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Glenn Nicholls wrote on Thu, Jan 12, 2017 12:42 AM UTC:

Thank-you for your interesting opinions Mr Duke.

But, if I may say, these remarks are mostly your individual opinions and some of these would not, I think, be shared by all, including myself.

The point I am making is that of popularity and I can see no other games or pieces that have made such headway on this site compared to the three games and their pieces I've mentioned.  Shogi I have no real knowledge of and so cannot comment on, but it seems (and I may be wrong) that this game is played by a large number of people but not in such a geographically wide area compared to Western or Chinese Chess.

One point I would mention with Capablanca Chess is that the large combined strength of the pieces to commence with is reduced once an exchange of the very strong pieces is made and then reduced still further once another exchange is made, so the game will often "scale down" to something resembling Chess on a larger board (but not greatly larger if 10x8), and if there are different very strong pieces left this could make for very interesting games (IMHO) and perhaps less likelihood of a draw. 

Unaesthetic positions are difficult to define since there is a saying I remember from long ago that "One man's meat is another man's poison" and so I would simply look at a position on the board from any of these three games and see what could be made of it from either side.  Sometimes there are possibilities in a game that are hard to see and the more unusual the position the more you may be able to cause your opponent to go wrong by playing unexpected moves combined with time pressure, if this can be brought about. 

There are three other basic piece compounds I find interesting and I think I first heard these mentioned a number of years ago by one of our editors - Joe Joyce, and they are the Rook, Bishop and Knight each combined with a non-royal King (or Commoner as this piece is sometimes called).  Of these the piece I personally like most is the Knight/Commoner compound and I have called this an Earl - a dangerous piece if he can get into the enemy camp; thanks to Joe for mentioning these pieces.

Anyway its past midnight in the UK and I will have to sign off for now.

 

 


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