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<blockquote><i>
It has two full atoms, half of another, and a quarter of another; this puts
it already in the Rookish range, though maybe a bit weak. The partial atoms
are the forward parts, which must boost it to full Rookitude.
</i></blockquote>
Well, as I count it, it has two full atoms, and the quarter of <em>two</em>
others. Now, I am certainly willing to accept that 0.5 of the value of the
W is due to its forward move, but what I am less convinced of, I guess, is
whether the W forward move by itself <strong>adds</strong> that much to of
the value of the W to another piece that already has forward moves. It's
at least an interesting question, I think.
<p>
If the Elephant is 0.75 N, and the Great Elephant is 1.5 N, then the White
Elephants are about 0.5 N too strong (the exact amount depending on your
opinion of the relative values of the N and B). If that's the case, maybe
the Queen should be replaced by the War Elephant, Rook + Alfil Rider (RAA)
-- this should be about the proper balance, since a Rook + Alfil would
be a full 0.5 N weaker than a Queen, but since the Great Elephants are a
tiny bit weaker than Rooks, maybe, and there's the Bishop differential,
the extra strength of the AA over the A ought to just balance things.
<p>
<hr>
Captain Spalding Chess!? -- Marxist!
In the work of creating a chessvariant tournament called ChessWar I came up with the idea of having a chatroom dedicated for chessvariants and more spesific Zillion players (since the tournament will use Zillions to play). What I wonder now is if there are any interest in a chatroom from chessvariant players and creators. It would be a great place to meet other Zillion players since there aren't really any such place at the moment. It would also be a good place to go if you need players to test a game you have created. The room will open during July but I'm very interested to hear thoughts about the idea. Tomas Forsman
i'm just wondering why in most multi-level chesses the boards alternate their patterns (instead of a constant white in the bottom right), and this is the only place i could think to ask. Is it necessary for some reason? Would colorbound pieces be affected adversely if the boards weren't so arranged ? Anyone...anyone...
In Absolutely Colorboundmost Chess, there must be as little interaction as possible between pieces on squares of different colors. As a consequence, there can be no Castling. A further consequence is that you should really play it on two boards, lest the visual clutter become a sort of interaction between the two colors. The big surpsise is that it must be a doublemove game, one move on each color. If you have only one move, and must decide between colors, that is a form of interaction! (Yes, that interaction would make a better game; but the absolute extreme colorboundmost chess has to be doublemove.) Your Q is on the same color as the enemy K. This means that you start with enough material superiority to mate the opponent -- but of course the reverse is also true! I see this as a race game (pushing the boundaries of race games!), and therefore immediately thought of Parton's 'Fair race rule' from Racing Kings: if W gives mate, Black can draw by giving mate in reply. (The question of who wins first is an interaction between the colors, but it is unavoidable in a chess variant.) However, since it's a doublemove game, an even better alternative is to make it 'balanced'. W only gets to make one move first turn. To avoid interaction, the rules must specify on which color W must move on the first turn! Of course all the pieces and Pawns and Kings must be colorbound. (Also, a game with weak interaction played as a singlemove game on a single board would be more interesting; but the first step is to define the most extremely absolute colorboundmost game possible!) Am I correct in thinking that all these consequences follow inevitably from the premise? Have I missed any? Is it interesting that this much of the game can be specified without even thinking about how individual pieces move?
Oops. I forgot while I was writing. There's a specific reason not to use Parton's fair race rule with an absolute doublemove game of Absolute Colorboundmost Chess. The reason is that symmetrical play gives Black a guaranteed draw!
An alternate approach to balancing Colorboundmost Chess would to follow the path used in other double-move variants -- only have white make a single move on their first move. I would suggest having white make their first move on white, so that each player would make the first move on their King's color. Once you have white making only a single starting move, it should no longer be possible for black to mirror white, so race rules could be applied.
I have been adding board measurements for each game to our indexing database. Do people see a need for an index which cross-references games and pieces? This would enable listing all games which use a particular piece, or listing all pieces used in a particular game.
<p>If so, would the pieces be identified based on their movement or on the name of the piece? We could cross reference piececlopedia items with game items, or simply associate a list of piece names with each game. Keep in mind that building a cross reference would be a significant amount of work.
Too much work, I think. I don't think many visitors to this site would want to look up, say, all variants that use a Murray Lion. Or all variants that use a Gryphon. Or whatever. Don't worry about those cross-references. I'm sure you have enough work to do as it is. :-)
google can do a fair job:
<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=+%22murray+lion%22+site%3Awww.chessvariants.com&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&meta=">http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=+%22murray+lion%22+site%3Awww.chessvariants.com&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&meta=</a>
<p>for example of the murray lion query.
<p>a script that query google probably would be sufficient
I'm with Joseph on this: too much work for the payoff. Think about keeping it up-to-date; whoever's job that was might have no life in a heavy contribution week. Also, listing all the pieces in a game is redundant to the actual game description. If it were done, it would be most useful to be identified by move, rather than name of piece. This would be a sysiphean labor. You would have to create indices based perhaps on funny notation. The syntax of funny notation is ambiguous, in that although it can describe movement precisely, there is more than one way to describe the same movement in many cases.
Quite often we get requests for information about a game that (for instance) is played on a large board and there was a piece called a 'Royal'. Now searching all chessvariant.com pages for the word 'Royal' turns up too many hits. So cross referencing can be useful when looking for games where piece names are commonly used words in other contexts.
<p>Not that I want to do all this work of course, but if there is enough demand for it, perhaps it would be worth it.
currently in the piececlopedia, many of the pieces list all the games that use that piece, even if the piece goes by a different name in a particular game. for example, the piececlopedia page for chancellor - moves as R+N - lists the chancellor from capablanca's chess, the marshall from grandchess, the champion from carrera's chess, etc. i think this is a good idea to have as much as possible, but it also sounds to me like having an automated system for this is not worth the effort. i think we'll have to settle for pointing out any additions to the list to the piececlopedia editor whenever we see something missing.
with so many submissions it might not be feasible to add gamelist to piecelopedia, rather I think it would be perhaps be more helpful for submitters to reference piecelopedia instead, this way everyone add a few links yet the pages becomes more understandable.
i have a question about opposing kings occupying adjacent spaces. I thought this was legal because kings were nuetral. I was told this was illegal, they cannot be next to each other because they would be putting each other in 'check'. Can anyone set me straight on this? Thanks
Martin,<p>
The answer to your frequently-asked question is 'Yes, it is (always) illegal to have your king adjacent to the opponent's king.'
<p>
For more details see <a href='http://chessvariants.com/d.chess/faq.html'>the Rules of Chess FAQ file</a> and the <a href='http://chessvariants.com/d.chess/chess.html'>the Illustrated Rules of Chess</a> page.
I agree with jianying, I think. Cross-referencing all the variants sounds like a LOT of work but not much gain. OTOH, it might be worthwhile to fully cross-reference a subset like the _recognized_ variants, as that's where a lot of the better pieces either originated or were popularized. (Sometimes that influenced how the game drew enough interest to become 'recognized'.)
When I go to sleep at night, I often try to think about something
interesting or pleasant while I drift off. Last night I found myself
thinking about an odd Chess piece.
<p>
The piece moves without capturing like a Dabbabah-Rider (repeated leaps
of two squares in the same orthogonal direction), but captures like a
Rook. So, mDDcWW or mDDcR in Ralph's funny notation.
<p>
And I found myself wondering: how powerful is this piece, and what sort
of game or problem would it be good for? I has a number of curious
characteristics: except for capturing, it is doubly colorbound, being
restricted to 1/4 of the board; and while it can switch by capturing,
at any time it can only attack 1/2 of the board.
<p>
It seems to me that this piece is vaguely cannon-like, being more powerful
in the opening and midgame than the endgame. It also seems to me that it
might be a very charming part of a piece mix. Any thoughts?
It seems like a most interesting piece indeed. Such a piece could be the basis for a variant along the lines of Ralph Betza's Colorboundmost Chess. I will post details as a comment to Colorboundmostr Chess.)
Hmm... very interesting. Did you consider the Bishop/Queen equivalents? Or even (gasp) the Nightrider equivalent (moves as a 2/4 rider or captures as a 1/2 rider)? The latter seems like an especially odd piece, preferably for use on really big boards. And how would a king like this work? Move as an Alf./Dab. and capture like a king, or capture like an Alf/Dab/King? And would a CV in which every piece is like this work well?
I considered the Bishop equivalent, but decided it would likely be
too weak.
<p>
Mike Nelson has proposed a game based on these sorts of pieces -- you
can see it in the comments for Colorboundmost Chess. My suspicion is
that there would not be enough power in the board in the endgame, making
the game drawish.
Perhaps this would make it less drawish: The King moves as a Ferz and captures as a King (mFcK) and cannot castle. The former change means less force is needed in the endgame, the latter enhances the chance of a middle game victory.
I think the weakened King might to the trick, though I would express the funny notation as FcW. The resulting game ought certainly to be different!
This odd piece oddly is almost a rook worth in the endgame. It still has the can-mate property, except for the rare case that the bared king is in the secure corner (If the odd piece is on a1, the secure corner is a8). In the most cases it can block the secure corner and the bared king is driven by zugzwang towards a mate. The secure spots left by the odd piece are all single fields without secure neighbours -- thus a bare king must leave them. --J'org Knappen
Jörg, I'm not sure about the can-mate part. It seems to me that in a lot
of situations the piece would result in stalemate, not mate.
<p><hr><p>
Mike, I threw together a crude ZRF of your game last night -- it seems to
play OK. But I was wondering if stalemate ought to be a loss instead of
a draw, as the nature of the game makes it more likely, as does,
unfortunately, changing the King from WF to FcW.
<p>
By the way, do you have a name for it?
No, the odd piece does not have the 'can-mate' property. If the odd piece (mDDcR) is on the seventh rank holding the bare enemy K on the eighth while the friendly K moves in, the odd piece can't move to the eighth rank to mate! If the odd piece is on the sixth rank, it can't hold the enemy K on the eighth--the whole seventh rank is safe. Two of the odd pieces, one on a even-numbered rank (or file) and one on an odd-numbered rank (or file) should mate easily.
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