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Big Board Chess. On a 10 by 10 board with individual opening setup. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Tue, Jun 11, 2002 09:49 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★Anonymous wrote on Tue, Jun 11, 2002 09:56 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★Big Board here has similarity to Quintanilla's Switching Ch., and to last week's Lizarzaburu's XYMYX (a version of earlier Synchronous), and to any 'Random Chess' for that matter, in the following respect. All of them can in turn be applied to any other CV. Schonfelder's idea is to have a placement phase instead of an initial array. That gets rid of opening theory right away. In Schonfelder's preferred embodiment, 25 pieces would take a long time to place (anywhere in own half of board). See the sample game of Schonfelder, Beyer and Buntz. Now we can also combine further. For ex., take Brown's Centennial Chess, a relatively unheralded game. Play it with Schonfelder's placement (for the first 26 'moves') and Quintanilla's Switching adjacently throughout: Big-Board-Switching-Centennial Chess, theoretically very playable.
Like mediaeval Courier Chess, some recorded versions of Shatranj, and Ethiopian Chess, Big Board has placement, or mobilization, phase. There is sample game, and clearly opening theory goes out the window. Bird, Capablanca, Seirawan, FischerRandom, Four-Way and all proponents of their ilk would like Big Board for keeping familiar long-term standard movements. In other words, no Berolina Pawns, Nightriders, Dawson Grasshoppers, Watt and Kapaa Bowman(Quantum), Timur's Giraffe, Jetan Chieftain, or 10,000-20,000 other exotic pieces available.
Joe Joyce wrote on Sun, Jul 27, 2008 03:02 AM UTC:A different approach that gives a similar effect is to use a very large board, a fair number of pieces, good separation between the sides, some sort of pawn[like] screen or short range pieces, and several moves per side per turn. The combined effect of these is to give a game something very like mobilization, except that it occurs in the first few 'active' turns of the game. Any sort of mobilization does away with opening books, a result that seems to be legitimately desired in this field.
I think this is too tedious as well. Actually I would much rather modify this considerably. 1 king 1 queen 4 rooks 4 bishops 4 knights and 1 camel/knight compound. (or zebra-wazir). All Pawns set up on rows 3 and 8. Choice of King on e or f and Queen on e or f. 2 Rook must be on a and j Each player gets to set up rest of pieces on first 2 rows behind pawns only. Castling allowed. This version is immensely more playable --
Except the point of Big Board Chess seems to be to use conventional pieces on a larger board and to eliminate openings in favor of a setup phase. Introducing (relatively) exotic pieces and forcing the setup into a compact men-behind-pawns, king-and-queen-in-the-middle arrangement (necessitating openings, albeit a more Chess960-like variety) seems to be going against the purpose of Big Board. You end up with yet another decimal chess variant, possibly a good one but unlike Big Board in spirit.
I had a note for exactly what Duniho proposed, coincidentally, 5 placed each side each of 5 rounds of placement. Everything else the same, and it's over with in 5 rounds, maybe strict time there so set-up might be done even in a minute or two. There are other set-up CVs to be linked too, not Big Board alone:
Ethiopian
__and__
Free_
Placement.
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Garth, The problem is that the setup is too tedious. It is just not that playable practically -- and is actually more unlike chess that a chess with exotic pieces. There is only one exotic piece in my proposed variant -- we can even do without it some prefer it that way. Necessitating Openings seems to be a good thing - why get rid of openings? My version provides both a setup and an opening phase which seems more desirable. There is enough variety in the setup to ensure that deep opening theory CANNOT be memorized (by humans). In fact, in addition to bishops on opposite colored squares I can even place restrictions on where the bishops can be placed and 2 other rooks can be placed. Perhaps like balancing them on each wing. This to reduce the number of possible positions but lead to more balanced setups. Computers can be programmed to do quite well in Big Board chess as it stands -- so defeating computers cannot be the goal in designing this or most chess variants. Usually, I would submit this idea as a brand new variant, but I don't have the desire to make new variants anymore. If anyone is interested in developing a game from my proposition feel free to do so.
Although I considered expediting Big Board Chess by allowing five drops per turn for the setup, that wasn't exactly what I proposed. My proposal, which I shall call Expedited Big Board Chess, takes seven turns for the setup. It begins with five drops per turn for the first three turns, then drops to four drops for the fourth turn, three for the fifth turn, two for the sixth turn, and one for the seventh turn. Although slightly longer, it isn't onerously so, and it has the advantage of allowing more strategic and tactical decision making in the setup phase. It also parallels the piece distribution, allowing players, if they choose, to set up the Pawns on the first two turns, the Knights on the third, the Bishops on the fourth, the Rooks on the third, the Queens on the second, and the King on the seventh.
How about 5 drop rounds altogether? 1st round drops: Player's 5th rank 2nd round drops: Player's 4th rank 3rd round drops: Player's 3th rank 4th round drops: Player's 2nd rank 5th round drops: Player's 1st rank In each round a player is allowed to drop up to 10 pieces.
Jose, your proposal puts added restrictions on the order in which pieces may be placed, while mine and George's just speed up the setup without restricting the order in which pieces may be placed. Your proposal also deprives the setup phase of some of its strategic and tactical possibilities, which was part of the appeal of the original game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbles; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700924.html. Of CVs with a set-up phase, this Big Board, rather than Unachess, http://www.chessvariants.org/diffsetup.dir/unachess.html, has been elevated at Next Chess project threads, where B.B. is currently #6. The most proficient designer at bringing others' core idea to perfection has to be Duniho, and he does so for Big Board in the comment, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24670. Both Unachess and Gilman's recent comment for a proposed Shogi variant, Karagi, allow moving pieces before full deployment. Adding the factor of both options at once is a worsening because the science of deployment deserves separate treatment. If player can move a piece instead of continue deploying until it runs the course, think how unaesthetic in actual play are repeat back-to-back moves of the same piece more than twice, such as King, during peculiar combined phases permitting either movement or placement. There could be just a few pieces on the board, and move of King three times in a row, then followed by the further set-up deployment towards full complement of the 32 or 40 (Shogi) or 50 Big Board pieces. It is just an ugly scenario. Also, one player may still be in the placement phase of the original pieces, long since completed by the other player. As usual, Gilman is right though that that would be relatively modest or less extreme in the Japanese regional variant Shogi, since the very bizarre particular form of Chess has ongoing drops already, and they amount to continual deployment and re-deployment; so may as well extend them ad absurdum. ( Or, by analogy, like player's marbles re-deployed as own after being knocked out of the chalk circle on concrete with the deft flick of her/his thumb. And aren't most, though not all, variants of Marbles initially really undeployed, unlike the linked championship here? Or, what are the full set of marbles? See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700924.html. And which of Neto's Chess and Physics, http://www.chessvariants.org/other.dir/physics.html, subvariants would be better played with Marbles than with Chess Pieces? ''If you shoot a marble, how much entropy...?'' And on losing your marbles, there was the announcement: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18935.)
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