Comments by SamTrenholme

- Sam

- Sam

- Sam

I just want to note that the Crab is also a piece invented by Ralph Betza that is a half knight.  Betza's crab can move, from e5, to d7, f7, c4, and g4.  It's a useful piece because it is not colorbound and is worth half as much as a knight.  It can be used to create other pieces that are worth about as much as a knight: Crab + Wazir, Crab + Alfil, Crab + Dabbah, and Crab + Ferz, to name just four examples.

Might also be useful in a Capablanca variant to remove some power from the board.

But, I do like the vision of someone being in a hot, sandy desert in a small dark cafe, stuggling to cool down and playing this game to pass the time. Something very romantic about that vision.

That in mind, I now have an open invitation to play this game. We'll see how things work out.

I need to say that, in general, a lot of Chess Variant inventors are more interested in quanity than quality. When we moved the server, no one seemed to care that a number of variants were lost; I had to recover a number of variants from my own personal 2002 backup. In many cases, the inventors of the variants had lost thier .zrf file when making the variant.

I mean, we have thousands of variants here, yet I don't see people doing any play testing or trying to develop an opening stratefy for their variant. Instead, they move on to their next chess variant invention, leaving a variant with little or no testing, no real sense of strategy, and certaintly no opening library.

I have, I think, posted all of one chess variant invention here. I did a lot of work with the variant; in addition to countless Zillions games, I also played (and usually lost) a number of game courier games and even started to develop an opening library. I wish other inventors would care for their inventions as much, instead of making a new invention, maybe making a .zrf and a game courier preset, playing a couple of games, then walking off to invent their next game.

My next invention is one based on a board with both triangles and squares, and is based on ideas I have had since 1994. I may have a complete game by the 2007, or maybe not.

In the meantime, I will continue to play Schoolbook chess.

Again, this is not against any particular people but against an entire community who makes too many games and seems to care too little for each game they invent.

I wonder how hard it would be to add camel + bishop pieces to ChessV's 8x10 board?

- Sam

HRNBQKBNRH
BRNHQKHNRB
RNBHQKHBNR

I like both the names 'Sage' and 'Mage', but like Sage more than Mage,
since M in 8x10 chess can stand for 'Marshall'-the Rook + kNight piece. 


Everything else being equal, I like to have a given piece name use a
letter not otherwise already used for a piece name.

- Sam

Why is it drawish? Because, in the midgame, the common theme in chess is to try and get an attack on you opponents king, often times with a sacrifice. However, if there are two kings, and you have to mate both of them to win, then this very strongly discourages sacrifical play. For, if you make a sacrifice or two, and get one of the opponent's king, your army is now decimated and the other person can easily win by playing the 'exchange down to a favorable endgame' strategy.

Now, having it so you have to get every royal piece to win might make sense in a variant with an obscene amount of power on the board, such as the 'Flying kittens' variants proposed about a year ago.

One thing about internet communities is that it can be difficult to know whether someone is OK if they decide to leave the community, and it can be difficult, if not impossible, to dig up an obituary if they don't have loved ones who know what internet communities they were a part of to tell said communities that the person is no longer with us.

On the topic, V.R. Parton (the guy who invented Alice Chess) invented a games called Double King Chess. This is a symmetrical opening: RNBKQQKBNR; checkmating either king (or attacking both kings at one with a piece that can not be taken) wins the game.

One interesting variant is one where we have one chancellor and two queens. Then the following setups look interesting: RNQBCKBQNR and RQNBCKBNQR, with me preferring the second setup, since the knights are more likely to be used.

Of course, it may make more sense to have, on an 8x10 board, no queen, an Archbishop, and then, from Shogi, have a 'Dragon' (Rook + King) and a Horse (Bishop + King) piece. Here, the archbishop is the most valuable piece, and the power balance on the board may be better. One possible opening setup is RHNBAKBNDR.

• First, we place the bishops. There are 2025 ways of arranging the bishops.
• Next, we place the knights. For each arrangement of bishops, there are 1820 ways to put the knights on the board.
• Next, we place the rooks. For each arrangement of bishops and knights, there are 495 ways to place the rooks.
• Next, we place the Archbishops. For each arrangement of the minor pieces, there are 28 arrangements for the archbishops.
• Next, we place the Marshalls. For each arrangements of all of the above pieces, there are 15 Marshall setups.
• Next, we place the Queens. For all of the above setups, there are 6 ways to have the queens on the board.
• Next we place the king. There are two places he can go. However, this is balanced by the fact we remove all mirror images.

Sorry it took so long to verify your number. This is the first time I have had a computer with an arbitrary precision calculator and net access at the same time in a while (Let's hear it for Ubuntu live CDs).

Edit: Yes, 64-bit computer owners, the above number can easily be calculated using 64-bit integers. I'm still in the 32-bit stone age. Do they even make 64-bit laptops that weigh less than 6 pounds?

But, for people not comfortable with all of the force on a Capablanca Chess board, the question is this: How do we have a set up pieces that is 'balanced', the same way the Capablanca Chess pieces are balanced? Well, the rook, knight, and bishop make sense, since these three pieces combined cover all 24 squares one or two away from where the piece is located. [1]

So, we need some way of naturally extending the movement of the rook, knight, and bishop that doesn't put quite as much force on the board. My idea is based on ideas from Shogi and a variant available in ChessV called royal court chess.

In royal court chess, there is a piece called a 'crowned knight'. The crowned knight is a non-royal piece with both the moves of the knight and the king. This is a interesting way of improving the knight without making the rules needlessly complicated.

I proposed extending the idea of the 'crowned knight' to the rook and bishop: The 'Crowned Rook', which is a non-royal piece with the move of rook + king; and the 'crowned bishop', which has the combined moves of bishop and king. I'm not quite sure how valuable these three pieces are, but their combined value is considerably less than the combined value of the Archbishop (Knight + Bishop), Chancellor/Marshall (Rook + knight), and Queen. The crowned knight and bishop are probably each worth about a pawn more than a rook, and the crowned rook is probably about 2.5 pawns more valuable than a rook. 19.5 pawns value total; compare this to the 25 pawn value of the three combined pieces in Capablanca chess.

So, the next question is this: What is the ideal starting setup for this 'Crowned Chess' variant? There probably isn't a single ideal opening setup, but I am curious what ideas other editors have for the opening setup.

- Sam

Footnote:

[1] We can take this idea all of the way, and make a variant of Cherry's Capablanca Shantraj where the rook is wazir + dabbah, and the bishop is ferz + alfil, and the queen is the combination of those two pieces. However, Chess variants already have a hard enough time attracting interest without us making the movement of all the non-royal pieces different, making the game even harder to learn.

For example, I only think color balance for pieces matter if the pieces are colorbound. It doesn't matter to me what colors non-colorbound pieces end up on, since those pieces can change color at will.

As another point, I no longer think it's essential that each and every pawn in the opening setup is defended. I think it's a good idea for white to be unable to threaten mate on his first move, since otherwise Black can be prevented from making natural developing moves in the opening; having all pawns defended stops these kinds of threats. One of my proposals posted in this thread, 'Narcotic chess' (RQNBKMBNAR), for example, has an undefended flank pawn, but appears to be a perfectly playable variant. The original Carerra setups (RANBQKBNMR and RMNBQKBNAR) have the same undefended flank pawn 'problem', but again appear perfectly playable.

I am not sure every pawn around the king has to be defended two times or more. FIDE chess has had, for over 500 years, the King Bishop's pawn defended by only the king, and this has not stopped FIDE chess from becoming the most popular Chess variant that we will ever have. However, I can see why one may not want these weakly defended pawns in a Capa setup, since there is 18 pawns more power (2 more pawns, the archbishop, and the matshall/chancellor) on the board than in FIDE Chess.

One thing I like to see in an opening setup is a Chess-like arrangement of the minor pieces. One problem with, say, RNBQKAMBNR, is that moving the center pawns forward two squares blocks the diagonals of the bishops, and it is difficult to make the knights active players in the game. The nice thing about, say, RQNBKABNMR, is that the knights, bishops, and center pawns are naturally developed without getting in each other's way.

So, in conclusion, since I have my own ideals about the initial position of the pieces, I will come up with a different opening setup than other chess variant inventors may decide upon,

- Sam