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Courier 'de la Dama'. Courier Chess with a Modern Queen and other changes for more dynamic play. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]'DEF,LargeCV': In the more conventional Courier 'de la Dama' several changes, the major adding the modern Queen, eliminate the three unprotected Pawns of Courier Chess. Fortunately, unlike with Carrera's Chess copycats, only a handful have seen fit to re-design classic Courier Chess, despite the three array-unguarded Pawns. I would opt to play that original, even with its slower pace, for historic interest and this one's being rather uncreative alteration.
Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Feb 8, 2005 12:41 AM UTC:Good ★★★★I had not noticed this page until George Duke's recent post. I like the alterations made here (at least in the first game.) I will add it to ChessV shortly, because it already supports Courier Chess, and this is an easy addition. I also like the 12x8 board, and suspect that it may be a great board for CVs that has not been adequately explored. As for the second game, I have not played a game with a crooked bishop, so I can't speak to playability. I can say, though, that I am not sure at all how to program such a piece into ChessV in any 'good' way. For what I mean by good ways vs. bad ways, I will need to get into some detail about ChessV architecture. I will start this (complex) discussion on the ChessV thread sometime in the future.
Crooked Bishop must turn 90 degrees each step. It is a multipath chess piece after my article of that name. To its (0,2) squares CB is two-pathed. To others of its squares, however, it is single-pathed. Ralph Betza's Crooked Bishop is not very effective since it implements variably depending on the squares. There are better ways to define a change of direction of 90 degrees or 45 degrees in a chess piece. Cetina's Sissa(45- or 225-) is superior to Crooked Bishop because it is easier to visualize the destination squares.
Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Feb 8, 2005 02:45 AM UTC:I find the Sissa incredibly confusing. The Crooked Bishop a little less so, but only a little. The raven is straight-forward enough, and perhaps similar to a Sissa in strength ... From a programming perspective, Knight-riders are fairly tricky, and you incur a significant performace penalty when you generate moves for them. Multi-path pieces incur a *huge* penalty in cost of computation, even well beyond that of Knight-riders.
Personally I would not bother using Sissa or C.Bishop in a CV. Frequent reference to Sissa is for comparison when running across multi-pathers. Raven(R+NN) and S appear about the same value since Sissa has four paths to its Rook-squares, both near Queen value. Raven too does not generally fit well into any quality CV. I like Sissa better because of originality and well-known arrival squares.(The Courier de la Dama Furious uses CB.) Crooked Bishop so-called is only somewhat less vacuous than 'Crooked Rook':--is that already invented? [Yes of course, in same article Betza re-invents CB]
''Some people'' means himself also, the main modifier of Courier. Nuno Cruz refers to his own Courier de la Dama. So, Cruz now does not sanction adding the Modern Queen. Medieaval Gala from the same region of Europe is better lesser-known game and on 100 squares omits Knights. Here, with Knights on 96, it takes still poor Knight six moves to cross corners, with or without that Mad Queen.
Mr. Duke, you are perfectly right! I contradicted myself, thoug the thoughts are years apart. I created Courier de la Dama five years ago. I believe it was well accepted by the community of this site. And I like to play it (I confess I'm such a poor player I did not yet had the courage to play with real people over here..) The original courier chess is game with much interest and playbale as it is (interesting to analise is: its slower pace is because of the lack of Queen or the dimensions fo the board?), the Alfil seams almost out of place when compering to the other pieces. That is whay I proposed to play it with Alibabas instead of Alfil. My ideia was: we have a piece that goes to all squares on the board (Rook), other to half (Courier) and other to half of that (Alibaba). The question is: could we still call it courier chess? I believe so, althoug possibly every one would disagree.
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