Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.


[ Help | Earliest Comments | Latest Comments ]
[ List All Subjects of Discussion | Create New Subject of Discussion ]
[ List Earliest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]

Single Comment

Chess with Mixed Pawns. Four normal and four Berolina pawns per player. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2010 04:30 PM UTC:
Chess With Different Arrays, see after the last slashes. /// To Gilman's, in that sentence ''must be'' is Betza's witty qualifier. Betza means to summon to mind the usual 2...Q-h4 counterpart to two-move mate, or Fool's mate, as a Helpmate by cooperating worst play. Some CVs even have mate in opening move by Black, and others take three moves. When Betza put this up, he really was annoyed someone beat him to a CV-facsimile Sam Loyd 15-puzzle, his rationale for writing hastily thinking someone else might come up with 1/2 Ortho-Pawn plus 1/2 Berolina. The sentence Gilman finds is sort of deliberate nonsense. Betza probably searched for another avenue of quick checkmate with Berolinas instead and did not find one by symmetric arrays (you would have to re-position the King). The sentence is wrong. He bothers with it because in regular Ortho-chess line-up and in Betza's 1/2 and 1/2 line-up, either King's Bishop can mate in three, and only Black Queen two; and 'd3-g6' would figure as move 3 not 2 -- close enough. /// What about Betza's puzzle ''One More Thing''? Whose position is better?