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Hopping Sliders[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Daniel Zacharias wrote on Wed, Mar 2, 2022 09:52 PM UTC:

Are there any games that use pieces that slide in a straight line but always hop over the first square? I know there's the picket, but that doesn't jump.


Bn Em wrote on Wed, Mar 2, 2022 11:04 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 09:52 PM:

The Google Custom Search turns up this when searching for ā€˜skiā€rookā€™: https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/abc-chess.html

Apparently it contains a (leaping) skiā€bishop, though no actual skiā€rook. Only one I could find though. EDIT: Never mind, apparently it's just an example. And all the other usages of skiā€sliders or Pickets (and their compounds) seem to be lame. Which leaves only a game which I've had in mind but not yet got round to writing up, where a leapingā€picket+wazir promotes from a Phoenix/Waffle. And arguably (albeit failing the ā€˜straight lineā€™ condition) the original GA unicorn/rhinoceros

I must admit I'm surprised these aren't more popularā€¦


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Thu, Mar 3, 2022 01:36 AM UTC in reply to Bn Em from Wed Mar 2 11:04 PM:

Where does the ski- name come from then?


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Mar 3, 2022 07:55 AM UTC:

The Heavenly Tetrarch in Tenjiku Shogi has ski-slide moves, but combines them with igui on the skipped square. The Wyvern in the Daring Dragons army of CwDA has a sideway ski-slide. (This caused a lot of trouble when programming it in the KingSlayer engine.)


Bn Em wrote on Thu, Mar 3, 2022 04:26 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 01:36 AM:

ā€˜Skiā€ā€™ seems to date back at least as far as Jelliss' ā€™All the King's Menā€˜, which would seem to be a work about pieces but not an actual game (I can't seem to access it though, and fsr the link in the Alphab. Index is to https://www.chessvariants.com/link/). Idk if he got his terminology from another source himself

I knew I must have forgotten somethingā€‰ā€”ā€‰looks like it was indeed Tenjiku's Tetrarch


Ben Reiniger wrote on Thu, Mar 3, 2022 05:10 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 04:26 PM:

The correct external link page for All the King's Men is https://www.chessvariants.com/link/pcAlltheKingsMen (a semantic version of https://www.chessvariants.com/index/external.php?itemid=pcAlltheKingsMen).

There Jelliss references himself in a '73 The Problemist article, which somewhat remarkably are available online at https://www.theproblemist.org/mags.pl?type=tp. Clicking and searching through the issues, I find Ski pieces defined on page 387 of the November/December issue 285.


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2022 01:54 AM UTC in reply to Ben Reiniger from Thu Mar 3 05:10 PM:

Thank you! It looks like ski-whatever is the only name anyone's used for these pieces.


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2022 07:41 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 01:54 AM:

Ski-whatever is a bizarre name to my ears. Like if the piece was skiing. What's the meaning of ski- in English in this context?


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2022 01:35 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:41 AM:

In English, skiing is a winter sport that involves sliding on snow with a long plank attached to each foot. The piece name probably refers to a ski jump, in which a skier goes down a ramp that sends him up into the air for a while before touching ground.


Bn Em wrote on Sat, Mar 5, 2022 02:05 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Fri Mar 4 01:54 AM:

It looks like ski-whatever is the only name anyone's used for these pieces.

Wellā€¦ strictly speaking Gilman extended (in M&B06) the name Picket, as well as its orthogonal and 3Dā€/hexā€diagonal counterparts (resp. Pocket and Packet) and their forwardā€only counterparts (Piker/Poker/Paker) and compounds (typically with the suffix āŸØā€onāŸ©, as in e.g. Fezbaon for H.G.'s Lame Duck), to include pieces which leap over the first cell, or indeed the last or any single intermediate oneā€‰ā€”ā€‰these latter three being resp. earlyā€ lateā€ and flexiā€leap versions of the usually Stepping pieces.

It seems he only ever used the stepping form in his actual games though (though it seems skiā€ itself is (or at least originates as) problemist usage, which fwiw Gilman tended to be dismissive of, if not without his reasons)


Bn Em wrote on Tue, Mar 7, 2023 01:33 AM UTC:

While browsing I came across another couple of games with skiā€sliders: Quang Trung Chess has a skiā€rook from its third edition (except the fourth, where it's a skiā€queen); the comments on the 4thā€ed. page here also reveal Snark Hunt's Boojum, also a skiā€queen (and its Snark, which moves as either king or boojum but demotes to the latter when moving as such)


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