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M Winther wrote on Fri, Apr 14, 2006 08:39 AM UTC:
The Burmese Elephant is an interesting piece deriving from Burmese Chess. It can move one step diagonally in any direction, or one step straight ahead. It has about the same value as a knight. Although it is a slow piece it also has a big advantage: together with a king it can give mate to a lonely king. Neither the bishop or knight can achieve this. Applied to regular chess, this has great impact in endings with pawns and light pieces. When the opponent has an elephant left, the drawing motif of sacrificing a light piece for the remaning pawn no longer holds water. Unlike the bishop the Burmese Elephant can reach all squares of the board. I tried substituting this piece for the bishops in regular chess. The result seems to be quite functional. It's a less technical form of chess: Elephant Chess.

For the Zillions programmers out there I'd like to point out the method whereby I stimulate the engine to castle. I have simply added links from the king's squares and around them. This makes the king feel uncomfortable on those squares and he castles to get away. It works remarkably well. In many chess variants castling is imperative to connect the rooks and to survive the middlegame. Note also how I've managed to increase the value of the Elephant compared with the knight (otherwise the engine underestimates the Elephant). This is simply by adding move function calls to dummy squares beside the board, occupied by dummy pieces. These are important tricks for Zillions chess variant programmers. Take a look in the zrf.

Mats

David Paulowich wrote on Fri, Apr 14, 2006 12:55 PM UTC:
The Burmese Elephant has also been used in Peter Aronson's White Elephant Chess and my Shatranj Kamil (64). I do not believe that, in general, King and Burmese Elephant can force checkmate (or even stalemate) against the lone King.

M Winther wrote on Fri, Apr 14, 2006 12:56 PM UTC:
Correction: the Burmese Elephant cannot always mate a lonely king. But,
together with a king, or some other piece, it is very suitable for giving
mate in the endgame.

M Winther wrote on Fri, Apr 14, 2006 01:15 PM UTC:
David, thanks for the info. I have corrected my homepage. I had missed the
'White Elephant' implementation. It's an interesting concept with
different armies, i.e., the Burmese Elephants pitted against the bishop
pair, etc. Luckily, my 'Elephant Chess' differs very much from Peter's
inventions. Nor did I know that this piece is the same as the 'Silver
General' in Shogi. It is an interesting piece. Its qualities are much
different from the orthodox chess pieces.

Aronson discusses the strength of the Burmese Elephant and compares it
with the Fil (the other kind of Elephant) in Shatranj. This is a
surprisingly weak piece, about equal to a centre pawn. To me it's obvious
that the Burmese Elephant is much stronger since it can reach all squares
of the board, while the Fil can only reach a quarter of them. The Fil is
an awkward piece. I cannot understand how they could bear with it for more
than a millenium. But I suspect that they originally played with dice. Then
the piece makes much more sense.

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