Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Hi!

   An excellent idea-promotion according to John Ayers' rules make for a
better game!

   I have an idea: Let the Man have the Squirrel (or Castle from
Renniassance Chess) move to start with, and let the promoting Prince have
the original Man move (as Horse or Fool).

   If anyone wants to play me using these rules, my userid is:   cavalier
(another Renniassance piece!  :})


       Eric V. Greenwood        e-mail:   [email protected]

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MZcourier-spiel

The zog.

The 'Bishop' in this game moves as a 'Ferfil', and the 'Councillor' moves 
like a 'Centaur' (knight, wazir, fers).
Would this be the first appearance for these pieces?
Anyone know an earlier game they are in, or another old game anyway. 
I know 'Ferfil' is in the game 'Shako', 1990, by Jean-Louis Cazaux.

Courier-Spiel is the basis for my other favorite, Dragon Chess, so I chose it as my first addition to the Grand Chess & Beyond project. For my "Grand Courier" I chose the names Duke (KN), Elephant (FA) and Fool (WF) so they wouldn't conflict alphabetically with the other pieces of my basic set. I drew my E & F file placement from Chu Shogi.
King ; F1 & 10
Queen ; E2 & 9
Rook ; A1 & 10, J1 & 10
Knight ; B2 & 9, I2 & 9
Elephant ; C2 & 9, H2 & 9
Bishop ; D2 & 9, G2 &9
Duke ; F2 & 9
Fool ; E1 & 10
Pawns ; ranks 3 & 8

A variant with an interesting mix of past and present. It seems possible and desirable for White's (or sometimes Black's) central pawns to strive to both advance to the squares on the fourth rank relatively early in many cases, much as in chess. To me that's a healthy sign for a two army square or rectangular board variant with an even number of both files and ranks, as far as the richness and logic of the opening phase of a typical game of it might go.

As far as this variant's 12x8 board goes, in the old days such would be fine in someone's home on a table, but nowadays if it were to be played over-the-board in a tournament hall (as in a chess tournament) its being 12 squares wide would naturally count against it as far as having physical boards with squares (and thus pieces) that weren't somewhat small in size (otherwise the boards would often take up too much room on a table in a tournament hall). Luckily this isn't much of a consideration for internet contests involving a variant with this one's otherwise unwieldy board shape. Another concern would be that the game might take too many moves to play on average, say compared to chess, but I'd suppose it wouldn't be as bad as in the case of the original 12x8 Courier Chess variant, with its relative lack of more powerful piece types such as the modern queen.

Here's 3 different 12x8 CVs with a quirk or two:

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/wide-chess

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/champagne-chess

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/parity-chess

Today I've had an idea for a CV that might be called 'Accelerated Courier-Spiel'. The thought is to try to come up with a modified version of Courier-Spiel that one day just might be significantly more popular with modern day chess (and CV) players.

The rules would be the same as for Courier-Spiel, except:

1) Some form of fast-castling rules would be used - in particular such as those used for my own 'Wide Chess' CV:

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/wide-chess

2) The 'fool' pieces (move like guards) would be replaced by Archbishops, in the setup (a slight 'rationale' would be that thus for the new setup, one chess minor piece has been knighted [= the Archbishop] and the other chess minor piece has been crowned [= the Centaur]). [edit2: A slightly different setup seems advisible to make these and the other changes most feasible]

3) The pawns would behave as in standard chess, except that they can promote to any piece type in the (modified) setup, except for a king. [edit: if centaurs replaced archbishops in the setup, then the resulting CV idea might be called Centaur-Spiel]

Note I thought about somehow having Chancellors in the setup, too, but given that I wanted 12 non-pawn pieces per side still, I didn't mind excluding Chancellors as I've always worried they might trade each other off too easily in CVs where they can be developed to be able to do so in just one more move, if either player is willing or has no better option. [edit4: Below is an idea that might be called Capa-Spiel; See above for my own suggested castling, pawn rules. edit6: Perhaps it might often be hard to castle kingside completely safely, at least early on, owing to possible pressure by the enemy Q, bishop(s) and chancellor - in any case the position of the Archbishop in the setup might also cause some awkwardness (also the case in the previously diagramed setup, for Accelerated Courier-Spiel):]

[edit: Adding an Archbishop and Centaur to the FIDE army on 10x8 (like for Capablanca Chess' Archbishop and Chancellor addition) might be an interesting concept. edit3: A slightly different setup, after the changes, again seems advisible to me. edit5: The following (reverse symmetry) idea could be called Centaur Princess Chess; pawns would be like in chess, and castling rules would be like in my earlier Wide Chess. edit7: The setup may seriously limit the number of interesting opening variations, at least in the early stages of a game, I fear:]

[edit8: 22-Nov-2019: Currently I'm not liking any of these 3 CV ideas, as in their setups, very much.]

[edit9: Here's an idea of mine (with castling and pawn rules as suggested for my Accelerated Courier-Spiel idea above) that could be called Hurly-Burly Spiel; I'll study it at my leisure:]

Note that wikipedia's entry for Kirins states that 2 of opposite colours can mate a lone K without help from their own K; also, Dr. Muller's results elsewhere indicate that on 12x8, K & 2 fibnifs (also called lancers) can mate a lone K, and he opines that K & 2 horsewazir compound pieces really should be able to mate a lone K.

[edit11: I don't really like this CV too much since neither side has a full FIDE Chess army included, which is why I worked on edit10's CV idea.]

[edit10: Here's another idea of mine, somewhat similar to the last one (i.e. with same castling and pawn rules), which could be called Hurly-Burly Chess; I'll study it at my leisure:]

[edit12: I'm afraid I don't really like this CV idea too much either, since the enemy Archbishop in the setup might make castling queenside often/sometimes a somewhat unsafe idea, and the board is very wide in any case, which makes it especially impractical for over-the-board games (besides trying to recall the setup).edit13: Lately I think I'm worrying too much about possible defects for all these CV ideas.]

The odd/special pawn promotion rules of Courier-Spiel kind of remind me of the odd/special pawn-of-pawns promotion rules found in another (earlier) historic variant, Tamerlane Chess:

https://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/tamerlane.html

[edit: Also note that with the Centaur and Guard pieces chosen for Courier-Spiel, in the setup, for each side, there are 3 pieces with a guard-like component (king, centaur and guard) and 3 pieces with a knight-component (besides three with a bishop component and three with a rook component, thanks to the presence of a queen), though just 2 ferfils.]

It is a little detail, but I recently observed that the initials of this 19th German author, Albers, is not H.G. but H.C. It is H.C. Albers. The mistake comes from the title page of his book, Unterricht im Schachspiele which is written (as well as the full book) with Gothic script. There is no doubt, the C of H.C. is the same than the C. of Courierspiele.

I don't know who was the first to make that mistake, then it crawled in many places including my own books. Fortunately we can also find some sources which are correct now, like Georgi Markov's papers.