Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Apr 27, 2009 05:04 AM UTC:
Larry, if you go through the comments for this page, you'll find some comments by HG Muller on piece values there. In general, he values the minister at 6.33 pawns and the High Priestess at 6.50. The guard, he values for the endgame at 3.2, but more like 2.8 at setup. And he makes the comment that all the pieces in this game that are analogs to pieces that can mate in regular Capa can mate in this game. Start about in the middle of the 30 comments.

Mats, you've made an interesting point in saying that one needn't exhaust one's brain in this game, which fits kind of next to Larry's comment about being able to recover in this game. In FIDE, tactics, from the nature of the pieces being generally infinite sliders, is always active. While you certainly could use a strategy, it's 'positional play', aka: tactics, which often determines the game, and always has at least an indirect effect on the outcome. In Great Shatranj, strategy is always active, but tactics tends to happen more sporadically, with intense bursts for 5 - 10 turns at a time, followed by a bit of strategic picking up of the pieces. In closed games, given that no piece here has a blockable move, I suspect the tactics would be more varied, intense, and far-reaching. These pieces are made for close-in, with wide, short footprints. The High Priestess attacks 8 forward squares [and 8 rearward], every turn, unblockably. Does the B+N?

Edit Form

Comment on the page Great Shatranj

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.