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Comments by AndreasKauffman
Marseillais Chess. Move twice per turn. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]When I was in school, we played Marseillais Chess with the following variation: if you are given a check, you should move the King from the check and you move only once this turn. This gives attacking side a big advantage: you can move one of your pieces, then give a check - the opponent must move the King and can't do the second move. The games were very tactical, once you gain an initiative, you usually try to keep it at any cost, sacrificing pieces to get the enemy King into open space, where you can keep checking it.
Kriegspiel Zillions (v 2.0) file 
. Zillions file to play Kriegspiel against the computer. The human player's pieces are not hidden.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]ZRF file is based largely on Chess.zrf, found in Zillions distribution. Actually it is a standard chess, but black pieces are made invisible. I have only Zillions version 2.0, but I think it should be easy to make it work for older versions of Zillions. First thing to try is to replace (version '2.0') in ZRF to something like (version '1.0') or whatever you find in Chess.zrf in your version. You can get error messages about not found images. Get them from demo versions of Zillions 2.0 and copy them either to installation directory of Zillions or to directory where you extracted Kriegspiel.zip file.
Chess on Steroids. Pieces increase their powers with those of the pieces they capture. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]May be the name for a new variant is not so good. A completely different chess variant which also called 'Stealth Chess' already exists: http://www.chessvariants.com/crossover.dir/stealthchess.html
Tandem Chess. 4 player variant where pieces taken from your opponent are given to your partner. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]3 first links at the top-right of this page (after 'See also:') are broken. The fourth one is very good, but still need to be updated to point directly to http://members.lycos.nl/bughouse/.
L. The list of official nominations for the variant-by-committee.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Shouldn't we also select a King? A new King would be a royal piece, but could move differently then a FIDE chess King.
Information on METAGAME Game-Playing Workbench. Information on tool for game programs.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Link to download METAGAME you can find on my page: http://www.geocities.com/andreas_kaufmann2000/ai.htm. I didn't have time yet to try it myself. If somebody already tested METAGAME please let me know! Does it play better then Zillions?
Queens Left Chess. Black king and queen reverse position in setup. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This variant is described by Pritchard in 'Popular Chess Variants' (see Ch.3 'Displacement Chess'). Actually, he describes the variant where White's king and queen are interchanged, but this is essentially the same.
Crazyhouse. A two-player version of Bughouse. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Crazyhouse is one of my favorite chess variants. Zillions plays it not especially strong, so you need to download Sunsetter or Sjeng, which play really good. I even created a WinBoard adapter for Zillions (see http://www.geocities.com/andreas_kaufmann2000/winboard_adapter.htm) to have a convinient way to play against these engines.
Anti-King Chess. Each player has both a King and an Anti-King to protect; Anti-Kings are in check when not attacked. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Great game! Any plans to make PBM-preset for it?
Thank you, Tony! Your PBM preset is very nice! I like especially Anti-King Chess II, if anybody wants to play it, please invite me to the game!
Free Placement. Game starts with players alternatingly placing pieces on board. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Chess variant you refering is called <a href=http://www.chessvariants.com/diffsetup.dir/unachess.html>'UnaChess'</a>. There is also a number of similar chess variants, e.g. <a href=http://www.chessvariants.com/diffsetup.dir/descent.html>'Descent Chess'</a>, which is designed by me based on UnaChess.
I recently added two open invitation (for Anti-King Chess and Pocket Mutation Chess). They appeared in Game Log, but not here. What did I wrong?
Suggestion: it would be nice if the game name in third column be a link directly to the game rules.
Turkish Great Chess VI. Large variant adding an Archbishop and a General (Amazon). (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fergus, Yes, you described this correct. I can add that I made my first move (which was: 'P d2-d4 // Good luck') using your advice. I appended '&userid=andreas' to the game log URL (I don't have access to my emails at home) and made a move. May be this caused the problem? Another thing I suspect is that Laila entered not 'p e7-e6', but '1....p e7-e6'. I made a similar mistake when I played here for the first time.
Marseillais Chess. Move twice per turn. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Can anybody create a game courier preset for Marseillais Chess (Balanced variant)? Thanks!
Anti-King Chess. Each player has both a King and an Anti-King to protect; Anti-Kings are in check when not attacked. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The game Anti-King II is very interesting, still it seems to be that Anti-King prevents development of pieces too much. Wouldn't it improve the game by having a 'transparent' Anti-King? All pieces and pawns would be allowed to move throw the position occupied by 'transparent' Anti-King, as if it would be empty.
Contest: the 9 Queens Problem. Put 9 queens and 1 or 2 pawns such that queens do not see each other. Send your solution before Feb 29, and win a book![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Very interesting variation of the famous problem!
Roberto, the solution for ten queens and two pawns is very elegant! I failed to find it, also I easily found the soultion for nine queens and a pawn. How about general problem? Namely, given board of size NxN, M queens (M>N) find the minumum number of pawns, so that it is possible to setup queens and pawns in such a way that queens don't attack each other. Looks like a quite difficult mathematical problem.
Crazyhouse. A two-player version of Bughouse. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You can also play Crazyhouse on http://www.schemingmind.com/
A Chess Problem with a Chancellor 2. Mate in two moves.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Amazons. Queens fire arrows to make squares unpassable. Last player that moves wins. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This is really a very interesting game! It can be played now also on <a href=http://www.brainking.com>BrainKing server.
Recognized Chess Variants. Index page listing the variants we feel are most significant. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I propose to add <a href=http://www.chessvariants.org/incinf.dir/darkness.html>'Dark Chess'</a> to the list of recongnized chess variants. This chess variant can be played on 3 game servers (BrainKing, SchemingMind and ItsYourTurn) and is a quite popular. I personally consider it the best chess variant with incomplete information, with elegant rules and more interesting to play then Kriegspiel.
Grotesque Chess. A variant of Capablanca's Chess with no unprotected Pawns. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have another idea how to improve Capablanca Chess. Just combine Fisher Random Chess and Capablanca Chess. So, each initial position will be randomly chosen with constraints similar to Fisher Random Chess (rooks to different sides of the King, Bishops on different colors etc.) What do you think about it?
ChessV
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Good job! I used ChessV to produce nice pictures for Wikipedia article on Capablanca Chess, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_Chess. Wish List: * Would be nice if settings made in 'Options / Board and Pieces...' would be kept between program starts. * I use 800x600 screen resolution and games with 10x10 board, e.g. Grand Chess doesn't fit on my screen. Would be nice if the board is scaled automatically when window size changes, like in Arena. * Pieces are flashing when you make a move. This can be fixed e.g. by using double-buffering technique. * Can we have Three Checks Chess in ChessV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Checks_Chess)? Zillions plays it quite pure. Thank you for development of this nice program!
Yes, now I noticed that color settings are stored per specific game type. I think, it would be nice to have possibility to apply the color changes to all game types (may be with an option to apply only to one game type as now). By the way are there any reason to restrict the number of available colors to 48? With more available colors it is easier to find a nicer color scheme. I also found a bug in Bird's Chess. ChessV castled out-of-check in position after: d2d4 f7f6 i1h3 g7g5 g2g3 g5g4 h3i1 h8g7 f2f3 i8h6 f3g4 h6g4 h1f3 e8g6 i1h3 d7d6 e2e4 c8d7 e1e2 e7e5 d4d5 f6f5 b1c3 h7h6 h3f2 g8j5 f3g2 j5i6 f2g4 i6g4 g2f3 g4f6 c1d2 g6f7 d1f2 j8g8 f1c1 f5e4 f3e4 j7j5 h2h3 b8a6 g1j4 a6c5 e4g2 i7i5 j4i3 f6i3 f2f7 d8f7 j2i3 g7f6 j1j5 g8g3 d1f1 c7c6 j5j8 ChessV played 0-0-0 here, despite King being in check by rook on j8.
On Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhi_Chal you read: Buddhi Chal is a Himalayan variant of chess. The name means mind game in Nepali, and is from the same root word as Buddha (the Pali word budh, meaning, 'to know'). Does anybody heard about this chess variant?
Would be nice to have possibilty to move by clicking with mouse on starting postion in diagramm and then on the destination position. This is how most of other game sites work.
Interesting and rich content, however there are something which can be improved: * images are missing in many articles (for example in http://www.chess-dictionary-chesmayne.net/Chaturanga.htm) * background sometimes make the text difficult to read (for example background in red color) * some articles use too much links, for example: http://www.chess-dictionary-chesmayne.net/Shatranj.htm.
Chinese Chess. Play Xiang Qi, the Chinese form of Chess.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Would be nice to have Alfaerie Graphics for this preset. This is my favorite graphics and I always select it when playing other chess variants here.
Would be nice to have Alfaerie Graphics for this preset. This is my favorite graphics and I always select it when playing other chess variants here.
Please look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgar '...In 2004 Judit took some time off from chess to give birth. She was consequently considered inactive and not listed on the January 2005 FIDE rating list, meaning that her sister Zsuzsa temporarily became the world number one woman player. Judit is expected to return to chess at the Corus chess tournament in January 2005.'
Chaturanga. The first known variant of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]May be you find something interesting on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chess or http://history.chess.free.fr/variety.htm
Tamerlan Chess . Westernized version using Alfaerie graphics.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I get an error message when trying to load Zillions file for Timur Chess (with latest version of Zillions on WinXP): 'bitmap can be loaded: images\Alfaerie\timurboard.bmp'. I checked that the image is there. Is the bitmap corrupted?
Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Will we play in tournament a balanced version of Marseillais Chess or regular one? I would prefer balanced version.
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Which piece is stronger, General or Elephant? Is it worth to exchange General or Elephant for two pawns? Are there any writings from 1000 years ago about piece values in Shatranj :-) ?
Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thomas, I like Shogi preset with white marble board as well.
Can we expect that Kasparov comes up with a new chess variant, like Fisher did?
I just recalled that Kasparov actually already invented a kind of new chess variant: 'Advanced Chess' (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess).
Is it possible to switch ChessVariants pages to some kind of <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki>Wiki</a> system, like used by Wikipedia? Then there would be no shortage in authors, editing articles in Wiki system is very easy, every reader is a potential author!
Another variation would be that the player, who reaches initial position first, wins. The game can start e.g. with white King on a1 and black one on h8 (or other postions to deversify the game). Then black starts with undoing the last move. As 'uncapturing' of pieces is disadvantageous and would never made otherwise, then it should be obligatory to 'uncapture', if possible. So the game could start (black moves are shown before white also in notation): -1. kg8 (*Qh8) // black uncaptures white queen, undoing the last move kg8xh8. -1. ... Qf6 (*nh8) // white undoes Qf6xh8 -2. nf7 (*Rh8) Rh1 (*bh8) -3. bg7 (*Rh8) Rh2 (*rh8) . . . etc. I need to think something more about uncapturing of pawns, but may be no restriction should be made here, so that if e.g. white leaved with doubled pawn and all black pieces already on the board, then white can't win anymore. If black in the same situation, then it is a draw. There should be probably a rule for uncapture of bishops to forbid that two bishops e.g. on light squares are produced.
No restriction on pawn uncaptures (except that it can't be done on first or last rank) could probably lead to a too drawish game. A player just needs to delay pawn uncaptures until all other pieces are uncaptured and than try to uncapture all opponent's pawns on the same file. So, I would suggest the following rules: * Pawn uncapture is not allowed on the file where there is already pawn of the same color. For example, black can't uncapture white pawn on g-file if the file already contains another white pawn. * Uncapture is also not allowed if it produces a pawn, which is behind player's pawn. For example, black can't uncapture white pawn on g7 if there is already black pawn on g2. * A player can't uncapture more pieces then present in usual chess setup (light and dark-colored bishops are considered as different pieces). However if a player unpromotes one of his pieces, that piece becomes available for uncapture again. The game finished when: * A player reaches starting postion with his pieces (this player wins). * A player can't make a legal unmove (this player loses). There is already a ZRF file for this game without any restriction on uncaptures: 'Unplay Chess' by Karl Scherer (can be downloaded from Zillions of Games pages: http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/26414?do=show;id=966 I slightly modified it to place white king on a1 and black on h8 in initial position. Here is my first game against Zillions (I played black): -1. kg8 (*Rh8) // black uncaptures white rook: kg8xh8 -1. . . . Pg7 (*rh8) ?? // white unpromotes the rook and uncaptures the black rook, undoing the move P g7xh8 R. This move loses the game. -2. rh7 (*Qh8)! // undoing rh7xh8. Black wins as white doesn't have any unmoves which wouldn't leave black king in check by queen on h8.
Another short game against Zillions: -1. kg7 (*Qh8) Qh4 (*rh8) ?? -2. rh7 (*Bh8)! White loses, as it can't remove check by bishop h8 to king on g7. I first thought that -1. kg7 (*Qh8) quarantees win for black, but then found the only defense: -1...Qh4(*bh8)!.
One more game. I played it against myself, trying to find a forced win for black. As surprise, white won! 1. kg7 (*Bh8) Ph7 // white unpromotes bishop, there were no uncaptures possible, so a regular unmove is allowed 2. kh8 (*Pg7)?? Pf6 (*pg7)! White wins as black doesn't have any legal unmove now.
See Wikipedia's article on <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_control>Time control</a>:
<br><br>
<i>In tournament chess the most common time controls for professionals are at 40/2, SD/1 time controls, which means that the first 40 moves must be made in two hours and then all remaining moves be made in an hour. Any extra time from the original two hours carries over to the sudden death time.</i>
After this match with Adams is especially amazing failure of Hydra in <a href=http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2461>Freestyle Chess Tournament</a>, where human players were allowed to consult computers. Hydra didn't even made it into quarter-finals and the winners were two amateur players, not even masters, who used three average desktop computers!
Chaturanga for four players.. Oldest multiplayer chess variant. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Are there a ZRF on this game? Does anybody already tried out how strong plays software sold on http://www.chaturanga.com ? From screenshot is looks quite professionally made.
Greg, this was not me who added a link to BrainKing.com. You can check this by yourself, see history of the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ChessV&action=history In case of 'edit war' you should describe the situation on the discussion page of the article and ask other editors for mediation. By the way I just removed the link to BrainKing.com.
Marseillais Chess. Move twice per turn. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thanks for creating a preset for this interesting game! One small remark: the preset can't yet detect a checkmate, see
<a href=http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game=Balanced+Marseillais+Chess&log=rlavieri2003-andreas-2005-207-126>
this game</a>.
Does your website works with Firefox browser? I wanted to try out your game (I was very interested because I am a Dark Chess fan), but was not able to start a game.
I tried play with myself using Internet Explorer 6.0, but failed to start the game. After I clicked on the oponnent I only saw 'Waiting www.vervechess.com' in both browser windows, but the game didn't start. How long is usually delay before the game starts?
Ok, now I was able to start the game against myself (using Internet Explorer). My mistake was that I didn't select an opponent in both browser windows. Here is my first impression of this chess variant, certainly this could be different if I played with a real opponent. The attempt to create a real-time chess variant is very original, may be Verve is a first such chess variant. I first thought that Verve is a variation of Dark Chess (if not count real-time way of play), but then noticed that it has complete different visiblity rules. It seems that in difference to Dark Chess in Verve too much information is visible, why didn't you want to use elegant and simple visibility rules of Dark Chess? Also not clear why you need to delay the game play when both players selected thier moves. I would suggest the following move synchronizations: * game starts * player A makes a move => the move immediately made on the board, because player B is not moved yet, player B doesn't know that A already moved => player A can't make a second move before player B moved or 10 (or whatever) sec are passed. * 10 sec are passed, but player B didn't make a move => player A can move now * player A moves, => move immediately performed * player B moves, => move immediately perfromed etc.
Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Does anybody have a statistics about current standings and how much games are still to be played?
Contest: the 9 Queens Problem. Put 9 queens and 1 or 2 pawns such that queens do not see each other. Send your solution before Feb 29, and win a book![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]By the way, does anybody tried to solve classical domination and independence problems for chancellor (rook + knight compound) and archbishop (bishop + knight). I.e.: 1) Is it possible to setup 8 archbishops on 8x8 board so, that they don't attack each others? 2) How many archbishops are needed to attack each square on the board? 3) as 1) but for for chancellor (trivial) 4) as 2) but for chancellor (difficult).
Game Courier Tournament #2. Sign up for our 2nd multi-variant tournament to be played all on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fergus, can you please give an example of how to use 'swap' command?
BrainKing.com. Play by email site that lets you play several chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I played on several similar servers: ItsYourTurn, SchemingMind, CowPlay as well as here on Game Courier. Each server has something unique, but still BrainKing.com is my favorite. This is why I like BrainKing most: * very nice and convinient user interface * there are a lot of chess variants, including my favorite 'Loop chess' (Crazyhouse clone) and 'Dark chess' * ratings are calculated for each chess variants, so you can find opponent of the equal strength (actually I prefer playing against stronger opponents); this also adds more sporting interest in playing the games * there are many tournaments being held (with many players participating)
Switching Chess. In addition to normal moves, switch with an adjacent friendly piece. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Well, and my play in this game with Gary was based on that such switching is possible. Actually, before playing 22. Re1, I specially checked this page to see if it is forbidden. The rule is important enough to be explicitely mentioned. For example, let's consider position in chess: White: Ke1, Qe2, Black: Ke8, Qe7. If white now plays Qe2-e6, queen usually first taken off from e2 and white king is temporarily in check. Still this move is legal in chess, because this is the end of the move when the king shouldn't be in check. So, I suggest two resolutions: 1) I play another move instead of 22. Re1 and we start using a new rules (pinned piece can't switch). 2) Gary takes a move back, which was based on assumptions that a pinned piece can't switch and we continue without this rule.
Game Courier Ratings. Calculates ratings for players from Game Courier logs. Experimental.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Would it be difficult to implement ELO rating system here?
Switching Chess. In addition to normal moves, switch with an adjacent friendly piece. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ok, let's go with the option #1, please make your 21 move again and we continue with the new rule.
The following was posted to Wikipedia article 'Chess variants' by anonymous editor: '...Super Knight: Starting position for white is the same as in chess. Black gets 8 pawns, his King, and a knight ...the SuperKnight. The SuperKnight checks like a regular knight, but it can move to ANY unoccupied square or capture any of the opponent's pieces. The game should be won by white every time but only if he keeps his pieces well defended. The white rooks are not defendable so blacks first two moves are usually to capture white's rooks.' Does anybody heard about this variant?
“Scandinavian” is probably Bughouse. This chess variant one of the most popular between chess players. In Russia Bughouse is called 'Swedish chess', may be in Bulgaria it is 'Scandinavian'. I also think that “Reverse chess” is losing chess, what can it be else?
Can you please post a link to Sudoku puzzle with chess pieces, you mentioned in your message? Thanks!
Interesting attempt to create a synchronous version of chess, in which both players make the moves simultaneously: Xymyx chess. They created a very nice real-time server to play this game. I tried it out today - the game is a quite fun to play live!
How about contest to create a chess variant with incomplete information, like 'Dark Chess' or 'Kriegspiel'?
Another suggestion: contest to create a chess variant, which can be conviniently played on usual chess board with usual chess pieces (may be with more then one chess set, also it is allowed to use less pieces). Piece moves should be also the same as in chess. Example of such variants: * different capture rule (e.g. Crazyhouse) * different goal (e.g. Extinction chess) * incomplete information (e.g. Kriegspiel, can be played with 3 boards + arbiter) * different move order (e.g. Marsellias chess) * different starting position (e.g. Fisher random chess or Una chess) * random elements (e.g. Dice chess) * multiplayer variants (e.g Bughouse) I think this is broad enough to appeal to many people.
Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Chess on a board made out of hexagons. (Cells: 91) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]ZRF with a nice graphics can be downloaded from my homepage. ZRF is by J. Mark Thompson and Ivan A Derzhanski, graphics created by me.
By the way, Alfred Pfeiffer found a nice way how to implement Glinski's standard notation in ZRF. One can simply use 'translate' command to give the cells desired coordinates: (translate ('g2' 'g1') ('g3' 'g2') ... ). I updated ZRF on my homepage (see my previous comment) with these changes.
Hi Mats! From large chess variants I prefer Capablanca chess variation with good initial setup. For example, Gothic chess or Embassy chess.
The reason is that for ordinary chess player it is quite easy to remember moves of chancellor and archbishop and these new pieces add interesting tactical and strategic elements to the game.
From my game against Zillions-of-Games:
Mastodon chess, white plays and checkmates in two moves.
Mastodon chess, white plays and checkmates in two moves.
An interesting chess variant suggested by an anonymous on Wikipedia chess article talk page:
...Nobody has ever cottoned on to my variant 'Schizo-Chess' where you play as normal until you capture- if you capture you switch to the opposing side and play a further move, if that is a capture you switch back, until there are no more captures. Aim is to win on your move, usually with a combination where you play the winning move as checkmate. 'Schizo' because each player has to play himself simultaneously, also- it does your head in..
...Nobody has ever cottoned on to my variant 'Schizo-Chess' where you play as normal until you capture- if you capture you switch to the opposing side and play a further move, if that is a capture you switch back, until there are no more captures. Aim is to win on your move, usually with a combination where you play the winning move as checkmate. 'Schizo' because each player has to play himself simultaneously, also- it does your head in..
HP-minichess. Small chess variant that could be played against a pocket calculator. (5x5, Cells: 25) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This chess variant is usually called 'Gardner minichess', since it was Martin Gardner, who first invented it in 1969.
'Game History' menu item for Minichess in Zillions-of-Games says: 'The recent play has suggested that the game is a draw with the best play.' Does anybody has more information on this? What is the best play in Gardner minichess?
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]There are cetainly much more Shatranj openings. You can find a lot of them in Murray's book 'A history of chess'.
Andernach Chess. Pieces change side when taking.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]According to http://www.janko.at/Retros/Glossary/Andernach.htm the pawn promotes first and then changes the color.
Pocket Mutation Chess. Take one of your pieces off the board, maybe change it, keep it in reserve, and drop it on the board later. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I agree with Jeremy that nightrider is more valuable than rook in this game. May be its value is somewhere between rook and cardinal: * rook - 5 pawns * nightrider - 6 pawns * cardinal - 7 pawns. So, moving all nightrider-combined pieces one class up will probably improve this game. In any case, this will avoid that most of the game start with rook->nightrider pocketing as of now. Certainly, some play-testing is needed to see if really there are situations where you will prefer nightrider over cardinal. Other possible alternatives: 1) Add a new piece class between classes 3 and 4 and move nightrider and SuperRook there. 2) Remove nightrider-combined pieces completely to simplify the game and make it more strategic.
Just try a game with Jeremy (chose white and DON'T make rook->'nightrider in pocket' move early in the game) and you will see for yourself... Still, I think the game is balanced since white can prevent early forks by black nightrider and have time to pocket nightrider from rook as well. The only problem with this game is a lack of variety in the opening, since the majority of the game starts with pocketing nightrider.
Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The problem with this game is that it is too complex. It is already difficult to remember how pieces move in all these different armies, not speaking about more advanced strategy or tactics... For ordinary chess players pieces, which combine moves of existing pieces, like R+N or B+N, have more chances to attract the attention.
Seirawan Chess. invented by GM Yasser Seirawan, a conservative drop chess (zrf available).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Very original and interesting idea about how to introduce 'new' pieces R+N and B+N to chess. Advantages over 8x10 and 10x10 variants are obvious: starting position stays the same (with usual opening patterns). The board dimension stays the same, so balance in piece values is retained. I think the names for these pieces chosen by Seirawan are fine: since ordinary chess player donesn't know them anyway, no problem to come with names you like more.
Recycle Chess. Players can capture and drop their own pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I think the most natural rule is that you can't capture your own king. This is a rule used on BrainKing.com (see http://brainking.com/en/GameRules?tp=98). The game is really fun to play!
Good idea! I would be interested in 'double move variants' tournament. One more idea: * 'Drop variants', which would include Crazyhouse, Hostage Chess and Recycle Chess.
Tandem Chess. 4 player variant where pieces taken from your opponent are given to your partner. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Any volunteers to create Game Courier preset for 2-player bughouse, like described in 'Bughouse per e-mail' section? Looks like a fun game!
To get an idea about what chess variants people like to play, one can look into statistics of running games at BrainKing.com (http://brainking.com/en/Statistics?p=2): 3. Chess 3128 11. Dice Chess 1325 12. Dice Chess 10x10 1316 26. Loop Chess 385 27. Japanese Chess 369 44. Massacre Chess 207 45. Chinese Chess 207 46. Dark Chess 202 52. Anti Chess 163 57. Atomic Chess 151 59. Embassy Chess 149 61. Ice Age Chess 145 64. Horde Chess 139 66. Ambiguous Chess 132 67. Grand Chess 132 70. Fischer Random Chess 125 74. Fortress Chess 112 76. Amazon Chess 109 78. Los Alamos Chess 109 87. Extinction Chess 95 89. Behemoth Chess 95 90. Three Checks Chess 94 91. Capablanca Random Chess 91 92. Corner Chess 89 93. Janus Chess 88 94. Racing Kings 87 97. Minishogi 83 99. Cylinder Chess 82 100. Recycle Chess 82 102. Crazy Screen Chess 77 106. Screen Chess 70 107. Knight Relay Chess 68 110. Legan Chess 66 116. Knightmate Chess 59 122. Berolina Chess 54 123. Cheshire Cat Chess 53 126. Maharajah Chess 44 Unfortunately statistics for finished games is not easily available at this site. Still one can visit pages for particular variants and see the number of total finished games, e.g. for 'Dice Chess': Statistics of won games white 33290 (51.71 %) black 31028 (48.19 %) Draws 60 (0.09 %) No suprise, that such great games as 'Loop Chess' and 'Japanese Chess' at the top of the list. However, it is amazing to see 'Dice Chess' as a second most popular chess variant (after chess itself)!
Invisible King Chess. Opponent can't see where you moved your king to. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Hostage Chess. Pieces taken are
held hostage and can be exchanged against other pieces and then dropped. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]There is a nice freeware to play 'Hostage Chess': http://www.hostagechess.com/download.html On the first start of the program I got an error message about non-existing directory, but after I created the required directory (Documente/HostageChess), it works without any problems. The AI strength of computer opponent is pretty good already by 5 sec/move, so if you like Hostage Chess it is really worth to install.
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