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Superchess and Monarch. Booklet in English and Dutch and book in Dutch about large chess variants with fantasy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Fred Kok wrote on Sun, Nov 16, 2003 04:55 PM EST:Coen Leentvaar wrote on Mon, Nov 1, 2004 04:47 AM EST:The next edition of the open Dutch championship superchess will be held at the famous Corus tournament in wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands. The date is 2005, saturday january 29th. Registration at 9 am and start at 10 am. A seven round Swiss system will be used. The pieces are: Amazon (Q+N), Empress (R+N) , Princess (B+N) and Veteran (K+N).
Are there any gamescores of some particularly interesting games from the tournaments available?
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Sep 24, 2008 03:58 PM EDT:Excellent ★★★★★Note that I implemented the form of Superchess as it is played in the Dutch Open in Fairy-Max, and added support for it in WinBoard. People interested in playing Superchess against the computer, can download the entire package of WinBoard + Fairy-Max set up to play Superchess (although Capablanca, Cylinder, Berolina, Shatranj, Courier, the Unspeakable variant, Falcon Chess, and good old Mad Queen are also still on the menu) from: http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/WinBoard_F.zip The folder contains shortcuts for playing two kinds of Superchess, actually: The kind that is played in the Dutch open has BN, RN, QN and KN compounds randomly replacing ordinary pieces in a symmetric array (two on Q-side, two on K-side) on an 8x8 board. The other sub-variant features Emperors in stead of Kings as Royal pieces (an Emperor moves as King, but also has a two-step forward or backward (non-jumping) move), and has Betza's FWAD and WD, the Squirrel (NAD) and the BN compound as replacements in the initial array (also on 8x8). This only samples a small part of the possibilities of Superchess, which features over 50 different fairy pieces, but it allows you to get a flavor of the game, at least.
Below Average. When these were posted 7 years ago, I saw all the 50 pieces and now it is not easy to see more than the eight ''few pieces.'' It is an adequate but uncreative site, and none of the 50 pieces were original, not at all, I remember that. Tangible pieces that may be available are not attempted to value. The piece-types as defined were all reworked standard variant fare, nor worth recycling over and over. Now it is nice every nation have a CV of its own. Easter Island of Chile has Hanga Roa proudly. Vietnam has Vu Q Vo's Quang Trung. Holland has dozens of better output in CVs than unimaginative but workable Superches and Monarch as a game to play. It takes some common sense not to overrate amalgams like SC & M, or Michael Howe's Optima and Novo.
There are two Superchess being discussed, and more than two exist. This is the poor one, because of recycling stock pieces. Uncreative designers gravitate in tropism to multi-piece forms with many substitutions available, as here. Remarked before, the rating does not try to estimate the value of handiwork accompanying Superchess and Monarch. Programmer Mueller was taking up its cause partly because of its place of origin, we speculate. It is interesting that there are many better CVers of Holland, including the author here Bodlaender and his own designs.
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