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Kriegspiel. With help of a referee, two players move without knowing the moves of the opponent. (3x(8x8), Cells: 192) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Nov 16, 2015 02:32 AM UTC:Good ★★★★

Back in the 1980's, with two other friends I played many games of what I believe was a Canadian version of Kriegspiel that was described in the Chess Federation of Canada's printed magazine that was still being published then. I recall that the rules were as described above, except as follows:

1) When something was captured, the referee announced 'Pawn captured on' or else 'Piece captured on' (but without specifying the piece type) before naming the square the capture occured on;

2) When a pawn could capture something on a given square, the referee would announce 'Pawn capture available on' before naming the square the capture was available on.

After one friend was no longer in town, I put together a BASIC computer program for this version of Kriegspiel that used less than 16K. My remaining friend and I sat in seperate areas, each with our own chess set, while the BASIC program I wrote kept track of the position, in memory, as though it was the referee. My friend or I would take turns sitting at the terminal, depending on whose move it was, trying a move to see if it was legal until the side to move found a legal move. If the computer said that a move was illegal, the person whose turn it was could decide to return to his physical board area and then ponder on what move to try next.

Because of the effect of the rules regarding incomplete information, or regarding information at times revealed by [pawn capture/king/various] move tries or checks, my tentative estimates for the piece values of this variant are quite different than for standard chess: P=1; N=2.5; B=2.5; R=4; Q=7.5 and the fighting value of K=3 (though naturally it cannot be traded).