Comments by judgmentality

Hm. Funny. I am going to sound very foolish here, but it did work when I just checked it again, via Firefox.

Wasn't working before, I swear! ::embarrassed::

The Dev appears to be a lot less vulnerable than two other well known multiple occupancy pieces, Peterson's Cobra and the wall. The rule for capturing the Dev is this: 'Devs can capture devs directly. However the other pieces of the opponent can capture the dev, if all of the four squares that dev is standing on are under threat ...' In the case of the wall and Peterson's Cobra, the entire entity is destroyed if any part of it is attacked without the whole being threatened. So the Dev suffers from weaker movement ability but this is partially compensated by greater invulnerability.

David Howe has written an essay about pieces of differing size - Growing and Shrinking: Playing with the Size of Chess Pieces. The notes to that page reference a few more such pieces.

Mark Hedden should be mentioned here as having made significant contributions to this genre of variants using multiple occupancy pieces (as well as multiple occupancy squares).

This the one you meant? Simple enough concept. Like some of Troyka's other famous games (Benedict Chess) we start with the regular FIDE pieces and board but turn everything upside down with a simple rule change.

At the moment I am writing this, there are a slew of games caught at the five vote mark, just below what would appear to be a qualifying threshold (of course that threshold could change if many more games get six votes). Among those with five votes, one of the games I would most like to see added is Gifford's Time Travel Chess. It is a very fascinating game that I have heretofore played hideously, losing fairly quickly. This is a game that deserves to be played a lot more. I have a feeling that it has some exciting hidden dynamics that have yet to be exploited by anyone. I hope it will garner some more votes.

Another I'd like to see played is Voidrider Chess, a game I've always wanted to play. (I once sent out an invitation to play it but nobody accepted.) It seems like another very ingenious Fergus Duniho game.

Connected Chess is quite fun, quite tactical -- Isolate to eliminate.

I was playing another one of Troyka's games the other day, Double Agent Chess, similar to Benedict Chess except the attacked piece always flips to the opposite color.

And I had the humiliating experience of checkmating myself (flipping my own king) on the first move. I lost without my opponent having to make a single move!

1. Nf3 was the losing move. May be a good practical joke to play on Kramnik. 'But, Vladimir, did you not know this is a Double Agent Chess tournament?'

Fergus, I want to commend you for creating these pieces. Brilliant job!

I particularly enjoy playing with the pieces you created especially for Mad Chess. I seem to be the only person who voted for Mad Chess on the poll for the next variants tournament.

Do you have plans to create more abstract pieces? I find it quite refreshing to play with pieces that reflect movement more than symbolism.

Above, you mention 'the Fairy Chess ZRF' - What do you mean by this? Can you create a link?