Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Your own Excellent still raised the overall rating, but on reflection(!) you deserve it anyway. I am still spotting games in which the feature would be a useful addition. While you are right that a biliards feature does little for the Rook, it does more for Rook variants such as Xiang Qi's Cannon. In nearly all cases it allows a Cannon to jump an enemy piece that is the only piece between the Cannon and the edge, bounce off the edge, and capture the piece on the way back! The exception is where the enemy piece is at the END of the rank or file in the 'HALB' option, in which case the Cannon can jump that piece to capture another enemy piece on or towards the OTHER end of the rank or file!

A Rook that can only move to the right would also gain from Billiards, as it could move left by bouncing.

Editor Quintanilla goodnaturedly rejected the idea of systematic, organized review of Chess Variant Page material I proposed January 2007 under pseudonym 'Charles Fort'. Starting June 2007 I have been doing it anyway, as half of my Comments, figuring that some relative newcomers, navigating the material and still being subjected to subpar Comments, lengthy and devoid of much content, by one poor prolificist ( who resents our honest evaluations after repeatedly requesting them), may appreciate it. The date here for 'Three Billiards...', by computer programming catch-up of files, '15.January.1996', inclusively came to cover several dozen CVPage articles from late 1995 too. Only few CVPage write-ups appear still to have '1995', somehow one or two '1994' also, when I am not sure CVPage was online as yet. Here Betza configures the Knight for Billiards, just referred to under Billiards Progressive, in one of the very first 40 or 60 CVPage write-ups. Betza suggests Cylindrical power equates with Billiards power, but the former would be stronger empowerment because of applying to all the pieces of a side.

Multi-path routing is important in order to reach squares that may be blocked along one or more pathways. Under related Billiards Progressive we pose the puzzle of distribution of triple paths. In standard Billiards(8x8), the following hold. Bishops and Queens have some (potential) three-path squares, reachable three different ways, so long as they are not on an edge square(the answer). Examples: (1) Bishop at b2 can reach g7 by way of b2-a3-b4-c5-d6-e7-f8-g7 bouncing twice, or else b2-c1-d2-e3-f4-g5-h6-g7 bouncing twice, or else b2-c3-d4-e5-f6-g7 not bouncing. Queen likewise. (2) Queen has more such 3-way squares than Bishop, because of Queen's Rook movement. However Queen still cannot do so from an edge square of square boards like 8x8 and 10x10. Queen has three here: Queen b2-c2-d2, and b2-a3-b4-c5-d6-e7-f8-g7-h6-g5-f4-e3-d2 bouncing three times, and b2-c1-d2 bouncing once. Bishop there has only the second and third of those. In 'Multipath Chess Pieces' year 2004 we put forth the proposition that multi-pathing is the norm. It is mere custom that dictates, for example, that standard Rook from c3 to c7 goes by way of c3-c4-c5-c6-c7 only. Our conclusion reads ''Beyond chronology, any Rule of movement writ large, having real-world counterparts allegorically, describes something multiform and multipath, whereof reduction to mere 'Leaper' or 'Rider' is actually the special case.''

The article's comments about the location of the edge are only correct if the chess pieces are point particles. If pieces are circles with diameter equal to the width of a square (as my set pretty much is), then the normal billiards rule corresponds to the bouncing edge being at the board's edge. This doesn't detract from the author's variants, but his comments about the inelegance of the normal billiards rules seem to be misguided in light of this (more obvious) way of looking at things.