried substituting this piece for the bishops in regular chess. The result seems to be quite functional. It's a less technical form of chess: Elephant Chess.

For the Zillions programmers out there I'd like to point out the method whereby I stimulate the engine to castle. I have simply added links from the king's squares and around them. This makes the king feel uncomfortable on those squares and he castles to get away. It works remarkably well. In many chess variants castling is imperative to connect the rooks and to survive the middlegame. Note also how I've managed to increase the value of the Elephant compared with the knight (otherwise the engine underestimates the Elephant). This is simply by adding move function calls to dummy squares beside the board, occupied by dummy pieces. These are important tricks for Zillions chess variant programmers. Take a look in the zrf.

Mats