Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Definitely one of the weaker pieces. Dave McCooey writes (in his Endgame statistics with fantasy pieces) 'Two Camels, even on different colors, cannot checkmate a lone King. A Camel and a Zebra cannot checkmate a lone King. A Camel and a Wazir can checkmate a lone King, which is surprising. It can take as long as 77 moves (154 halfmoves) to force mate.'

Perhaps inventors would find the Camel-Dabbabah combination to be a more useful piece. Still limited to one color, but jumping two squares orthogonally gives the piece 'close-range' power.

The camel is definitely worth less than a knight because of its
colourboundness. It is also colourswitching which is a little harder
to see: It can't triangulate.

What comes out as a surprise, the camel is stronger than other simple
leapers, including non-colourbound ones as the zebra. This is suggested
by the endgame analysis of endgames with fairy pieces to be found on this
server. Jeliss gives the following explanation for this fact: The knight
and the camel are singular in the simple leapers because they have more
round
trips consisting of six moves than other simple leapers.

--J%org Knappen

The point of more trips of six moves(or 5,7,10,whatever) is just that
longer leapers have less mobility, given a board size. On 10x10 Gilman's
Albatross(9,2)can move only from back rank to promotion square, back and
forth ranks 1 and 10, until getting to file a or j, whence it so goes
right and left too, never away from an edge. My implication is that
working backwards from such as Albatross, even Camel and Zebra, while more
valuable than those of greater leap length, are ineffective chess pieces.
What game really uses a Camel effectively or Zebra to advantage? All these simple
oblique leapers serve for intellectual exercises, but compounds entirely
different story.

The camel continues to fascinate game designers! Daniel Brown calls it the Jester in his 80 square variant J-Chess. The initial setup is:
 P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P
 R | N | B | J | Q | K | J | B | N | R

This is only a technicality really, but there's another way to think
about
the camel movement to put it in perspective. To use an analogy:

A camel is to a bishop as a knight is to a rook. That is, a knight moves
in an orthogonal L-shape while a camel moves in a diagonal L-shape. While
it works exactly the same way to say the camel does a (3,1) leap, it
makes
the camel fit better into the chess schema to think of it as a diagonal
analogue of a knight.

Whatev, though.

I have made extensive use of the Camel in exactly the way that ARM
describes. In Bacheloe Kamil, a cross between Bachelor Chess anmd
Wildebeest Chess, th non-array compound of Knight and Camel has the same
special properties as that of Rook and Bishop. In Ecumenical Chess, a
cross between Wildebeest Chess and the Carrera-Bird-Capablanca family, I
have the two pairs of simple piece and every compound of two, including
two of the Bishop+Camel compound (called a Caliph) bound to opposite
square colours. I describe that piece as 'weak for a compound piece but
strong for a colourbound one'.

I have just submitted a new variant, Carnival of the Animals, in which
dice mutate the FIDE Knights into other leapers with coordinates of up to
5.

I really am not an expert.. But from all those fairy pieces out there, the
Camel is probably one of the best to 'include' on a real functional
variant; that anyone more or less skilled could know and not think of
difficult to use in actual play..(?)

We also have the minimalists wizir, ferz or weak alfil, dababa.. Which
make for some very nice compounds; but this '2 pawn value' ancient chess
piece has something that makes for chess variant inventors include it very
often on their creations. No one seems to 'like' these guy, but he keeps
appearing! :-)

The Camel is actually a very awkward piece on an 8x8 board. It has such a poor manoeuvrability that it is almost always lost in the end-game without compensation, as there are almost no squares where all its moves stay within the board. The few squares where it has a reasonable number of moves it can only navigate between by first passing over squares where it has almot no moves. So as the board gets empty and there are no more pieces that can defend the Camel to keep it alive, it is first attacked on a good square to chase it avay to a very poor square, and then attacked there whle it cannot get away at all.

The only reason that it is worth something in the opening and ealy middle-gam, on a board dense with pieces, it can relatively easily fork something (from a safe distance, something that might still locked in by its own Pawns) and be exchaned for it.

More interesting pieces comparible in strength to a Knight are for one the FD (Betza notation), which is color-bound like the Camel, but much more useful. (Stragely enough this very playable piece is not described anywhere on these pages. Its ability to make Dababba-like jumps adds a new aspect to Chess, which requirer you to re-think Pawns structure.) The other are the 'Woody Rook' (Betza WD) and Commoner, because they are weak pieces having mating potential.

Pieces weaker than Knight (with 4 move targets, like Ferz and Wazir) usually make a game only slow and boring. Shatranj is a horrible game, which drags on forever and ends in draw 2 out of 3 times.

Maybe the Camel only becomes a little effective on the 10x10board?
On that board I recall we have for example Omega chess which uses the
Camel move joined with the Ferz which make it a more effective piece.

But maybe, on that board, the Camel by itself can prove valuable for
instance in the opening by forking, even if that means loose the piece on
an very early stage of the game?

Arm said: "This is only a technicality really, but there's another way to think about the camel movement to put it in perspective. To use an analogy:

A camel is to a bishop as a knight is to a rook. That is, a knight moves in an orthogonal L-shape while a camel moves in a diagonal L-shape. While it works exactly the same way to say the camel does a (3,1) leap, it makes the camel fit better into the chess schema to think of it as a diagonal analogue of a knight.

Whatev, though."

If I am right, another way to think about camel is to think he moves to the closest square from the one he is, excluding the one he is in and the ones that rook, bishop and knight can move to.



Anyway, following those idea, If you wanted to make a variant with leapers only (and assuming you consider bishop a leaper). You could do this
Rook = Fide Bishop moves
Bishop = rider version of Fide Knight
Knight = Camel
King = A mix of fide knight and ferz
Queen = Fide bishop and rider version of fide knight
Pawn = Ferz moves thad advance as move only and knight moves that advance as capture moves.


If you dont consider Bishop a rider you can do
Rook = rider version of fide Knight
Bishop = rider version of camel
Knight = moves as a (3,2) and a (1,4) leaper 
Queen = Rider version of camel + rider version of fide knight
king = camel + fide knight
Pawn = Fide knight moves that advance but only as move, and moves of camel that advance but only as capture.

I have played the Camel in a 8x8 board and it is the most forky piece. Worth more than 2 pawns, its value reduces in the endgame only because it needs another piece to checkmate.