Sam Trenholme wrote on Sat, Dec 5, 2009 04:32 AM UTC:
First of all, I agree with Fergus that it would be good if my submission were a Capablanca variant, so I have already made a preset with the Aberg setup (RANBQKBNMR) and Capablanca Chess castling (the king can castle only three squares towards the rook). This can well be Carrera’s original setup; this setup (with different castling) has also been proposed by Aberg. Since the point of this contest is to make variants that are simple to play, I’m keeping the castling simple.
Here is the preset, which took me all of five minutes to make. Since Fergus said “program”, I think that means “the preset needs to enforce the rules”:
I’m calling this setup “Balanced Capablanca Chess” because computer analysis of some Capablanca positions shows this particular starting array of pieces to be quite balanced; White only has a 3% edge and draws are at 12%. As a point of comparison, in FIDE Chess, white has a 10% edge and draws are at 30%.
I’m also doing something I’ve never done before: I’m signing up for the tournament. It’ll be good to play something besides my own Schoolbook here on the server!
Here is the preset, which took me all of five minutes to make. Since Fergus said “program”, I think that means “the preset needs to enforce the rules”:
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DBalanced+Capablanca+Chess%26settings%3Ddefault
I’m calling this setup “Balanced Capablanca Chess” because computer analysis of some Capablanca positions shows this particular starting array of pieces to be quite balanced; White only has a 3% edge and draws are at 12%. As a point of comparison, in FIDE Chess, white has a 10% edge and draws are at 30%.
I’m also doing something I’ve never done before: I’m signing up for the tournament. It’ll be good to play something besides my own Schoolbook here on the server!