Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Mar 3, 2018 10:07 PM UTC:

When programming is involved one can never be completely sure. But it is what the EGT generator says, and that same generator gives exactly the right statistics for the conventional pieces (where other EGT exist to compare against). The number of positions at each DTM then is exactly the same.

What I am sure of is that the argument you give is not relevant. What is relevant is whether the bare King can outrun the 'posse' that tries to drive it in the direction where it doesn't want to go, and run circles around it. If the mobility of the exclusion zone created by the attacking pieces is larger than the speed of a King, the latter is effectively trapped on one side of it. The point is that the board has edges. So it is enough if your posse can keep up with the King when it stays running in the same direction. Because eventually it will be blocked by an edge, and will have to reverse. Which takes some extra moves before you have to start keeping up with it, which can be used to make progress. E.g. King + Bishop + something vs King: King + Bishop can confine a King in a triangle at a corner, because the attacking King can plug the hole where the bare King could slip through the Bishop diagonal. But is just moves fast enough to keep doing that. But when the bare King has to reverse because it hits the edge, it now needs two moves before it threatens to escape, so you have one spare move to approach your third piece. Eventually it will then join the posse, and force the bare King to step back rather than just reversing, at an edge. This will work on a board of any size.

But when the speed of the posse is lower than that of the bare King, you can no longer confine the latter when the number of moves it needs to gain the width of the posse is smaller than what the posse needs to cross the entire board.

 

P.S. The entry form throws away long stretches of text again. Luckily I has moved this one to the clipboard before pressing 'Preview'....


Edit Form

Comment on the page Gross Chess

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.