Comments by SamTrenholme

- Sam

Update The Zillions file with these variants is available as a file in the Yahoo Chessvariants group.

1. Af3 Nd6 2. Ng3 f5 3. Nd3 Nhf7 4. h3 e6 5. BI3 h6 6. Ah5 Bh7 7. Ke1?

Zillions, for mysterious reasons, made a meaningless king move.

7. ... I6 8. Af3 MI7 9. Bxd8 Qxd8 10. Nc5 Ng5 11. Ae5 Nf7 12. Ad4 Ad6 13. Mj3 Qe7

ChessV now has Zillions on the run. With a better pawn structure and two more pieces developed, black has more than equalized and now controls the game.

14. Nd3

At this point, Black can force the win of a piece. The moves to do so are left as an exercise for the reader.

In the game played, White never recovered and Black (ChessV) eventually won.

Personally, I'd rather see Andy spend his time figuring out how to do a queen vs. king and king mate on a Gustavian board than troll here on chessvariants.org, but that it just my opinion.

- Sam

- Sam

- Sam

P.S. I liked Andy's last comment.

- Sam

Edit: More links added.

- Sam

Another interesting idea is the crab eqivalent of a camel (e4 to d7, f7, b3, and h3), which is even weaker than a crab (colorbound). This piece doesn't have a name, so I'll call it a mirage. The 'mirage' can be combined with a ferz, alfil, or dabbah to make an interesting colorbound piece, or with a wazir to make an interesting non-colorbound piece. 'Mirage' + wazir is probably slightly less powerful than a knight on an 8x8 board, but slightly more powerful than a knight on a 10x10 board.

- Sam

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess/msg/aa184ce18ea1d8ae?dmode=source&hl=en

I do not think he would be overly offended if I reposted his proposed Variant, so here goes:

Super Chess on 14x14 board

 
Piece Symbol Description
 
pawn    P    moves: forward 1, forward 1 or 2 initially
             captures: diagonally forward, all
             promotion: promotes to all but king upon reaching final rank
knight  N    moves: L shaped 2 square in one direction, 1 square at right angle
                    to first direction
             captures: same as moves and occupies that square
bishop  B    moves: Diagonaly any number unless blocked
             captures: diagonaly first enemy in path, and occupies that square
rook    R    moves: Straight line any number unless blocked
             captures: straight line first enemy in path, and occupies square
queen   Q    moves: bishop+rook
             captures: bishop+rook
camel   C    moves: similar to knight but 3 and 1 instead of 2 and 1 (bigger L)
             captures: similar to knight but 3 and 1 instead of 2 and 1
octopus O    moves: knight+bishop
             captures: knight+bishop
shifter S    moves: like king
             captures: like king
jumper  J    moves: 2 squares any direction
             captures: can jump over one enemy piece like a checker, capturing
                       it and occupying the destination square, 2 away from
                       the start square
air     A    moves: 4 squares in any combination (straight+diagonal)
             captures: any enemy along path, stopping at that square
lord    L    moves: rook+knight
             captures: rook+knight
demon   D    moves: like king
             captures: none
             special: any friendly piece touched cannot be captured, other
                      than another demon
faerie  F    moves: like bishop
             captures: like rook
envy    E    moves: like king
             captures: none
             special: give any friendly piece touching other than an envy or
                      pawn, queen like movement and capture capability, in
                      addition to normal abilities, but only for one move if
                      contact is lost on that move. Once contact is lost,
                      piece reverts to normal.
grunt   G    moves: camel+king
             captures: camel+king
             special: if captured, returns to square of origin if not occupied,
                      otherwise lost (square of origin on either side (left or
                      right) of board, permissible)
king    K    moves: 1 square any direction, but not into check, no castling
             captures: 1 square any direction, but not into check
             special: if under attack, and cannot defend, it is checkmated,
                      game over, opponent wins. Stalemate is a loss. No draws
                      accept by agreement of players.
 
Initial board configuration:
 
ernbocqkcobnre
gdflsjaajslfdg
pppppppppppppp
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
d-+-+-+-+-+-+d
D+-+-+-+-+-+-D
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
PPPPPPPPPPPPPP
GDFLSJAAJSLFDG
ERNBOCQKCOBNRE

- Sam

• N then (NW or NE)
• E then (NE or SE)
• S then (SW or SE)
• W then (NW or SW)

An interesting piece is the 'wazir then wazir', which moves as follows:

Leap:

• (N, S, E, or W) then (N, S, E, or W)

I have some other ideas in mind, such as defining riders and 'bulldozers', which I will detail in a later comment.

- Sam

- Sam

I respect copyright; I also don't like the idea of ideas being destroyed because of copyright. I find it somewhat frustrating that countless chess variants from the 20th century (and probably before) are not available online. Encyclopedia of Chess Variants is out of print, and Amazon currently only has one expensive copy available. I think most of the people who invented the variants in the Encyclopedia would have freely published them here if the web and this page existed at the time; the pre-internet model of using books and magazines which you buy to spread information has the advantage that it makes content which you have to pay someone to make available (such as quality novels and stories), but the disadvantage of content no longer being available if the book does not sell.

- Sam

Chess is dead.  OK, let me rephrase that--it was hard to come up with a
decent heading in 16 characters or less.  Chess, as a recreation studied
by humans alone is dead.  With the defeat of world champion Kramnik by a
computer this last October, and the failure of a human to defeat a
computer in a classical tournament since the 1990s, a good move in a chess
position is now found by mechanical calculation instead of human artistry.

What does this mean for chess variants?  It means that the study of
variants will now be greatly computer assisted.  This also means the end
of romantic gambits--no computer will give the king's gambit or other
romantic gambits a second thought.  It also limits tournament options--we
either allow computers to generate moves, or have a honor system that bars
tournaments being played for prizes.  

On the other hand, it does allow the automated creation of opening books. 
Greg Stong did some of this work with his ChessV program; I expanded on his
research to create an article for openings in a variant I have created
myself.  

So, computers have definitely changed the landscape.

I like the new tessellation that this variant uses; there are so many
possible tessellations out there, yet most Chess variants use a plain
square tessellation.  Only sometimes do we use a plain hexagonal
tessellation; far rarer is something radical such as a board using
triangles, parachess [1], or this board.  

I applaud you for trying out a new tessellation!

- Sam

[1] http://www.chessvariants.com/shape.dir/parachess.html

Happy new year everyone!

- Sam

From a message I posted to the old Yahoo group:

There are 1,440 setups in 8x10 chess where the queen is to the left of the queen.

If you add a single faerie piece, there are 12,600 setups for 9x8 chess (with the queen to the left of the queen).

If you add two of a single colorbound faerie piece, there are 36,000 possible 10x8 setups (with the queen to the left and all that). If you add two of the same piece which isn't colorbound, there are 63,000 possible 10x8 setups. If you add two non-colorbound pieces, such as the archbishop (bishop + knight) and the marshall (rook + knight), there are 126,000 possible setups.

126,000 setups vs. 1,440 setups. No wonder why so many more are playable.

We can go even further: If you add three unique non-colorbound pieces to FIDE chess on an 11x8 board, 1,360,800 possible setups (680,400 if we add two of one kind of piece and one of anothe kind of piece, such as two archbishops and a marshall). If we add four unique non-colorbound pieces to the FIDE mix on a 12x8 board, we have 16,329,600 starting positions with the queen to the left of the king. If we insist on making it two pairs of colorbound pieces to a 12x8 board (such as two camels and two camels + bishops), this restricts us: We have only 1,296,000 possible starting positions.

And, even further: If we have a 'Grand Chess'/Shogi setup on a 10x10 board, with the pawns on the third row and two sets of Capablanca Chess pieces (we discard the second king) behind the pawns, we have some 92,201,259,150,000 total possible setups (with the king on the right hand side).

It might take a while for the chess variant community to come with a full opening theory for each and evey one of the above setups. :)

- Sam