Gary Gifford wrote on Mon, May 1, 2006 12:33 PM EDT:
Jeremy: Thanks for the game compliments for Joe and me. Much appreciated.
On your other note: I looked briefly at Gess, and noticed that those stones
move and that I will need to revisit the rules to get a better feel for
that game.
In regard to the other conversation (with Joe), Joe stated, 'I look at a
game as (almost always) having 3 components, pieces, rules and board. Go
stones, X's and O's, chessmen, they're all the same in this view, the
game pieces. The difference is in the rules: the 1st two
games' play involves placing the pieces on the board in an advantageous
way; chess already has the pieces on the board, play involves moving the
pieces advantageously.'
Response: But GO stones, X's, and O's, unlike chess pieces, lack
mobility once placed... it is the 'zero-mobility' that is of interest
here.
My point was simply that large boards are a good home for long-range
pieces and more types of pieces. Saying that this is not the case by
using GO for comparision is where I disagree, simply because GO (as it has
existed for 4,000 years) is simply not a Chess-like game. The fact that
pieces do not move is very important here.
So I am more inclined to look at Turkish Great Chess from the 1700's,
Freeling's Grand Chess, Trice's Gothic Chess, etc. when discussing Big
Board CVs. And though GO uses a big board, it still is not a CV. On a
related note, I am playing a game of Duke of Rutland. It is a large
variant with conventional pieces and one excpetion piece (moves like a
Rook or King) ... to me that board's size is almost crying for more
mowerful pieces and a few different piece types. To replace existing
pieces with shorter range ones, or to reduce the exisiting (limited
variety) would make that game worse.
