Comments by judgmentality

Hi, Stephen. In our game against you, Eric and I were under the apparently
mistaken assumption that we could confer with one another. Clearly didn't
help us much but that's what we did. Now, I'm reading over these comments
and I see that we weren't supposed to, otherwise you wouldn't have the
admonition, 'never trust your partner.' Can I suggest that you allow
partners to confer with one another as part of the rules of the world
championship. This would increase game quality and allow for partners to
feel that they are truly cooperating with one another. How will the
tournament be structured? With what time parameters? 

To everyone else: 4-Way Chess is great fun and I encourage everyone to
enter this tournament, either by themselves or with a partner. Is anyone
interested in being my partner? (even though I've only played one game of
4-Way Chess and lost quickly?)

Hi, Roberto.

Not a chess variant, no, but the piece drop is not unknown to chess variants (as Shogi).

There are a few chess variants that use a Go board and integrate concepts from Go. Diffusion Chess is one. As we make other chess-go hybrids available for play on Game Courier, such as Gess, I shall call attention to them here.

Your suggestion that we add other games is a good one because it will provide further inspiration for chess variant designers to hybridize.

Ah, David, I'll bet you're right. I'll bet they do move like Camels. Intriguing way to describe their movement, strictly in terms of diagonals!

It's rather trendy to re-name the camel for some reason. It's been done in Renniassance Chess (General) and more recently in Clash of Civilizations Chess (Unicorn). In these variants (Agincourt and Super Cardinal, we have a very similar setup and two different names for the same camel piece, Cardinal and Archer.

I guess great pieces have a tendency to attract many names and uses. I designed a game once called Camel-Cardinal chess which featured one cardinal and one camel. I guess I could have called it Cardinal-Cardinal Chess.

Well, as you say, what's in a name. My answer is 'a lot' and I think your unicorn is the best unicorn!

Did you design that piece? It's quite lovely. I'd like to see it uploaded
and used in a preset.

Jared, I agree that the tiger should have stripes :-)

Meanwhile, we've been using this particular tiger in one of Eric Greenwood's Courier Modified variants, Courier Mod 3 and casually referring to him as a 'mountain lion.' He moves as a non-leaping lion that moves one or two spaces outward in any direction.

I don't know which variants / presets / zillions games have been implementing the same piece and using it for a different purpose. It would be nice to know though, and also know more about who uses a 'tiger' piece and for which purpose. I dissuaded Eric from introducing a new 'tiger' this morning, partly because there is no alfaerie piece which really looks much like a tiger yet. If someone stripes that one though, it would do, I'll say.

The answer to your question is that your friend was wrong if he thought he
was representing the standard rules. Perhaps he confused 50 with 15. From
the FIDE laws stated on this page: 

'The game is drawn when a player having the move claims a draw and
demonstrates that at least [the last?] 50 consecutive moves have been made
by each side without the capture of any piece and without the movement of
any pawn. This number of 50 moves can be increased for certain positions,
provided that this increase in number and these positions have been
clearly announced by the organisers before the event starts.
[The claim then proceeds according to 10.13. The most extreme case yet
known of a position which might take more than 50 moves to win is king,
rook and bishop against king and two knights, which can run for 223 moves
between captures!]
10.13, etc.'