Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 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

Lion Chess[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, May 23, 2013 07:31 PM UTC:
I am not sure about that. It is true that the Queen is also on the left
half of the board. (But only barely so.) Putting the Lion on the King side,
however, would force the players to develop it before they can castle in
that direction. (And it is often much more convenient to castle there, as
on the Queen side you would need an early Queen move, and your King ends up
in a worse place too. But developing a Knight in front of your Pawns is
comparatively safe, as it is well protected, and only has to fear Pawns.
Putting a Lion there makes it a sitting duck for all kind of slider
attacks. The only way to prevent that would be to develop the Lion to e2,
which makes for much less rich opening theory. OTOH, a Lion is very agile,
and perhaps developing it to f3 or g3, and moving from there to a more
central position  might not be very inconvenient. So I am still in doubt.