Comments by judgmentality

My chess clock arrived in the mail this week. I'm going to play in a local chess tournament this weekend, the Arlington Open. This will be the first time I've played in a chess tournament in well over a year. My rating is not very high so don't expect much of me. I'm also out of practice and haven't studied it much lately. I'll let you know how I do.

Larry Kaufman and his son tend to do very well there. One of them usually wins it. Click on the Larry Kaufman link to find out something about him that will interest chess variant players. As a matter of fact, I think I'll ask to interview him! Maybe I'll also ask if he wants to start a local chess variants club with me.

Susan Polgar Reports: 

'Game over! Black hung a Rook! A shocking ending to the most bizzare
match! Unification has been achieved! Congratulations to Kramnik! Well
done!'

No, after a King is castled, the king only moves one space at a time, just
like before.

In standard chess, it is indeed possible to capture the piece that is checking. Escape by fleeing is not the only option. Interposition of another piece is a third option in some cases, but not when attacked by a knight, the only jumping piece.

I recommend this excellent beginner's book for a review of some of the different ways one can check and extricate oneself from check.

An aside: There is a chess variant called Wuss featuring a piece that always must flee - can only flee - when attacked. You might try it out some time. It is very interesting.

Happy 2007, and thanks to the many of you in the chess variants community
who have been so generous and kind to me. You've made this a very special
year for me, thank you. Looking forward to finishing old games and starting
new ones in 2007, finishing old interviews, posting them and starting new
ones.

A couple of us have been meeting in the Washington, DC area. Any other
chess variant enthusiasts around here?

Also, it links to Chego which takes the notion of drops to the outer limits.

Excellent question.

Joe's correct. It's an unfortunate restriction. If I had the programming skills at my fingertips, I would add a variant where the options of movement were indicated by colors that shifted to reflect pathways of newly formed aggregates.

Meanwhile, Color Rider Chess doesn't suffer from this problem but because of presumed difficulties of envisioning aggregate pathways, I contracted the board so I fear it might be piece heavy. Unfortunately, Color Rider Chess imposes its own limit of forcing one to match colors. Again, I did that to un-complicate the visuals.