Check out Alice Chess, our featured variant for June, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Feb 5, 2021 10:51 AM UTC:

For most fairy pieces Betza notation is very compact, and would consists only of 2 or 3 capitals. Like BN and BR for Archbishop and Chancellor, HFD for the 'Half Duck', FC for the Omega Wizard. It gets a bit complex only for asymmetric pieces, where you would have to detail all the directions it moves in. And for divergent pieces, where you have to specify captures and non-captures separately (fmWfcF for a Shatranj Pawn, which is divergent as well as asymmetric).

With the XBetza extension it can get really complicated to specify moves that consists of multiple 'legs', i.e. visit intermediate squares on the way to their final destination to do 'something' there. (Which could be as innocent as just changing direction, or it could be testing whether the intermediate square is empty (lame leapers) or occupied (hoppers), or even capture what is there (locusts).) In that case you would have to specify the entire path to the destination by a sequence of (relative) direction specifications. Which will get longer as the paths visit more squares, and as their are more alternative paths. The Falcon of Falcon Chess is a notorious example of that: it has 16 move targets, each reachable through 3 different path, each path consisting of 3 steps. (Fortunately it is fully symmetric, which makes the 16 targets equivalent, but that still leaves 3 paths of 3 steps to be described.) Such pieces are really exceptional, though.


Edit Form
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.