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Symmetric Chess. (Updated!) Variant with two Queens flanking the King and Bishops Conversion Rule. (9x8, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Kevin Pacey wrote on Tue, Oct 3, 2017 01:52 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

The interesting bishop's conversion rule makes this variant tricky to handle in the opening stages. On a 9x8 board, bishops are only clearly slightly better than knights, the development of which can also be tricky to decide on. The extra queen per side make this a variant rich in possibilities.

My tentative estimates for the piece values of this variant would be: P=1; N=3.5 approx.; B=3.75; R=5.5; Q=10.25 and the fighting value of K=3.5 approximately (though naturally it cannot be traded). Note that a N has slightly less excellent central squares on an empty 9x8 board compared to on a 10x8 board (in Capablanca Chess I rate also rate a N as worth 3.5 approx., but actually a little less than on 9x8 when not rounding to the nearest 0.25), but the 9x8 board being somewhat smaller seems to at the least offset this IMHO, as a N can have a slightly easier time getting from one extreme flank to the other.