Enter Your Reply

Last night I did another trial run with the server. This time I found out
how to suppress the auto-logout feature (which logs out users after a
certain idle time), so that the Fairy-Max bot could stay on-line for the
entire night. It played one game of Gothic Chess against a Human, two
games of Capablanca Chess against a computer opponent, and a lightning and
standard game of normal Chess against another computer opponent. On my
internal network I was able to play some Carrera, Embassy and Bird Chess
games against it, as well as Knightmate.

So indeed, Embassy, Carrera, Bird, Capablanca are now all supported, as
different setups of the variant Capablanca.

As for the variants to offer in the future, I do think that this is an
area where a greater framework similar to IAGO Chess could actually be
useful. To get orthodox Chess players to play the variants, I think it
would be useful to educate them in small steps. So I actually would like
to offer a number of modest variants, introducing only a single unorthodox
piece. For instance:

8x8 Janus         ( (BN) replaces Q )
8x8 Chancellor    ( (RN) replaces Q )
8x8 Amazon        ( (QN) replaces Q )
8x8 Centaur       ( (KN) replaces Q )
Synode            ( 10x8 board with 4 Bishops per side )
Cannon Chess      ( Pao replaces Pawns on b2/7 and g2/7 of 8x8, no castling )
Janus Chess
Chancellor Chess  (with 2 (RN) on 10x8 )
Capablanca Chess  (with many sub-variants differing in opening array)
Xiangqi
Shatranj
8x8 Heian Shogi   (Silver replaces Bishop, Gold replaces Queen, no drops)
9x8 Heian Shogi   (same, but with 2 Gold Generals in symmetric setup)
Crazyhouse
Shogi
Superchess        (with pieces from the set (KN),(BN),(RN),(QN) randomly
                   replacing some of the pieces of a normal FIDE array)
Superchess II     (similar, but with a larger variety of unorthodox pieces)

Of course there could be training bots as well: 'wild' games where you have to checkmate a bare King with a (BN) or a Commoner.