Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Hey, Greg. The pieces used are all part of a 26 piece set I submitted to go
along with the 5 presets I've posted [so far] for 'Two Large Shatranj
Variants', 'Grand Shatranj Alfaerie'. The FIDE pieces are there,
represented by their customary letters, and some of the ancient chess
pieces, like the Ferz and Wazir, are in the set, represented by their
customary letters. The 'D' piece actually is a Dabbabah, but I don't
use it; instead the piece used is a D+W, which makes it a lot more
flexible. Anyway, all the other letters got used up by other pieces, and
the last piece and the last letter were the D+W and 'Y'. [As it's the
slowest and least 'forward' of all the pieces and I think of it as
looking like a sort of large robot lawnmower trundling along,  privately I
call it the 'Yardboy'. ;-) ] The 'extra' pieces are there to allow
people to easily change the preset so they can try out different pieces.
The series of games from Modern Shatranj through Atlantean Barroom were
put together to look at the effects of changing piece powers, and to be
able to do it in a systematic way.
Hope that helps. [Hope that makes sense.] Joe

George, thank you for taking the time to look over and comment on this pair of shatranj variants. I especially thank you for the reference to Ralph Betza's Augmented Knights article of 1994. I truly appreciate the historical references; to someone like me, who has just passed 3 years not merely as a member of CV but only being aware this site and the world of chess variants existed, the information is invaluable. 

The 'D' [for 'dababbah'] variant here is my 4th CV design, created in early-mid 2005 under the working name of 'Shatranj Capablanca'. Its evolution is documented in 'Two Large Shatranj Variants'. This rules page is an abstract from that series of games, posted so any players would have a clear, concise set of rules with no ambiguities, as 2Large is a game system rather than a game, and gives a number of options, though not coming close to your '91.5 Trillion...' series of articles. The 'R' [for 'rook'] version was added later at the suggestion of David Paulowich [as noted in the text], with whom I have had a number of private email discussions on the advisability of using rooks in variant designs. [A bit of trivia: Michael Nelson, in a private email, opposed changing to a rook; he, too, felt the DW piece was a better design fit for this game. I, hoping to see the game played, went both ways. Personally, I prefer the D version, and will play that unless my opponent wishes to use rooks.] Thus, the 2 pictures, which are both initial setups and clickable buttons for presets.

As far as names, I have often agreed that I am not good at them. The name 'general' was taken directly from the CVPages rules for historical shatranj; 'elephant' is the English translation of 'al fil', I believe; and the deliberately misspelled 'dababbah' is meant to indicate the piece has an additional wazir move - warmachine seems to be an acceptible substitute.

As for prior use of pieces, Joshua Morris posted 'Kozune' 2 months before I posted 2Large, in which he explicitly uses the NAF and NDW pieces. If not for a David Paulowich comment, I would have been unaware of this, because I overlooked Mr. Morris excellent game, thinking it was an Eastern variation with drops. I generally avoid drop variations, as I've only been playing [again, after high school in the 60's] for just over 3 years, and have enough troubles with Western variations. In reading Mr. Betza's work, I find these 2 pieces implied, but not demonstrated, as he adds only one augmentation to the knight in each case. But these are logical and obvious pieces, and I'm sure their original creators are lost in history, just as the AF and DW piece creators are.

There is a unifying theme ['slightly' broken by the use of rooks] to this game, that of very short range pieces that are all 2-square leapers. This changes some aspects of the game: there can be no pins, nor can a piece interpose to block a check [in the rookless original variant], as is also noted by Mr. Morris in Kozune. No piece can ever be blocked from moving to any square within its given range of movement, except by a friendly piece occupying the square; all threats are immediate. 

With your comments here including references to Ralph Betza's work, and that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jetan in your recent Chieftain Chess comments, I feel you are praising me with faint damns. As a fledgling CVer, I never anticipated being put in any such lofty company. I look forward to any comments you might make on my Grand, Atlantean Barroom, and Lemurian shatranj variants.

lol, good answer joe :)
is a great game, is just people's nature to be jealous and put down

While many variants try to balance the number of leapers with sliders, this game takes a different approach. Every piece is a jumper or a 1 square stepping piece. The Queen is replaced by the General, the rooks with dababbas and bishops with Elephants. Then, the game is expanded to a 10x8 similar to a Capablanca variant. The knight compound added to both dababbas and elephant.

Some interesting points: the dababbas and Minister can mate with aid of king. (A bit tricky with the dababba) (Of course the General can too) . The dababba starts out as a weak piece but gets stronger as the game progresses.

zcherryz, thanks for the support. I can always use it, and appreciate it muchly. Some people's tastes are amazingly similar. :-) 
I had some great help on designing this one. Someone with amazingly similar tastes designed it along with me during email conversations. Though some tastes aren't that similar...
Charles, thank you for your rating and especially for your comment in reference to chess players' tastes and who might find the game interesting, which I found interesting. I'll have to remember that if I try to hook a 'normal' chess player. And similar pieces must have been designed over and over again. A decent, playable game that presents something new, even if it's only old pieces presented in a new light, is what I hope to manage in a design. Shatranj variants were kind of 'in the air' when I first started doing mine. I like to think I was lucky enough to get some good ones. Not all agree; some do.

I like this game design for the consistently applied logic: Like in Chess,
where all 'long moves' are slider-like, here the long moves are jumps
over a 1-step target in the same direction. I would have chosen different
names for the pieces, though, to stress the connection with their sliding
counterparts in Capablanca Ches:

F+W:   Commoner
D+W+N: Deputy
F+A+N: Acolyte
D+W:   Turret
F+A:   Choir-boy

I don't understand why you keep the 'baring the King rule', though. In
Shatranj this rule is sorely needed to decide games, as almost none of the
pieces have mating potential, and Pawns promote to the near worthless Ferz,
of which not even a pair can checkmate. But there is no need for it here.
Almost all your pieces have mating potential by themselves. The only
exceptions (like in normal Chess) are the Bishop and Knight analogs, but
also there FA+FA and FA+N can mate. And Pawns can promote to very strong
pieces, that immediately decide the game.

HG Muller - you are not on the list of applicants. Please go to this page to register: http://chessvariants.org/index/registeruser.html

Thank you for the comment. The goal was to design a game that clearly played like chess, that had an essential 'feel' of chess, but was clearly different from FIDE. The king/'general' pieces, attacking all 8 squares around, complement the minor pieces nicely, with all attacking 8 squares unblockably. The 2 major pieces are obviously 'shatranjized' versions of the A and C. As they each attack 16 squares, double the others, but still have the same range of 2, they've made a nice fit with the basic concept. 

But this game is part of a shatranj series; thus the names. They are consistent across the series. [Heh, maybe not good names, but consistent. I admit to a naming disability. I've always thought Minister and High Priestess were good names, clearly analogous to Chancellor and Archbishop, and among my personal best efforts. Others may differ.] 

Why the bare king rule? Hubris and laziness, mostly. When the final design for this game and its sister game, Grand Shatranj, gelled, I felt it was so obvious that both games were clearly easily and readily playable as is that I posted them without first playtesting them. The bare king rule serves 2 purposes: it gives an air of shatranjness to the games, which I wanted whether or not the games deserve it; it gives me a bail-out against draws in case the games turn out to be very drawish. So far, except for Modern Shatranj, I don't think the series has had a draw, in the admittedly few games of each completed. I guess it serves mostly as window-dressing. But at high-level play, it may well diminish the number of draws. How much is another matter.

Ah, I was not referred to the page you gave, but followed the instructions
on the posting input form, namely writing an e-mail to
[email protected].

Unfortunately, the page you referred me to now does not seem to work
either. First time I tried it refused my user ID because it contained
periods, and now it does not want to accept me because it says 'e-mail
address already in use'...

But to get back on topic: I am currently trying the Minister/WDN in a
normal Chess context on a 10x8 board (so no Capablanca pieces, but two
Ministers in stead). It seems that to balance two Ministers, I need Q+R
(Q+N seemed far too weak, Q+2N far too strong after ~10 games). That would
make them worth approximately 7 Pawns. To get it more precise I have to
wait until I have about 100 games.

It seemed the first games of two Ministers against Q+N were a bit lucky.
They were losing significantly in 20 games against Q+R, so I went back to
Q+N, and had it run overnight. In 115 games this gave a reasonably
balanced score of 53.5%. The Pawn-odds score is usually somewhere around
62%, so this could indicate a ~25cP advantage for the Minister. OTOH, the
statistical error in 115 games is 4.3%, or 35cP. So the deviation from 50%
is not really significant, and indeed, after 90 games, the Ministers were
behind, at 47.8%.

As Q=950 (by definition) and N=300 (on 10x8), assuming equality would make
the Ministers 625 cP each. Taking the 115-game result at face value would
give 637 cP (+/- 17cP).

I am now running two High-Priestesses against two Ministers.

HG, thank you. I appreciate the effort you've put into this. That there are and can be sets of numbers on pieces to compare and contrast gives designers a valuable tool to use, if it can be developed. 

I find it interesting that a limited piece with a maximum range of 16 squares and a maximum distance moved of 2 is apparently worth more than a rook on a 10x8. I do expect a similar result with the high priestess. Question: would the high priestess [1] and the minister [1] be adequate/reasonable replacements for both knights and both bishops on a FIDE 8x8 or Capa 10x8? I'd think if they replaced the rooks and gave a pawn, it'd be about even, plus or minus about a pawn, say.

The brute force method you are apparently employing must eat up a lot of computer time. I'd love to ask you about all the shortrange pieces I've seen, as there are a good number of them out there. Another common class of pieces, besides sliders and shortrange, is the cannon-type. Have you done anything on these pieces, or any others? 

I'll see what I can do about getting you signed up as a member. Are you a wiki member? Please email me directly. Joe

Indeed, my method is very time consuming. But I am still developing it, and
hope to make it more efficient. (For instance, I have not really
established what the optimal time control is to play these games. I am
using 40/2' with fairy-Max now, and 4/1' for my better engine Joker, but
it turns out that Joker finds the same Pawn-odds score at 40/10' as at
40/2'. If that would be true for all scores, I could speed the process up
by a factor 6!)

I currently have one dual-core PC entirely dedicated to Chess testing
(running 24/7). And I consider fairy-piece values one of the spear points
of my research. I have too many spear points, though: I develop two Chess
engines, micro-Max and Joker, also in variant versions, am currently the
main contributor to the WinBoard open-source GUI (and in particular the
only one that cares about variant support). I want to write a Shogi
engine, and develop a much faster end-game-tablebase builder. I could use
an extra computer, but I want to postpone my next buy until I can get an
8-core Nehalem. Because I want to develop a new SMP algorithm for tree
search that scales better on large numbers of cores, and I really needs a
machine to test this on. So for the time being, I will have to do with my
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo.

But eventually I will do most fairy pieces. I will probably convert Joker
to handle fairy pieces as well, as it can reach the same quality play in a
fraction of the time. If you have a computer (which is likely, since you
post here), you could easily do such tests yourself too, however. It is
harder on the PC than on the tester! It is just a matter of letting it
run, and once a day look at the result, set up a new position and start a
run for that.

I am currently running a test with 2 Ministers against 2 High Priests
(starting at the A and C positions of Capablanca Chess, so in a context of
all normal Chess pieces). This seems a pretty even battle, In fact, after
62 games, the High Priests are even leading (26+ 22- 14=, 53.2%). I guess
I will let it run overnight. But they are very close, so the High
priestess is also more a Rook replacement than a Bishop replacement. My
Rook opening value on 10x8 is only 475. So 625 is even on the strong side
for a Rook. (Why do you find that surprising? A Rook on 10x8 has a MAXIMUM
of 16 moves, and most will be blocked on a non-empty board. All 16 moves of
Minister and High-Priest are unblockable.)

I have not tried your leaper replacements for Bishop and Rook yet, but
some time ago I very precisely tested a similar piece, F+D, because I
wanted it to investigate pair bonuses for color-bound pieces (and F+D is
color-bound). A pair of these pieces tested nearly as strong as a pair of
Knights, perhaps a quarter Pawn weaker (this was on 8x8, though). This
would make it 290, as my Knight is 300 on 10x8. I don't know yet,
however, how much of this is pair bonus. But if a color-bound piece with 8
unblockable moves can be wrth as much as a Knight (at least, in a pair),
the non-colorbound pieces F+A and D+W must be similar or better, and thus
good Knight replacements.

It is funny that a pair of the F+D, which is the (color-bound) conjugate
of the King, is worth nearly a Knight (when paired), while a non-royal
King is worth significantly less than a Knight (nearly half a Pawn less).
But of course a Ferz is also worth more than a Wazir, zo maybe this is to
be expected.

After 150 games the Ministers lost to the High Priests by 42% (47+, 71-,
32=). That is an excess score for the High Priests of 8%, about 2/3 of the
Pawn-odds excess score. That would suggest a High Priest is about 33 cP
stronger than a Minister.

Because the difference is so small, preliminary tests left me in the dark
as to which piece was stronger, so in the test mentioned above I had to
run them as exactly equal. This is the safest thing for not producing any
self-fulfilling bias in favor of one or the other, and thus reliably
determine who is strongest. (Note that the statistical error over 150
games is only 3.56%, so that the probability of an 8% swing (2.24 sigma)
between equal pieces is only ~2%.)

The disadvantage of exactly equal programmed piece values (625), however,
is that any difference in strength is not fully expressed, because the
side with the better piece will often trade it for the inferior one, not
realizing it is better, annihilating his advantage. So I am rerunning the
test now with the High-Priest programmed as 650.

OK, final report of the pilot tests (~100 games in a Chess context).

The re-run of M vs HP with HP set at 650 did not make the HP mre valuable
compared to when the engines thought they were equal. On the contrary, the
result was 45.4% (51+ 64- 26=) for the Ministers, against 42% earlier. The
4.6% excess score for the High Priestesses corresponds to about 35 cP, or
17 cP a piece. That confirms the value 650 (against 633 for the Minister).
Perhaps the first time the High Priestesses were partly lucky. Note that
the standard error is 31 cP.

Then I tried the 'Elephant' (F+A, or Elepherz, really) and 'Dababbah'
(W+D, Wazibabbah), in pairs against a pair of Knights (so that the
opponent actually had 4 Knights in the array RNNBQKBNNR against RNEBQKBENR
or RYNBQKBNYR). Note that I started the Wazibabbahs at b1 and i1, because
the on c1 and h1 there was a terrible development conflict with the
Knights.

EE vs NN was practically equal (I had already anticipated that, and
programmed the value at 290 against the Knight's 300, for a slight
discouragement of trading the imbalance away for no reason): 49.5% (39+
40- 21=). So a _pair_ of E is worth 600. But, being color-bound pieces, I
have no doubt that part of this is for the pair bonus, and that an
unpaired E is worth less than half of it due to the inability to access
the other color. Fairy-Max is not really a good system to test this, as it
has no pair bonusses in its evaluation. As the piece itself is less
valuable than the Bishop, (a pair of those isworth 750 on 10x8), my
educated guess would be that the pair bonus is also smaller, about 30.
That would make the E base value 285.

YY vs NN gave a clear win for the Knights: 45.5% (37+, 46-, 18=). The 4.5%
excess score translates to only 30cP for the YY pair, though. Thus each
Wazibabbah comes out at 285. It seems an isolated F+A and D+B are equal in
value, and that the F+A achieves its higher value only through the pair
bonus.

Finally the Commoner, which I already tested before once on 8x8. Again I
tested a pair of them against two Knights. As expected, also on 10x8 a
very clear win for the Knights: 40% (35+ 46- 14=). That corresponds to
70cP, or 35cP per Commoner, which thus comes out at 265 (very close to the
preset of 260 I gave it, so no need for a second iteration).

Note that this low Commoner value falsifies about every speculation that
has been made about it (usually presented as 'King end-game value'),
which all put it above the Bishop, around 400. It is not an effect of the
bigger board, as I found nearly the same value on 8x8. This is opening
value, though, and Betza has mentioned that the opening value of the
Commoner is indeed very low, but that it gets very strong in the end-game.
So I am testing that now, By setting up varies Pawn chains of 7 or 8 Pawns
on 2nd and 7th rank (making sure each side plays each Pawn setup equally
often in both directions), plus Kings on i1/i8, and then giving one side
Knights on b1 and f1, and the other Commoners on b8 and f8. No other
pieces are on the board, and I would say this definitely qualifies as
end-game. 13 games is a bit early, but the Commoners are not doing very
well here either (61.5% for the Knights, so far).

So the preliminary conclusion of the piece values in a Chess context is:
HP=650
M=630
N=300
E=285 (pair bonus=30)
Y=285
G=265
P=85

It seems that all pieces with 8 targets cluster around 290, and those with
16 targets around 640, with very litle spread. (I measured an F+D earlier,
and it came out at 580 for a pair, also fitting this pattern). For the
Commoner this is a surprise (although it is not completely clear why
others over-estimated it so much, as it is simply another piece with 8
targets, like the Knight, and much slower at that...).

The Commoners did make a strong come-back in my GG vs NN end-game test, and
finally won a 133-game match by 55.3%. This shows that indeed they do
perform vbetter in the end-game than in the opening, compared to Knights.

Normally I would say that the 5.3% excess score corresponds to 40cP, so
that each Commoner is 20cP than a Knight, i.e. 320. (In stead of their
opening value 265.)

Here that would be really premature, as I have not determined the end-game
value of a Pawn. (My intuition tells me it must score better than the 62%
for Pawn odds in the opening, as the best you could hope for in the latter
case is to preserve the advantage to the ending through game stages that
are still full of tactical surprises, which could easily erase the
advantage. Unlike a Piece advantage, a Pawn advantage in general does not
automatically grows during the progress of the game. You can only start
building out a Pawn advantage when the board gets empty enough that it can
be converted to a passer that can be safely pushed through enemy territory.
So an end-game Pawn might give an excess score larger than 12%, and hence
the 5.3% would correspond to less than 40cP.)

But no matter what the end-game Pawn value is, it is clear that the G-N
difference changes sign. This could be due to a drop in value of the
Knight as well, and is not necessarily proof that the Commoner rises in
value. According to Larry Kaufman's analysis of 8x8 games, a Bishop or
Rook rise in value compared to other pieces (including the Knight) as
well. He expresses this as a function of the number of Pawns present, and
the B-N swing can be 50cP in going from positions with all Pawns to
positions without Pawns. This is similar to what we observe for the G-N
value. It would take far more end-game test matches, involving all piece
types, to determine this. (In particular Q vs 3 minors would be useful.)

Whatever the case, the relative Commoner increase is a comparatively small
effect. It never ever even gets close to the commonly encountered estimate
of 400.

You can upload the implementation of this game using my piece values for
the time being from the following link:
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/GrtShatranj.zip

Just unzip it anywhere you like, (the zip archive contains a single folder
GrtShatranj with everything you need in it), go to the folder, and click
the shortcut named 'Great Shatranj'. That should startup WinBoard in 
Great Shatranj mode, using Fairy-Max as engine. (WinBoard actualy thinks
this is variant capablanca, but legality testing is switched off, so that
doesn't matter.) 

If you want to paste in positions through a FEN, you should use the
following letters (I was limited to what Fairy-Max accept, as I still have
to make the piece identifiers programmable there rather than the fixed set
PNBRQKEFWACHG):
P = pawn
N = knight
E = elephant (AF)
W = dababbah (DW)
C = commoner (FW)
M = minister (DWN)
H = high-priestess (AFN)
K = king

For some reason it does not start to play automatically if you make a
move; you will have to use the 'mode -> machine black' (or white) menu
to make it play.

BTW, there is no guarantee what the other variants will do in this
Fairy-Max version, which I use to test strange pieces. So don't use the
'new variant' menu!

The way I read it, Minister and High Priestess are regulare FDW and FAN, which can jump to all their distant destinations...

I do like Great Shatranj for the consistent application of a single idea, mnamely to replace all distant slider moves by a single 2-jump. But I don't think it stands any chance of replacing the Mad Queen game. Slider moves are simply too interesting to discard completely.

I might include Great Shatranj and its pieces as standard variant in the Variant Server.

HG, George, sorry for taking so long to reply to your comments. I was looking over comments about piece strengths, and ran across several here by Mr Muller, and one by Mr Duke. [I suspect I addressed at least part of this in previous comments off-topic, but I should/need to tie it all together here.] I appreciate the comments you gentlemen have made. HG, your work on piece values is especially welcomed and I again would like to thank you for the time you have put into this question. The amount of computer work you have done is truly amazing. George, thank you for the comment and rating; HG has the right of it, however; the FAN and the WDN are the real pieces, with both the knight and either the alfil or dabbaba leap. In fact, this game design started my fascination with short range pieces that could leap. I find it surprising that seemingly no one else has used these pieces in games. I find them beautiful and logical pieces, as well as rather obvious, because they are really just cut-down, or better, shatranjized, BN and RN pieces. I'd be honored to have them appear on a variant server. 

EDIT: My memory is even worse than usual; Joshua Morris uses both pieces in Kozune [posted onsite].

John, thanks for the comment and rating. I believe I see the idea behind calling the NAF a Big Ferz; the NWD is not exactly a Big Wazir, though. Based on analogy, your Big Wazir would seem to not properly exist on a standard 2D board [although there is undoubtedly some strange geometry where it could exist as the counterpart to the Big Ferz]. I suspect the closest to the Big Wazir that might work on a 2D is the double DW, a warmachine that may move as a wazir or dabbaba twice in one turn, thus covering 4 squares in each of the 4 orthogonal directions. [I do use this piece in Grand Shatranj, as the lightningwarmachine.] It is not an exact analogy with the NAF, but does hit 16 squares, also. 

Interesting question; anyone else have any ideas for a 'Big Wazir' piece.