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Chess with Ultima, Rococo and Supremo Pieces. A series of variants with the Orthochess array transplanted to a 10x10 board and various exotic pieces added. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Jared wrote on Tue, Sep 3, 2002 04:16 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Regarding the 'Co-Ordinator Chess' variant, I would like to propose a
slight rule change that I call 'Co-Ordinator Chess II' (since Roman
numerals stuck onto CV names seem to be all the rage around here).  I
would also like to see it implemented in the ZRF, if nobody minds stuffing
it in there (as my ZRF coding is awfully limited).  Here's the change:

When both Co-Ordinators are still on board, they co-ordinate with each
other, instead of the King; they co-ordinate with the King only when one
of them has been captured.  If there happen to be three or more
Co-Ordinators through Pawn promotion, after you move one, it can only
co-ordinate with one other Co-Ordinator at a time.

--Jared (who hates typing 'Co-Ordinator' on a laptop keyboard)

Peter Hatch wrote on Tue, Sep 3, 2002 06:02 PM UTC:

I think it would be interesting to try this with a Grand Chess-like starting setup, with a 10x10 board and all the pieces except the rooks one square farther forward than in the standard setup. Like Grand Chess, it would then not need castling rules. Promotion could be done like Grand Chess or kept the same.

Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Aug 7, 2004 05:36 PM UTC:

In response to requests for <a href='http://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/ultima.html'>Ultima</a> support in <a href='http://gregstrong.com/ChessV/'>ChessV</a>, it seems reasonable to implement this game first, so I can write (and test) each of the wacky pieces seperately. Unfortunately, however, this game leaves the details of pawn moves and castling unclear. My first thought is to give pawns a 3-step initial move, subject to en passant (as in <a href='http://www.omegachess.com'>Omega Chess</a>), allow castling, with the King sliding 3 spaces toward the Rook, and have pawns promote on the 10th rank, and allow promotion to the Ultima piece being used. Although, I also like the previous poster's suggestion of a <a href='http://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/ultima.html'>Grand Chess</a>-like setup. But then again, I'm somewhat partial to Grand Chess, because castling is eliminated, and there's no 3-step pawn move necessary, which would make en passant (the other awkward move) even more pronounced. I have no idea if pawn promotion on the 8th rank is good (in this game or any other.) Of course, I can always support a couple of options, and I don't mind doing this, but I don't want to go crazy either. One thing I want to avoid is every game having so many check-boxes for options, that there are so many permutations that no two people on Earth are playing the same game. Besides, it requires more coding :) Any comments on this?

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Sat, Aug 7, 2004 07:08 PM UTC:

George, the following rules were what Ben Good and I used when playing these games, and which was encoded into the ZRF. <ol> <li>Pawns have an initial move of one, two or three squares with en-passant possible. <li>The King castles by moving three squares toward the Rook, which would then leap to the King's far side. <li>Pawn promotion on the tenth rank to any type of piece that started on the board. </ol> These seemed to work pretty well. You can take then as official for the four games in this set that I invented (Advancer, Long-Leaper, Pushme-Pullyu and Swapper Chess). The ZRF also contains the same games played on a 10x8 board with normal Pawn initial movement. These also work pretty well.

Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Aug 7, 2004 07:15 PM UTC:

Thanks! Let me ask you, though, since you have played both ... Do you have any relative opinion of this on 10x10 vs. 10x8? You mention that both work well, but do you think that one works better than the other? Or, in other words, is it worth implementing both in your opinion?

Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Aug 7, 2004 07:45 PM UTC:

Also, related to evalulation of pieces ... I have the following values for Ultima pieces (in Ultima): Withdrawer = 3.1, Coordinator = 2.9, Long leaper = 5.3, Immoblizer = 8.2 Anyone have any thoughts on how these values apply when each piece is taken in isolation and dropped into an FIDE Chess army, as in this game? Or values for the Advancer, Swapper, or Pushme-Pullyu?

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Sun, Aug 8, 2004 06:33 AM UTC:

I would have thought the Withdrawer to be slightly stronger than a Rook,
but it seems to be the contrary when I pit four Rooks against four
Withdrawers, both in David Howe's Chess on a Longer Board with a few
pieces added on 10x8 and in this game on 10x10. (Rectangular boards such
as 10x8 or 12x8 obviously favor the Rook over Queen-moving types.)

Still, the Withdrawers (and the other pieces) should be more valuable in
these games than in Ultima, because they alone offer baroque capture
(other than en passant) and can easily attack a chain of Pawns.

Joseph DiMuro wrote on Mon, Aug 9, 2004 01:01 AM UTC:

Since you all are talking about these Ultima-type pieces, I was wondering; what ever happened to Duniho's game Supremo? Is it still being developed? Seems like it's been a while now...

George R (Bob) Dekle wrote on Fri, Dec 22, 2006 03:55 PM UTC:

I invented this family of rather unoriginal games in a shameless effort to mimic some of V.R. Parton's decimal variants, which had exotic pieces added to the orthodox array. I thought the games played better on 10x8 (ten files, eight ranks) boards rather than 10x10.

M Winther wrote on Mon, May 14, 2007 09:09 AM UTC:

I have created a new Zillions program of Dekle's Coordinator Chess. This is much better than the implementation in Chess-with-Ultima-pieces (although the other variants might be quite good). In the latter implementation the Coordinator is underestimated, and the openings are monotonous. My new algorithm is more effective, I think. The result is that my new Coordinator Chess seems to win every game against the old version. To get Zillions to correctly evaluate the pieces is imperative because otherwise one gets the impressions that the variant doesn't work. In this case Zillions gladly accepts exchanging his Coordinators for light pieces, which leads to a strategically lost game. By my new implementation I have shown that Coordinator Chess is a very interesting variant, which works very well. It's important to make proper implementations of game variants, otherwise one is doing the variant a disservice while it seems like the variant is bad. Zillions programmers should know that it's often wortwhile to reprogram variants that have already been implemented.

So the Coordinator is an interesting piece. It's becoming more and more obvious that we need an Encyclopedia of Chess Pieces, to complement the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. Someone should shoulder this work. Incidentally, my bifurcation pieces are not more difficult than the Coordinator. I have simplified the Hoplit and the Doublebarrel, because they were somewhat problematic.
/Mats

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