Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

The relative attractancy of this sort of game lies just in this, namely that it is slow.  One needn't exhaust one's brain. Yet it is complex enough to create strategical complexity. When chess was slow, in medieval times, it was extremely popular, also among women. The later faster game was more about performance and was regarded as less enjoyable by many people. However, the more devoted gamesters became even more enchanted.
/Mats

The game can definitely let a player recover from an error. Maintaining the exchange ratio appears to be necessary.

I anticipate that the current game I'm playing will exceed 70 turns. Looking at the potential of a hundred-turn game will often scare the impatient. ;-)

Has anyone determined the various combinations of pieces needed in the endgame? I like the pattern that a Minister and Dabbaba take when cornering the opposing King.

Larry, Mats, thanks for your comments. You bring up a lot of topics. First, some statistics: of 10 games completed, 8 were won by resignation, one by time, in 33 moves [although the position was very poor for the loser - it appeared a resignation around turn 40 was clearly possible], and one by mate - with a breakaway Minister and High Priestess literally cornering the king, in 69 moves. The resignations lasted from 11 to 79 turns. So, for all games, # turns/game = 11, 20, 21, 33, 43, 45, 49, 50, 69, 79. 

While it's not a huge sample, it looks like hundred-turn game would exist, but be rare, and if the numbers hold approximately true, most games will end within around 50 turns or so. I don't know the numbers, but isn't this fairly close to FIDE norms, at most a bit longer, not a lot?

Hey, Larry, has it occurred to you that you might just play a pretty good game of shortrange? Being a Jetan master and all? ;-) You came out of that slightly premature attack very well, and our game right now is almost at a standstill. We've achieved a balance of forces across most of the board. But the final battle is not even showing an outline yet; it's just the first faint stirring of pieces, with no form or center. 

And this speaks to both Mats comment about the appeal of the game being its slowness and your comment about having a chance to recover. A so-far common pattern in these games is that many show a major battle involving, and costing, about half the pieces per side, occurring early midgame. Then the 2 sides re-group, and often a final key battle is fought, with one side generally coming out of that the clear winner. The short games are when one side is clearly losing after the initial battle, and resigns. [Or when one side gets blitzed by the other through differential skill in handling these almost familiar but rather tricky pieces.] The 40-50 turn games are when one side has either lost the 2nd battle, or never got its pieces together enough after the first battle to fight effectively. I suspect the longer the game the better the players are, or at least they're very evenly matched, at whatever skill level.

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?

Another nice Shatranj variant from Joe, this time on 10x8.

I'd tentatively estimate the piece values as P=1; N=3.38(=3.5 approx.); E=Y=2.695(=2.75 approx.); Guard(approx.=K's fighting value)=3.2; HP=MI=7.075(=7 approx.); R=5.5.

Hi Joe,

Just saw you post in another thread and hadn't seen you in a while. Good to see you drop by! Hope all is well :)

I've been meaning to ask you if you'd consider simplifying the promotion rule for this game. I remember that, after some discussion, the promotion rule for Modern Shatranj was simplified. I'm thinking the same reasoning may apply here. These promotion rules are somewhat difficult to implement when programming this game. Also, since the number of promotions to specific pieces is limited, the FEN notation for a game would need to be expanded somehow to keep track of which promotions have already been used. It seems like unneeded complexity to me but happy to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,
Greg

Also, since the number of promotions to specific pieces is limited, the FEN notation for a game would need to be expanded somehow to keep track of which promotions have already been used.

That is not true, is it? You can see what is on the board, and at all times would be allowed to increase that to what you had in the opening position (which can also assumed to be known). And you cannot promote to an Elephant on the shade where you already have one.

Pawns may promote to lost pieces, with restrictions. One pawn may promote to either (lost) member of the following 4 pairs of pieces: dababbas; knights; elephants; minister-high priestess. If promoting to a lost elephant, the pawn must promote to the opposite color of a surviving elephant.

I took this to mean that only one pawn may promote to a lost piece in each pair.  In other words, once a pawn has promoted to knight, you cannot promote another pawn to a knight even if you lose another one.  Upon further reading, however, I see it is not entirely clear.  But the word "either" must have been chosen for some reason.

Are you doing this game for your program Chess V Greg. First off, I notice on your 'person info' page, the link to Chess V ....

http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv

this doesn't seem to work.

I have actually done a zrf file for this, I did it years ago, but I notice it wasn't released, the file is titled 'great shatranj -test' lol, so I must of forgot. I see that I have made pawns able to promote to General, Minister or High Priestess :)

Joe, you need to change your pawn promotion rules, stop making life difficult for everyone :) .. and I sent you an email too, look in your junk email section hehe.

My original idea was to restrict promotions to only 1 piece total of each pair, or to 'generals', non-royal kings. However, I've always considered a game a collaboration between the designer and the players. ... Okay, when a bunch of designers says 'change your promotion rules!' I'm amenable. Grin, anything to get a game played!

If I were to suggest one different rule, I'd say promotion to the pasha (jumping general) might make the original version better. It has the virtue of being a powerful piece not in the original game. However, if you're playing with HG's variant which uses the pasha instead of the man, you might want to expand the possibilities.

Now, what would you all like to see?

Sorry whaaaatt, whose trying to make you change the promotion rules .. oh, Greg, shame on you!!! How could you!!

Alright, with that said, Joe, interesting idea with the Pasha, pretty powerful piece, Alfil Dabbaba Wazir Fers. Interesting because it isn't in the starting line up. I like it :)

It seems I always have misinterpreted this rule. The WinBoard inplementation of Great Shatranj allows promotion to any piece that was captured before. Fairy-Max doesn't support 'under-promotion', and always promotes to the same piece. So I had to pick the General for that.

It seems to me that the rule is needlessly complex. (And therefore a bad rule.) Dababba, Elephant or Knight would be very rare choices, so that you would want to pick any of those twice is a bit inconceivable. General would (in general ;-) ) be a better choice, and there is no limit on those. Minister and High Priestess are of course very strong, and the obvious choice when it can survive. The first promotion that does that, will very likely be decisive. Which makes it irrelevant whether you could do it a second time or not.

I'm fine with the General (Wazir/Fers) too, it's a less power piece than the Pasha, but either one, I don't want to influence Joe at all (lol).

Are you doing this game for your program Chess V

ChessV has played Great Shatranj since the early days.  The original versions (0.x) supported it fully.  But about eight years ago, I abandoned that code and rewrote from scratch (versions 2.x).  These also supported GS but the other day I noticed - to my horror! - that the promotion rule wasn't fully implemented.  I think I meant to talk with Joe about simpilifying it first and then forgot about it.  So the current version doesn't allow pawn promotion at all!  Obviously that needs to be fixed.

I notice on your 'person info' page, the link to Chess V .... doesn't seem to work.

Wow, yes, that link was very old indeed.  Thank you for pointing this out.  The new home is http://www.chessv.org/ You should check it out if you haven't seen it since the rewrite.  It's a huge improvement.

Regarding a new promotion rule, the options discussed are fine with me.  Should promotion be to General or Jumping General?  I guess it depends how decisive we want promotion to be.  A possible shortcoming to allowing promotion to only Jumping General would be the (admittendly very rare) situation where promoting to that piece would trigger a stalemate.  My personal suggestion would be either (A) pawns always promote to Generals, or (B) pawns may promote to a choice of Minister, High Priestess, or Jumping General.  But I'm not really picky.  My main objection to the current rule is that you cannot tell what promotion options are available by looking at the board - you have to know the game history.

The WinBoard implementation is really tailored to 'promotion to captured pieces, or Generals'. It shows the possible choices in the 'holdings' left and right of the board, where captured pieces go (without color flip). Initially it is filled with 10 Generals. So I would appreciate it if this stays the same, or at least when it remains forbidden to promote to something that was not captured first. Otherwise the user would not be able to select his choice in WinBoard. (Engines can always refuse a choice that they think is not appropriate.)

So: Pawns may promote to General or to any captured piece?

That's also fine with me. But preferably without any additional restriction about having two elephants on the same color.

Yes Greg, i'll check out your program.

And, I do like the General, it's a nice piece.

But preferably without any additional restriction about having two elephants on the same color.

Indeed. This is a pretty useless restriction anyway, as no one should want to do that in the first place. Same-colored Elephants are almost useless.

Say, speaking of Winboard, I notice the CECP specifies 'great' for Great Shatranj as an internal variant, but it doesn't specify if it is the 'D' or 'R' variant (although the brief description implies it is Great Shatranj D so I'm assuming this is the default.)

Any more comments or suggestions?

Hi Joe

Haven't heard from you in a while.

I can imagine some unusual circumstances where it might pay to underpromote to an elephant that runs on the same diagonals as one the player already has on the board, such as in cases where a promotion to such an elephant results in an elephant fork, say involving the opponent's king and another valuable piece.

In general, I personally prefer the allowance of [under]promotion to any piece type in the setup of a given CV, as it often/always seems rare/unusual cases can be imagined where any sort of [under]promotion can be justified tactically. However, there is also a certain elegance to restricted promotion, like in Courier Chess or your Modern Shatranj CV, where only one piece type can be promoted to, in those two cases. I think an inventor should feel free to make promotion rules to be as he or she chooses.

On a personal note, in our home we're having issues with our phone+internet company, and we may have to switch to a different company at some point if we cannot solve things, so I might need to re-register on this CVP website somehow later on, if that's necessary.

so I might need to re-register on this CVP website somehow later on, if that's necessary.

It's not - you can update your email address.  Log in, select "Personal Information" from the "Kevin Pacey" menu, and click "Change Email".

Thanks Greg.

Actually I like all the suggestions: my pita original one, only generals, only pashas, any lost piece + generals. The vote is split with a plurality to any lost pieces plus unlimited generals. (And what if the first general could be a pasha and each subsequent general a mann?)

So I guess we go with any lost piece + "unlimited" generals. But I wouldn't mind if anyone managed to add one or more of the others as options, despite knowing simplicity is the best rule (in most cases.)