Comments by SamTrenholme
| As an afterword, the Wikipedia editor (-Ril-) that tried to delete the Zillions of Games article, and who was so rude to people from the ChessVariants server voting to save ZoG, is now being held accountable for being a disruptive editor. |
I can see why it is that you consider the Schoolbook opening setup interesting (note that the Schoolbook setup actually predates this comment, if barely). I also consider something you thought up of on your own a very interesting opening setup for 8x10 chess setups.
I think the original carrera setup for everything besides the very powerful pieces is the best 8x10 setup; the Grand Chess world champion seems to agree.
- Sam
Mainzer Schach. Large variant with Janus, Marshall, and different setup. (11x8, Cells: 88) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]|
h7 looks the be the weakest pawn in this setup (the knight-side pawns are a good deal weaker than the bishop-side pawns). The corresponding fool's mate that takes advantage of this weakness is 1. c4 Ak6?? 2. Axh7#. With two archbishops, which make for rather powerful midgame attackers, this will be be more intensely tactical than the various 8x10 chess setups out there.
I'm a bit worried that white may have an overwhelming advantage here; basically, white can use the bishop-moving pieces to attack the right hand pawns with moves like c4, d4, and e4 to put pressure on the right hand side and make it very difficult for black to develop his pieces. There may be a way for black to sucessfully defend his knight side, but this will make it much harder for black to equalize, since black needs to deal with the issue of defending his knight side instead of engaging in normal development. Note that I haven't actually playtested this game. - Sam |
Swapmate Chess. Pieces have "mates" which they can swap places with. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
I see two problems:
This will make the game more tactical and have more flare than standard FIDE chess. |
Catapults of Troy. Large variant with a river, catapults, archers, and trojan horses! (8x11, Cells: 88) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Here is what I would do to lower the number of draws:
- Archers, in the interest of minimizing friendly fire, will not fire (capture) when on the friendly side of the river.
- Archers can leap on to or off of the Troy horse any time, as part of their normal move.
- Bridge builders can not capture nor be catpured. Any piece, friendly or enemey, can slide through the bridge builder as if the bridge builder was not there; it is illegal, however, to land in the square that the bridge builder occupies.
- A bridge builder can not destroy a bridge that is adjacent to the opponent's bridge builder.
- Bridge builders move like chess queens.
|
A lot of draws often times indicates that a game is unbalanced; basically, a weak player can force a draw against a strong player. As it turns out, it's actually harder to fix a drawish game than it is to fix a game where white always win; a 'white always wins' game can usually be fixed with the pie rule; a drawn game needs to be fixed by changing the game to be less drawn (usually by making attack stronger and defense weaker) [1].
Here is some empirical evidence:
In order to make sure this is an apples-to-apples comparison: I have included two other games from the same game server that the Catapults games were played on. I have also included statistics from a real-time server, BrainKing, since this server has a large number of games, and since you mentioned that correspondence games will have more draws. I'm sure you won't do this, but if you ever change your mind and incorporate my ideas, you can still keep the same copyright on Catapults of Troy (then again, you can't copyright ideas, only artistic expression). :-p - Sam [1] Chess-like games can usually be made less drawish by adding Shogi drops to the game. |
Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Chess on a board made out of hexagons. (Cells: 91) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]|
Over three years ago, I pointed out that this game is probably too drawish, based on looking at the game mechanics (the king is too hard to checkmate). I'm not surprised that both games of Glinski's Hexagonal Chess played on the game courier server ended in draws.
My Russian isn't good enough to look at all of the games played in tournaments on the Russian page, so I can't get a sense of the draw percentage there, but I will bet you it's a lot bigger than the corresponding FIDE Chess draw percentage. Here are three ways to make this game less drawish:
|
|
Looks like you're right.
Here is how I got to see all six games:
- Sam |
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]|
Since I'm being critical of other people's variants, it's only fair that I be a little critical of my own variant.
In my playtesting, the biggest problem I have found is that it is too easy to swap off the marshalls. What usually happens is that the kingside bishop moves off of the G file near the beginning of the game. This causes the H pawn to be undefended. Next, one plays Mh3/Mh6 threatening the h2/h7 pawn; the only reasonable defense to this is for the other player to move out their own marshall. If they move the marshall to the I file, this results in less marshall mobility, so the best move is to have the two marshalls face each other. This is usually followed by the two marshalls being exchanged. This particular motif makes it so marshalls frequently do not make it to the endgame. One possible solution to this problem is to have the opening setup be one where black's pieces are reflected (the marshall on b1, king on e1, archbishop on f1, and queen on i1) relative to the white pieces. Another idea is to swap the marshall and the kingside rook in the opening setup. - Sam |
Catapults of Troy. Large variant with a river, catapults, archers, and trojan horses! (8x11, Cells: 88) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Hey, I wasn't planning on inventing another variant for 2006 (I prefer quality over quantity), I have some ideas for a wargame variant inspired by Catapults:
|
Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Chess on a board made out of hexagons. (Cells: 91) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]|
I agree that six games is not an exhaustive sample. However, it's the best data I have available. Now, I don't have enough of a background in statistics to give you a error percentage with these figures; however, it may be telling that we have played 31 FIDE Chess games on Game Courier and not one of them ended in a draw.
Then again, according to this Russian page (translated via the fish here) King + Rook vs. King (and King + Queen vs. King) is a mate against a bare King. I wish I had more game results to look at to see just how drawish this game is; the results over at Game Courier don't make this game look very good. Perhaps Glinski's Hex Chess with Shogi drops? - Sam |
|
Of course, we need a Mormon (non-drinking) version of this game. How about dice chess; roll a dice to determine what you move. One means pawn, two means knight, three means bishop, four means rook, five means queen, and six means king. Goal is capture of the opponent's king. Castling can be done if either a king or rook is rolled. If you can not move any piece, re-roll.
This idea is hardly original; indeed, here is an ancient dice version of Chess. I have heard it said that Shantraj was once a dice game, and the reason Shantraj stopped being a dice game and became an abstract game is because it was against Muslim law to gamble. - Sam |
|
The Wikipedia article for chess variants, at one point said 'The broad definition of chess variants is so universal, it may include nearly any abstract battle game or war game'. That said, at which point does a variant become a wargame? Good question. The answer depends on who you ask.
I think we're crossing the line once we add dice rolls. I also think that line is crossed when the opening setup is asymmetrical or when there is hidden information ('fog of war'). The reason for having one move all of their pieces (in any order they choose) in a single turn is to make the game impervious to traditional computer analysis. - Sam |
Schoolbook. 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I think Pre-Chess (a variant where each player places a piece anywhere on the first rank until the first rank is full before moving pieces noramlly) is a very interesting variant. This variant is mentioned, as I recall, in New Rules for Classic Games, but only exists as a Java applet on this server with no discussion of the variant. As I recall (I got rid of this book years ago when cleaning out storage), Pre-Chess was mentioned in a 1970s issue of Chess Life magazine.
The Carrera chess variants is a crowded field, but with good reason: This setup makes for a very nice game. I think I mentioned this before, but the big reason there are so many Carrera variants is because there were some serious problems with one of the more famous Carrera opening setups. I said this before, but it's interesting that what you settled on as being the best 10x8 setup is very close to my own Schoolbook setup (which I came up with in the summer of 2004). Indeed, your placment of the rooks may make for a better game.
- Sam
|
I just want to let you know that I liked the ideas presented in Shangai Palace, and that the game looked like a fun one to play. I think it is a shame that Zillions plays it so dang poorly, and that people were so hard on it. I really like the idea of a game where some pieces can drop and other pieces can not be dropped. Perhaps we can have a tame chessgi where only rooks and bishops can be dropped. Of course, it's very trickly to compare the value of a piece that can be dropped with a piece that can not be dropped.
Another idea: Have it so that a piece can only be dropped with certain pieces capture the piece in question. I think I have some interesting ideas in 'Crossing the Rubicon', but I think I want to get several dozen mating positions for schoolbook, and a computer program that can play it better than Zillions--my current plan is to take the guts out of ChessV and make it a Schoolbook playing engine, and hack up Winboard and Xboard to play Schoolbook instead of FIDE Chess (I once hacked xboard to play Grand Chess, so I know this can be done). Once that is done, maybe I'll consider a variant besides Schoolbook. There are a zillion variants out there; just not enough what I would consider fully-developed variants. It's a shame there isn't as much interest in board games as there used to be in Ohio. I think this is because people are playing online games instead. I never went for online games; if I am playing someone at Chess and losing, I want to be 100% certain that my opponent is not cheating so I can feel that he is winning fairly. I can never do that on the internet. I think an essential human element is lost when people interact with computer screens instead of real live people. - Sam |
Symchess. Missing description (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]|
First of all, I like the name of the variant. Second of all, I like the name Unicorn. These pieces have traditionally been named Camels, as you point out. A unicorn is also David Paulowich's monkier for the bishop + knightrider piece. Since the Bishop + Knightrider is been called a 'Paladin' in the Way of the Knight ZRF file, I prefer the name 'Unicorn' for the strong but colorbound Camel + Bishop piece.
I also like having the knights and bishops closer to the center. How about: p p p p p p p p p p r c n b q k b n c r - - a - - - - m - -Where 'c' is the camel (what you called the 'unicorn' in this variant), 'a' is the archbishop (knight + bishop), and 'm' is the Marshall (rook + knight). - Sam |
Way of the Knight 
. Pieces with experience levels: a `role playing variant'.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'm working on building a list of every single Zillions file that fell through the cracks when the big move happened.
- Sam
I have determined that the following 31 zrf files, which were once on the server (and, indeed, still have index pages pointing to a now-non-existant .zip file), are no longer here:
- Sam |
Vyremorn Chess . Large variant on two overlapping square boards.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] War of the Worlds . Chess army from planet Earth against the Martian forces of Jetan.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Weak! . Black has 7 knights, and 16 pawns, White the usual array.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Weakest Chess . Pieces are as weak as possible while still retaining chess-like qualities.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Weave and Dungeon . Abstract game played on a board divided into Weave and Dungeon, with movement following different rules on each part.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] White Elephant Chess . Four variants pitting the white Elephant army against black with the normal FIDE array.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]25 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
Quite clever. Note that, since the pawns are more defended in the Schoolbook opening setup than they are in FIDE Chess, we need to pull out the King before we can mate him with the bishop. This stronger defense does not, IMHO, make the game more drawish--having a lot more force on the board more than compensates.
- Sam