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Scramble. 36 pieces scrambled on the board. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Tue, Feb 6 08:36 AM UTC:

This page is almost ready. Please leave your feedback below.


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Tue, Feb 6 03:17 PM UTC:

I guess this page is ready. So, what do you think?


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Tue, Feb 6 07:02 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 03:17 PM:

My my, what have we here? A variant so out of the box and original while also staying mostly true to Chess. A brilliant idea with a lot of potential. Of course, there are kinks, so lets get into those.

Each player has 18 pieces.

Perhaps a list explaining how many of each piece?

  • Pieces that move orthogonally (Queens and Rooks) are not allowed to be placed next to the reserved squares in the next few moves. This is to allow for both Kings the chance to come into the game. 
  • If too many "reserved squares" are under attack by pieces of the same color, players have to make sure that at least one square per King is "safe"(not under direct attack). 
  • When placing Pawns on the board, they also have to block eventual attacks on Kings coming from across the board. 
  • Long range pieces (Queens, Rooks, and Bishops) have to be placed on the board in such a way that at least two "reserved squares" are safe for placing the Kings. 
  • Short range pieces (Knights and Pawns) will have to balance the board against too much control of the long range pieces. 

Perhaps a better way of doing the setup would be to place the two Kings straight away, and then go from there, keeping each army on its own half of the board.

A problem that I quickly noticed is that after setup it may be possible for White or Black to win in a single move (example, in the last diagram White can play Qxh3#).


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Tue, Feb 6 07:52 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 07:02 PM:
  1. Perhaps reducing the number of Queens to two, while increasing the number of Knights might solve that problem. So, what do you think?
  2. If we place the Kings first and keep all pieces of the same colour on their own half of the board, the four Pawns can just be arranged on a single line in the third rank.

💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Wed, Feb 7 08:32 AM UTC:

I believe this page is ready.


Diceroller is Fire wrote on Wed, Feb 7 09:56 AM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 08:32 AM:

Sounds good, playable at least at the first glance.


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Wed, Feb 7 10:15 AM UTC in reply to Diceroller is Fire from 09:56 AM:

Thank you. I'm glad you like this game.


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Thu, Feb 8 07:38 PM UTC:

This page looks good enough to be approved.

The rules may be slightly unclear in some places, but overall they are clear enough that approval is warranted.


Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Feb 9 12:55 AM UTC:

How are the pieces introduced to the board? Players alternate turns placing their pieces?

You don't need to separate the pawn and king placements; since they're forced, just place them all at once.


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Fri, Feb 9 09:43 AM UTC in reply to Ben Reiniger from 12:55 AM:

I just updated the rules following your suggestions. Thanks.


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Tue, Feb 13 08:10 AM UTC:
promoChoice=NBRQ shuffle=NBRQ graphicsDir=/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/ whitePrefix=w blackPrefix=b graphicsType=png squareSize=50 symmetry=none pawn::::c3,d3,e3,f3,,c6,d6,e6,f6 knight:N:::b1,c1,h2,a4,,a7,h7,d8,g8 bishop::::d1,a3,h3,h4,,a6,a8,b8,f8 rook::::f1,h1,a2,,a5,h5,h8 queen::::a1,g1,,h6,c8 king::::e1,,e8

💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Tue, Feb 13 08:16 AM UTC:

Can anybody help me adding the shuffle function for this interactive diagram?

This is Version 1 of the game (pieces of the same colour stay in their own half of the board). 

Also, Kings and Pawns have fixed positions. 


H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Feb 13 08:48 AM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 08:16 AM:

That is quite easy: I just added the line shuffle=NBRQ . That causes all of the mentioned pieces to be randomly permuted over their initial positions. (Only when you press the Restart button of the AI, though; the initial Diagram always shows the 'nominal' position, which might be important for knowing what the castling partners are.)

Since this isn't really a shuffle but a placement game, you did not specify any restrictions on the shuffle, assuming that the common sense of the players would avoid undesirable positions (such as all your Bishops on the same shade, or an unprotected black piece attacked by white). A random shuffle of course ignores such considerations. A rule like 'no unprotected attacked pieces' would be too complex to enforce anyway. But people can always reshuffle if a position comes up they consider defective.

If you post in HTML, please take care that your Comment contains as many </div> as <div> tags. Otherwise it would mess up the remainder of the command list. I had to add an extra </div>, because all other Comments were appearing inside yours! (It could be worse; I have seen cases where unbalanced tags made the entire remainder of the list disappear, including the link to edit the offending post, which made it really hard to recover from that.)

The way you formulated

Pawns and Kings are the only pieces that remain in their own half of the board in Version 2 of the game. 

implies that all other pieces have to be put on the opponent half, which is of course not true. The sentence seems redundant anyway; you already stated that K and P have fixed positions, and readers are not so stupid that they would have to be told the positions in which the Diagram shows them are on their own half.

 


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Tue, Feb 13 09:33 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 08:48 AM:

Thank you for your help and suggestion. I have removed the unnecessary rule.

I tested it and it works. 

If I wanted to create this version on Game Currier how do I apply the shuffle function? 


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Wed, Feb 14 01:27 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Good news! You can play Scramble against Stockfish on Chess.com. 

You have no idea just how insane this game is.

Here is how to do it:

  • Go to Chess,com
  • Go to Learn / Analysis /Set Up Position / Clear Board
  • Place pieces on the board according to the rules of Scramble
  • Practice vs Computer
  • Change Bot
  • Play!

Diceroller is Fire wrote on Wed, Feb 14 01:30 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 01:27 PM:

And on Lichess also with real Stockfish. I disgust if Chess.com engine is Stockfish, though.


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Wed, Feb 14 03:02 PM UTC in reply to Diceroller is Fire from 01:30 PM:

On Chess.com this game is just a few clicks away. On Lichess you have to write the FEN Code for every single game.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Feb 14 04:26 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 01:27 PM:

What is scramble?


💡📝Florin Lupusoru wrote on Wed, Feb 14 04:53 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 04:26 PM:

You may call it shuffle. But I wanted a more original name. It means mixing things together.


🔔Notification on Mon, Feb 19 07:33 AM UTC:

The author, Florin Lupusoru, has updated this page.


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