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Comments by BenGood
btw, i am also aware that the commercial variant 'roman chess' comes with a vinyl 10x10 board. it looks pretty nice, but the set is also $70, which seems rather high, especially considering that the design of the additional piece is one of the most uncreative pieces i've ever seen. <P>
sorry, looks like we have gotten into a discussion here that's become completely unrelated to the page we're actually posting it to.
Alfaerie Expansion Set 3. More chess variant graphics based on the Alpha chess font.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]looks good. but am i missing something or is there no link to click on for actually downloading the expansion.zip?
Shogi 
. Optimized ZRFs for Japanese Chess and some recent variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]very nice, but i need to point out that if you go to the 'traditional board' variant, the pieces are setup shifted one square to the left, which means the leftmost column is off the board and just sort of floating in space, and the rightmost column is empty. fortunately the 'modern' and 'large' boards work fine, and the different piece sets are very nice.
Photo's of Shogi Set. Photo's of wooden Shogi (Japanese chess) set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]hans, the page just says that the set is from japan? did you order it or were you actually there? if you ordered it, where'd you order it from? how much did it cost?
Shogi set photo's. Photo's of shogi (Japanese chess) set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice sharp photos on this one - i wish my pics came out that good. it would be nice tho if the author could provide some info on where he got the set and how much it cost. <P>
also, the other posted comment is totally irrelevant to what's actually on the page and probably should be removed.
ps - it would also be helpful if the make and model of digital camera used was listed on the page somewhere. thanks.
Korean Chess: photo's (2). Photo's of original Korean chess set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]some nice closeup pics here. i'd like to point out tho that the link no longer works, and neither does www.ekoreanmart.com.
something else i forgot to mention - when you click on the third thumbnail, the pic on the resulting webpage is actually *smaller* than the original thumbnail. this is definitely not right.
Hexagonal Chess Set. Home made set of Glinski's Hexagonal Chess.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice pic, and nice set. i'd be interested in hearing exactly how the board was made.
Piececlopeida: Advancer. 
Moves like a Queen, but captures by approach.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]doh. thanks, i've sent aronson a corrected diagram.
Multivariant Tournament 2003. 2003 Multivariant PBEM tournament headquarters page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]number of squares is can be a really misleading stat when considering the 'size' of a game - in this case how long it will take to play (realizing of course that there's always a big range for any given game). a more important number is the how many pieces are in the game. for example, chess and xiangqi both start with 32 pieces and both take approximately the same amount of time to play, xiangqi should definitely not be considered a 'large' variant. and if you look at omegachess, it adds 40 squares to the board but just 4 non-pawn pieces. the starting setup can be a factor too, i find omegachess games are generally slightly longer than grandchess because the extra squares are between the armies - not behind them as in grandchess, and the new pieces are leapers instead of riders. i've found a lot of 10x8 and 10x10 games are closer in playing time to chess than to truly large variants such as doublechess, quantum, rennchess, and chushogi.
i was planning on voting against shogi and xiangqi for this tourney for the same reason that mhowe objects to gothic and omega - they are games for which one can fairly easily find an online opponent; dshort runs an omega tourney on richard's pbem server about once a year - there is one currently going. i also saw this tourney as an opportunity to play some more unusual games that rarely get played. <P>
i also vote no for machines. i get enough of zillions too. the quirks of zillions thinking process are wellknown and can often be used against it, so i am interested in seeing how people play these games. if programmers are really interested in trying out their programs, i'd suggest running a separate tourney for that.
Extinction chess. Win by making your opponents pieces of one type extinct. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Shogi. The Japanese form of Chess, in which players get to keep and replay captured pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]On the side bar there is a link called 'links to shogi variants.' this link no longer works, i get a message saying this index has moved and it's redirecting me automatically, but then it just takes me to the main index.
Chu Shogi
. Members-Only Shogi variant on 12 by 12 board. (Link.).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Dai Shogi. Shogi variant on 15 by 15 board. (Link.).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]aha. lawson pointed out a typo in the url for this page, but nobody ever fixed it. roger hare's page is still up. i would assume then that there is a similar typo in the chushogi page.
Building a Tridimensional Chess Board. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]re: lippincott's comments: i'm definitely interested in seeing pics of this. chessvariants.com has its own photo section, if you go to the main index the link for the photo index is towards the bottom. you can contact on of the editors about what to do with your pics. btw, i assume all your dimensions are really in inches, not in feet as you indicated.
ok, i'll have to come back and read more carefully later, but one thing i noticed is something to the effect that wider boards help increase the value of diagonal movers more than orthogonal movers. i have had no experience that would even remoately back up such a claim. in david short's doublechess, a game in which the board is 16x8, the bishop is severely weakened by the width of the board. it's well-known that increasing the board size weakens the knight, but in doublechess the B is hurt almost as much as the N by the board change (comparing to 8x8). the fact that it is more likely to attack the opponent's camp in 2 directions rather than 1 is small compensation for the fact that it often takes 10 moves or move to get the bishop from side of the board to the other. the rook, on the other hand, is not affected at all. in fact, when studying the relative values of pieces on different sized boards, it is my claim that all other things being equal, the rook is the most consistent piece from board to board, and should be the baseline against which other pieces are measured.
Flamingo. (1,6)-jumper.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]it's (1,6), if you follow the link to torsten linss' problem page, you can see that's how he's moving it in his problems. i'm not sure what i was thinking when i made the page - a lot of the pages i submitted in 1998 and early 99 were written very quickly, there's not much to them and they have some errors (there's also an inconsistency in the antelope in terms of how it's described on the page and how it's described in the index). i have been working on redoing all my piececlopedia pages, but it will be awhile before i get to some of them.
hmmm... my original response on this seems to have never gone thru... <P>
the flamingo is a (1,6) leaper. if you follow the link to torsten linss' problems, you'll see that's how he's using it. i'm not sure what i was thinking when i made the diagram, the piece pages i submitted in 1998 and early 99 were generally written very quickly and a lot of them didn't have much to them. i am working on redoing all my piece pages but it will be awhile before i get to all of them. i know with the antelope that there's a discrepancy between how it's described in the page and how's it's described in the index.
Treyshah. A commercial three-player hexagonal variant with 23 pieces a side. (Cells: 210) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this is an interesting board and starting setup. is he still selling boards or are they all gone? did he sell pieces too or did you have to provide your own? i notice that besides needing 3 different colors and 3 bishops per sdie, each side also needs 14 pawns. i also notice that the knight is not really analagous to the orthogonal chess knight like in the glinski and mccooey games - it's really the hexagonal version of the zebra, and altho i haven't played the game yet, it's probably a very awkward and weak piece, i'm rather skeptical of the claim that the knight and bishop in this game are worth about the same amount.
well, besides multi-movers, leaping pieces such as grasshoppers have symmetric move patterns but assymetric retreat. and xiangqi cannon has assymetric retreat when capturing but not when moving, which is one of the things that makes it such a neat piece (and difficult to get used to).<P> and incidentally any piece that move differently forwards than backwards (these pieces don't have symmetric move patterns, at least not about the x-axis) is going to have assymetric retreat. this includes lots of betza pieces such as fBbR, fRbB, etc etc (i could go on and on) and shogi pieces (which can of course be easily described in betza notation) such as the gold, silver, copper generals, the white horse and the whale, etc etc.
Raumschach: the Thoroddsen board. Build your own 3d chessboard.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this is a neat design, and it gives some good ideas for making 3D boards in general. but it's too bad there's no photographs of the board, i wonder if the author can get access to a digital camera or take some pics and have them scanned. i would like to see it.
Index page of The Chess Variant Pages. Our main index page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]it's a mystery to me why you can't link to a page just because its url is long.
84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i might be interested in meeting to play games. i live in pittsburgh, pa, but will probably move nov 1, possibly to the baltimore / dc area and possibly to lancaster, pa.
Multivariant Tournament 2003. 2003 Multivariant PBEM tournament headquarters page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i never got to vote in the first round because it said votes were being taken til november first.
Wa Shogi. A variant of Japanese Chess on an 11 by 11 board. (Link.).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this link is not correct, it should be: <P>
http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/rjhare/shogi/wa-shogi/intro.htm
Cube Chess. Chess board is a cube with 4 playable sides, each with a 4x4 grid. (4x(4x4), Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this looks neat but i have trouble believing that this is more practical than simply playing on a 4x16 board.
Chess Cubic. Chess board is a cube with each side a 4x4 grid. (6x(4x4), Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]also looks impressive. i wonder if this game wouldn't be improved by additional pawns, such as macrochess has. the colored pawn heads a nice touch tho (i had already observed that macrochess would have benefitted from something to that effect). is this game for sale? (yes, i could contact the inventor as is suggested on the page, but it would be easier if such info was put there to begin with.)
Spinal Tap Chess. Variant on an 11x11 board with a once-a-game mass 'Battle Move' of Pawns and Crabs. (11x11, Cells: 121) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]yes, you are correct. the ascii diagram is correct. the graphics diagram is not.
Orphan. Moves like a piece that attacks it.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]actually, the problem is that there should be an orphan on f4. the original diagram had it, but i redid this page this summer, and i obviously left it off by accident. i'll send a new diagram to aronson sometime today.
Regimental Chess . Commercial variant. Groups of pieces can form battalions and regiments and move at the same time. (36x16, Cells: 576) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]the company went down years ago. their webpage - also gone - discussed the game at great length, i printed the whole thing out and it runs more than 30 pages i think. at some point i was in fact planning on scanning all of them so that other people could see them. the problem is that they were printed in black and white, and as you can see from the diagram on this page, color is essential. so somebody (probably not me) would need to figure out what was supposed to be what color and at the color in using paint or photoeditor or whatever. <P>
at any rate, the folder with the printouts is packed away in a box somewhere so it could be awhile before i can find it and get them scanned (i don't own my own scanner either). <P>
the game is quite interesting and play is very complex. a friend of mine contacted the company, which was based in pittsburgh, he wanted to know how they were differentiating the regiments, and they told him colored rubberbands. which means making your own set is probably not too difficult.
Tori Shogi pictures. Pictures of a commercial Tori Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice pics. very useful for those of us who are considering buying from hodges but have never actually seen any of his sets. <P> one thing i'd like to mention here: even when measurements are provided, it's always nice to have a pic of people playing the game, it helps give an idea of size and scale that can be difficult to determine otherwise. yet such pics rarely appear on cv.com photo pages.
Wa Shogi pictures. Photos of a commercial Wa Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice pics, but when i click on them, they only come in 1/4 the size that the pics on the tori shogi photo page do, and they're still blurry. so i'm wondering if this page was set up right. also, it's indexed as a game page, not a photo page.
Chu Shogi pictures. Photos of a commercial Chu Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Dai Shogi pictures. Photos of a commercial Dai Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]good pics. will we get pics for for the four bigger shogis also?
New sets of Exchess (Superchess). Announcement of sets of chess variant pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]for anybody who wants to see them, haerington finally has the pics of the new pieces up on his webpage, www.superchess.nl, click on 'available pieces' and scroll down. they look good.
Renniassance Chess . Game played on several sizes of large board with 68 pieces per side.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i'm also glad to finally see a zrf for this game. it is an excellent game, and it is definitely a game that can be taken very seriously. thanks to eholzman for programming it. <P>
(btw glenn, who's mr. jackman?)
Pincer Pawn. Moves as rook, and takes by enclosing.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i made the original piececlopedia pages for the ultima pieces many years
ago. at the time i was really just trying to take the pieces out of the
context of ultima - with which they are so closely associated - because i
hoped that people might try combining them with other chess and fairy
chess pieces, which indeed they have (altho i don't know that it's
necessarily because of my pages). also, if mr. abbott was accessible via
the internet at that time, i wasn't aware of it - in other words, i didn't
talk to him at all about the game and so i just assumed he had invented
all the pieces. <P>
i'm not familiar with the games jorg mentioned except tafl, but based on
his description of them, none of these games have any historical
connection with chess. so even if abbott is not the inventor of the
pincer pawn's method of capture or the first to use it in a game context,
it seems he is still the first to use it in a chess variant, for whatever
that's worth. <P>
at any rate, several months ago i typed up a list of piece pages i want to
update / redo, and the PP is already on that list, so i'll make sure i
correct the error when i get to it (could be awhile tho).
Double Chess 16 x 8. On 16 by 8 board. (16x8, Cells: 128) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]players of this game who are interested in putting together a nice set may be interested in 'your move chess and games': <P>
http://www.ChessUSA.com <P>
i mention it because to play doublechess, you need two sets plus one extra queen per side, and if you click on their 'what's new' link, they are now selling 'extra queens' for a variety of their sets. so this enables you to buy two sets plus extra queens, which may be a more attractive option for some people instead of buying 3 sets. of course, you still need to come up with a 16x8 board. <P>
Tandem-84 . Variant on two boards of 7 by 6 rows with pieces moving between boards.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]it appears that castling works for the white pieces but not for the black pieces, this neeeds to be fixed. <P>
of less importance, but something that i've never seen before - and possibly something that can't be fixed given the nature of the game - is that if you artificially add or remove pieces in the middle the game, zillions gets confused and doesn't allow any pieces to be moved.
Tenjiku Shogi pictures. Photos of a commercial Tenjiku Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Courrier Chess . A large historic variant from Medieval Europe.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i can't get this to run, zillions is searching for the board bmp, courierboard2.bmp or something, and it can't find it. <P> i'm also not sure i understand why this unzips the way it does. noramlly when i unzip zillions stuff, i tell winzip to unzip it to the zillions/rules folder, and either a) the zrf appears right in the folder, or b) it creates a subfolder that has the zrf, but that subfolder is given the same name as the game, so i can find it easily. in the case of courier however, it creates - inside the rules folder - a folder called 'programs' and then a 'zillions of games folder' and then another 'rules' and 'images' folder. btw, it couldn't find the board whether i left the zrf in this folder or if i dragged it to the main 'rules' folder.
Xiangqi: Chinese Chess. Links and rules for Xiangqi (Chinese Chess). (9x10, Cells: 90) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]a good place to play xiangqi by email is on richard's play-by-email server, all you need is an email account and it's free, and you should always be able to find opponents. <P>
http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/
Tamerlan Chess . A well-known historic large variant of Shatranj.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this one doesn't unzip to the correct locations either. if you send it to the Rules folder, the zrf shows up there, but so do all the bmps, instead of appearing in rules/images/timurschess, which is where the zrf looks for them. it's a bit of a hassle create the new folder and to dig all the bmps out and move them into it. more importantly, even tho this problem is easy to solve, i wouldn't assume all users will know how to solve it - the first time i ran into this type of problem i had to ask around for help.
Grand Cavalier Chess . The decimal version of Cavalier Chess.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this one doesn't unzip properly either. all the bmps go to a folder under rules/images called 'cavalier', but when you open the zrf, it looks for bmps under rules/images/chess... but if you transfer all the bmps to this folder, it still looks for some of them under rules/images/cavalier... i didn't sort them all out, i just gave up until somebody else fixes it.
An EconoSplurge Chess Variant Set. Chess Variant Set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Bughouse Chess. 4 player variant where pieces taken from your opponent are given to your partner.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this implimentation is not quite really exactly bughouse, since it is turn-based (i believe somebody recently put in a comment explaining that the current zillions can't handle simultaneous play on two boards). but it is still a neat implementation, and it plays well, and there's many variations programmed in. it's definitely fun to play.
Cavalier. Piece from RennChess that steps one diagonally then slides orthogonally, or steps one orthogonally then slides diagonally.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]greenwood thinks a cavalier and king can beat a lone king. we're playtesting it now, if he proves me wrong, then i'll update the page.
Bughouse Chess. 4 player variant where pieces taken from your opponent are given to your partner.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]well, i have to qualify my previous comment, altho i still like this zrf, i previously stated that it plays well - meaning that zillions plays competitively, but since then i have easily beaten zillions several times even tho it's set to play at the highest level and 3 mins per move. for some reason if you threaten a mate in one that is easily defended against, zillions will not do so. i'm not sure why this is, as far as i know, the tandem84 doesn't suffer from this problem even tho it is also turn-based on 2 boards.
Rules of Chess: En passant capture FAQ. Answers to some questions about the en passant capture rule.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]sorry, you have it backwards, the diagrams are correct. the bottom *right*-hand corner square is always white for both players. the queens are always placed on squares of their own color, this means that the queen is on the left if you are white and on the right if you are black.
Schizophrenic Chess. Game on 12x7 board with Left and Right Schizzys, Bobbers, Teleporters and other exotic pieces. (12x7, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]well, i had been holding off on making comments about contest entries until the judging was done, but since everybody else has started it's obviously not a big deal... <P>
this game is a lot of fun and the pieces are neat. i eventually plan to put the teleporter and the bobber in the piececlopedia. i've found that the 12x7 board weakens the B and N about equally, altho of course there is no N in this game, the royal knight is a different piece altogether and on a smaller board is worth much more than a rook. (as a side note, i've found that the 16x8 board in short's doublechess weakens the N and B about equally). <P>
i was initially skeptical of the 12x7 board because i've found that boards with odd numbers of rows in games not using shogi pawns are unbalanced because whoever moves first usually has an easier time taking control of the center row and thus gaining an advantage. had short used standard chess pawns this would've been a problem, but i've found that the crab effectively eliminates this problem. <P>
one curious aspect of this game is that it is the first (and only) game i've seen where castling is usually a liability rather than a help. this is because castling puts the king in the middle of a stretch of empty squares which are then vulnerable to teleporters (altho the special teleporter rule helps against this, i'm not sure if this rule is implemented in the zrf or not). when i played zillions i lost every game by teleporter attack until the game in which i didn't castle.
Tandem-84. Variant on two boards of 7 by 6 rows with pieces moving between boards. (2x(6x7), Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]another impressive game. as i've mentioned previously elsewhere, games that use standard chess pawns and boards with an odd number of rows tend to be unbalanced, but this problem is eliminated by the double-board aspect of the game. in most of my games, one player was able to get a slight upperhand on one board while the other player gained control of the other board, altho this is somewhat of a generalization. <P>
the tactics in this game quickly become complex and intense, and therefore zillions plays the game well. pawn endgames are particularly interesting because pawns can dodge threats by jumping from board to board. the ghost works well and is easy to visualize and remember (i know aikin discarded several other versions of the ghost before picking the final ghost).
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i feel i must respond to the previous comment. i've read the article that he links to, and i am not impressed with it. i no longer trust anything written by sam sloan. he talks at great length and sounds impressive but says hardly anything to prove his case. he trashes murray constantly (yes, everybody knows now murray made some mistakes, but this is true of virtually all researchers of the time in all subjects, no matter how good they were). he claims that everybody since murray has just accepted his work, which is not true - eales consulted original sources and was mostly impressed with murray's work. besides, showing that murray made mistakes does not prove sloan right. virtually everybody i've talked to agrees that sloan and li do not have enough evidence to make their case. i would recommend approaching this article with a big does of skepticism.
Rifle Chess. Pieces are taken by shooting: capturing without moving. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i'm not sure what frank is talking about, guarding pieces does not work in most situations, unless the removal of the piece captured will open up a sight line between the defending piece and the piece that captured it. incidentally i've never thought this was a good game, the Q's totally dominate, nobody's even demonstrated a way to me to defend against having your army totally gunned down by the Q. i remember one time somebody posted to the yahoo board, can rifle chess be saved? my thought was probably not, and with so many other good variants around to play, why bother?
Rules of Chess (part 6). Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]charles, i'm not sure i understand exactly what happened in your game. if you can give us a more accurate notation of the moves (if you're not familiar with notation check it out at http://www.chessvariants.com/d.chess/chess.html), i'm sure somebody can answer your question.
Crooked Queen. Moves in a diagonal zigzagline or like a Rook.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]interesting, but isn't this piece the half-crooked queen? i would think the crooked queen would be crooked bishop + crooked rook. (it would also mean there would be two half-crooked queens.)
i wouldn't've guessed that the crooked rook is that strong, but i've never used it. i notice there's no piececlopedia page for the crooked rook, i nominate ralph to write one. <P>
i can see now how a crooked rook would dominate an 8x8 board, but i think it would be usable in larger games; i think it would work on optima, which successfully controls a lot of very strong pieces.
doh, i obviously still don't have all the optima pieces memorized. anyway, i still nominate ralph to write the crooked rook page. i'd do it, but i have no playing experience with it so i wouldn't be able to say much about it.
Cincinnati 4-way Chess. Four player chess variant from Cincinnati. (Cells: 101) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this game looks fun. i requested email opponents on the yahoo board last year, but i had no takers. moeser declined saying 4-player chess is more of an otb social thing, which is true, but right now i'm not in a place where i can come up with 3 otb opponents, and i'd like to try this game (also, i've played a variety of multiplayer email games on richard's server, and it works ok). i've played zillions a couple times, but zillions plays this one very poorly. i'm guessing it's because zillions doesn't understand the team concept, so the two armies don't cooperate, and since when zillions thinks for each army, it sees one against three, thinks it's losing, and therefore plays weird. <P>
so if anybody wants to play, email me at good7972@hotmail.com. i'm only looking to start one game, and it will be the squirrel version. i'd like to use moeser's checkmate rules too, even tho they are changed in the zrf - presumably because moeser's rules were too difficult or impossible to implement in zillions (i'll be using zillions to keep track of the game position, but i should be able to work around it once one player is checkmated, since i won't actually be playing against the computer).
anybody know where i can find the rules to coalition chess (koalitionsschach)? it doesn't appear on cv.com or in the evc. i don't know if it's a good game, but i'm curious because it was invented by 12-tone composer arnold schoenberg.
hey, thanks. the rules are horribly written, i can't tell if this because it's not a good translation, or cause schoenberg's original rules were written badly also. it's not clear to me if the plane can only capture at the end of the second move, or if it can capture on the first and then make a second knight move (chushogi lion-style), but it's more likely that he meant the former, in which case his claim that the plane is the most powerful piece is false, considering that the sub is equivalent to the amazon. anyway, i'll add it to my (long) cv to-do list to submit a page to the editors for linking to these pages.
this question can't be answered without knowing how big the board is. the bigger the board, the less of a big deal the hobbling is. the only hobbled piece i can think of that i've played with is the hobbled bishop in timur's. zillions rates it 2.3 pawns, and indeed i found it very difficult to use. the timur's giraffe, which has to go at least 3 squares, is practically useless til the endgame. <P>
on the other hand, in rennchess the duke and the cavalier can be considered hobbled as well, since they can't move to adjacent squares, and altho this is a definitely a weakness, they are nonetheless strong pieces. <P>
so i would guess zillions' value is too low, but it's hard to tell w/o knowing the context of the game.
after i submitted my comment i read this again: <P>
'which will be a queen that must go at least 2 squares, and is blocked if the adjacent square is occupied.' <P>
isn't this redundant, or am i missing something? <P>
i don't know of any precedent for naming the hobbled queen. if i remember correctly, in meta-chess, williams-brown calls such pieces 'lame', and refers to the timur's bishop as the lame bishop.
>>So pieces that must move at least two, but are not blocked by adjacent pieces seem to exist. <P>
aha, this is why mhowe put both stipulations in his definition. so he wasn't redundant after all.
Rules of Chess FAQ. Frequently asked chess questions.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i sent kristina an email, but for any other interested readers, here is the answer: <P>
to answer your question, no, it is illegal to skip your move in chess. there are no exceptions to this rule. if you have a legal move, you must choose one. if you have exactly one legal move available, then you must play that move. if you have no legal moves, but are not in check, then that is stalemate and the game is a draw.
Pancake. A piece that moves and captures like a non-royal King or a Nightrider-style cannon.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this piece is unclear to me. does it only move as a knightrider when capturing? or does it also have the option of making a noncapturing knightrider? 'cannon-style' would imply that it does, but your comments imply that it does not.
Cardinal. Moves as bishop or as knight.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice page. this is something i had considered doing but never did, so you've saved me the effort. the only thing i can think to add is that in superchess (www.superchess.nl), haerington uses princess for his B+N piece; and the physical piece he designed to represent it is somewhat princess like - the piece has a shorter skirt and a crown. (he also uses empress for R+N, and the piece has a long dress and a fancier crown.)
Chancellor. Moves like rook or as knight.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice page. your king's court link doesn't seem to go to the right spot, btw.
King's Court. Variant on 8 by 12 board with Chancellors and Jesters. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i've been checking the king's court webpage periodically for as long as i can remember knowing about it (several years probably), and they've never actually had a set for sale. the webpage states:
Kings Court is in the production stage and will Be available at the end of may or early june.
but it's said that for at least a year, maybe more. anybody know anything about it? anybody ever contact them about buying a game? i suppose i could email them myself, but i thought i'd ask here first.
i voted. i still think, however, that the poll results should only be visible *after* you've voted, and not before (currently you can see them before, but not after). it would also be nice if at the end there was a link back to the 'what's new' or 'main index' pages, the way there is after you post a comment.
84 Spaces Contest Jury members. Please consider becoming a judge for the 84 squares contest![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]>>I have resolved to treat any complaints like a baseball umpire: don't explain and don't retract. <P>
i wouldn't worry about this. when i did the 40-square contest, i received virtually no feedback - good, bad, or otherwise - about the job i did (except for the editors thanking me for being a judge). <P>
judges may be interested in my 'thoughts on judging', which is part of the same page as the contest winners. i just reread it and it holds up pretty well (despite some inexplicable typos, including getting aronson's name wrong, which i regularly did for years until he corrected me on it). although i tossed in a few constructive criticisms, i tried to keep it as positive as possible. originally had considered putting comments for every single entry, until i read that one of the entries was from a 10-yr-old kid. since i didn't necessarily know anything about the rest of the people who entered, i didn't want to risk trashing some kid's game online, which would accomplish nothing other than possibly discouraging him from continuing with chess variants. (i haven't looked at most of the 84-square entries, but based on what i've seen, and the comments of others, it looks like the quality level is very high. in the 40-square contest, there was a lot of good games, but there were few great games and a lot of horrible games - some of which were unplayable - so any honest appraisal of all the games would have contained a lot of negative comments.) <P>
i could come up with a list of advice for judges, but most of it is pretty obvious stuff. the one thing that i'll mention here: take notes as you go along. judging will takes months (i think i used a year and a half, since entries were being submitted long before the deadline), written notes will make things a lot easier when it comes time to pick your winners and summarize your thoughts.
>>but that some of my votes on the games in the group will be based SOLELY on my impressions of the games simply from reading their descriptions, THEN I would be willing to volunteer to judge Group B. Please let me know if this is acceptable. <P>
as i stated in my 'thoughts on judging', the first thing i learned when judging is that you can't just read the rules, you have to actually play the games.
Smess. Produced and sold in the early 70's by Parker Brothers. Arrows on squares determine direction pieces can move. (7x8, Cells: 56) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]your best bet is ebay. people who read cv.com and have a smess set are much less likely to be interested in selling it. i just did an ebay search - currently there's one for sale, it's at $17 with more than 2 days left, which is typical; in the auctions i've watched in the past, smess sets typically sold for $25-$35, sometimes higher. i don't know of anywhere else to get one. 'all the kings men' sets go for much less, i paid less than $10 for mine.
Replacement Chess. Captured pieces must be put on an empty square on the board. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]the game you are referring to is bughouse; it is mentioned on this page, altho hans did not provide a link to the bughouse page. on the bughouse page, he lists numerous alternative names to bughouse, altho 'double replacement chess' is not one of them.
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]do i need zillions 2 for this? i get an error message when i try to run it, saying i need a newer version of zillions. i'm pretty sure i have all the update patches for zillions 1. anyway, if it's for zillions 2 (which i don't have), it would probably be a good idea to say it on the page, and on all future pages.
the most logical guess is that the game you have is Minishogi, chessvariants.com has a page on it. in fact, if you can get access to a digital camera and take pictures of your set, the editors would probably be interested in them for a photo page.
Strategic Chess Federation Championship 2003. First annual championship.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i found this page interesting until i got to the part where it costs $100 to play. there's also nothing to suggest that any of the $6400 is being returned as prizes, so i don't know what it's being used for.
Viking Chess . Armies start side-by-side on a 12 x 7 board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i can't unzip this file. i get an error message (from winzip) saying that it does not appear to be a valid archive and i should try downloading it again (this doesn't solve the problem tho).
Tree Garden Chess . Large chess variant on 10 by 10 board with 4 by 4 area missing from the middle.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]this zip file doesn't unpack properly, and it's enough of a mess that i wasn't able to organize it properly. all the bmps go right into the rules folder (a problem for those of us trying to keep our folders organized), and the zrf is difficult to find, a 'my documents' folder (not the one on the desktop, not that i want zrfs being put there anyway) is created inside 'rules', which contains a 'zillions of games' folder which contains a 'tree garden' folder (so we have three nested folders that contain nothing but the next folder) which contains the zrf, which of can not find the images, and still can not find them if i transfer it to the 'rules' folder.
Invasion . A military inspired Chess variant played on an 84-squares board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]if a flag is moved to a corner, turning on the bomb, and then the flag is captured or moves away before the bomb is dropped, does the bomb remain turned on, or does it turn back off until a flag is moved to a corner square again? i had assumed the former until i noticed that zillions considers the latter to be correct. looking at the rules page, it is definitely not clear. the zrf was written by the inventor, and therefore is probably correct, but i thought it would still be worth checking on.
Tree Garden Chess . Large chess variant on 10 by 10 board with 4 by 4 area missing from the middle.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]thanks, this worked. for the benefit of future readers tho, it should still be fixed.
Invasion. A military inspired Chess variant played on an 84-squares board. (10x10, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]>>I've tried to make them as short as possible, hoping that playing with the zrf would enlight the shaden areas. <P>
i feel i should point out that this is bad practice for writing rules for cv.com or anywhere else. readers are not necessarily going to have zillions, and even if they do, when reading the rules they are not going to assume that the zrf will necessarily clarify ambiguities for them.
Dodl schach: photo's. Photo's of a very small chess variant set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice pics. can you tell us the dimensions of the set in centimeters or inches? it would be nice if we had a pic of hans holding the set, so we can get a sense of scale. i've never seen little sets like that in the usa.
Heroes Hexagonal Chess. Hexagonal variant with special Hero piece which enhances other pieces. (Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]from the zrf it appears that in the mobilization phase, a player can move each piece once at most, but this is not clear from the rules.
Shogi. The Japanese form of Chess, in which players get to keep and replay captured pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]my understanding of shogi is that because of drops, piece values such as given in chess are not meaningful or useful. in the fairbairn book he spends more than 2 pages (83-85) discussing relative piece worth and things you should take into consideration, and how you should think about it, and what other people say about the subject. but nowhere does he give values, and he says 'japanese professionals refuse to answer that question.' later he adds that he is trying 'to correct the distortion introduced by many western writers who insist on ascribing values to the pieces.' in other words, from fairbairn's perspective - and i've seen nothing in shogi to suggest that he is wrong and plenty to suggest that he's right - tweaking the values of the pieces in zillions will not make it play any better.
Round Table Chess. Chess variant on a board with round and square part. (Cells: 92) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Recognized Chess Variants. Index page listing the variants we feel are most significant. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i notice this page is not updated past june 2002. also, if you link to the recognized variant list (which does not have it's own 'rate this page' link, ultima is not on that page even tho it is a recognized variant.
Tandem-84 . Variant on two boards of 7 by 6 rows with pieces moving between boards.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i noticed recently that the way zillions numbers the moves does not match the way they are really supposed to be numbered. which may not sound like a big deal, but it can make things confusing when playing by email and trying to track down an error. so i'm wondering if this would be difficult to fix.
Odds Chess. Ways of giving a weaker opponent better odds. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i'm impressed with this list too, a lot of these i had never heard of before. i'm wondering tho if it isn't easier to win without a Q or queenside than it is to win with a capped pawn or capped knight. class E players are going to realize they can sack any piece for the capped piece and win. i doubt you can keep anybody from capturing your f-pawn if they really want to.
Omnigon Photos and Review. Photos and Review of commercial variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]as far as i know, there is no site to play omnigon online. in fact, at the time i wrote the review (august 2002), a search for any omnigon webpage produced zero matches, altho i think fun agian games might sell it.
Betza Notation. A primer on the leading shorthand for describing variant piece moves.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]i'd caution against your use of = for 'other promotions.' = is already standard shogi notation for no promotion, and standard among problemists for stalemate.
Tandem-84 . Variant on two boards of 7 by 6 rows with pieces moving between boards.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]apparently i never got around to mentioning this before... i noticed some time ago that zillions does not enforce the rule that a king in check can not make a drop move. this is a critical rule, and so it should be implemented if possible.
Rules of Chess: Pawns FAQ. Rules of promotion and movement of pawns explained.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Steve: it depends on what you mean by 'in front.' if the king is diagonally in front of an opponent's pawn, where the pawn normally captures to, then he is check, and you couldn't have moved him there in the first place. (if you're playing a tournament otb game, making an illegal move usually means forfeit. if you're playing online, the server shouldn't have allowed it in the first place. if you're playing an friendly otb game, then usually you just redo illegal moves.) <P>
if by 'in front' you mean directly in front of an opponent's pawn, where the pawn normally moves to but doesn't capture to, then to answer your question: no, you do not lose. whoever told you this either made up the rule or doesn't know what they're talking about. if you mean in front of your own pawn instead of an opponent's, again, there is no such rule. <P>
hope this helps. <P>
Grand Chess. Christian Freeling's popular large chess variant on 10 by 10 board. Rules and links. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]the link to freeling's grandchess page is broken. the site was redone last summer, so stuff was probably moved around at that time. i don't have the correct url handy.
Tai Shogi pictures. Photos of a commercially available Tai Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]nice pics. how long did that take to set up? and what's that in your hand, tongs? use them to adjust pieces?
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