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zebra vs knight[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Nov 8, 2017 05:00 AM UTC:

The plain zebra part was more a theoretical question. In my variants I don't use plain leapers, but I think it is useful to think about them in order to see their contribution :)!


John Davis wrote on Tue, Nov 7, 2017 09:27 PM UTC:

I'm not a programmer, so I can only offer my seat of the opinion. I have played Herculean, Cataclysm, Chess on a Really Big Board and Golden Age Chess on a Really Big Board, and I would guess that by 14x14 a Zebra is starting to be better than a Knight. But why use a plain Zebra? Most seem to use a Wizard now instead of a Camel. It's easy to come up with new major pieces, but not so easy to make a good minor piece. I'm a bit prejudice,  but I'm a big fan of the WZ Sorcerer. 


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Nov 7, 2017 07:40 PM UTC:

What happens here, nobody cares about this topic, or no one is confident enough to venture an answer, or am I just planely impacient :)?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Nov 5, 2017 04:12 PM UTC:

While playing herculean chess against sxg, I camed across the following question. At which board size if any a plain zebra (no enhancements) becomes equal or stronger than a plain knight (no enhancements). On 8x8  a zebra borders on uselessness, on 10x10 is pretty weak but on 12x12 seems ok, I guess still weaker, as it has more outside the board jumps and also is a bit more akward (it triangulates worse). But as you enlarge the board speed becomes an significant advantage. Also if the case of only one square away attacking pawns (like the orthodox ones, or berolinas) the zebra may attack behind pawn lines, this can also be small opening advantage. Also I think that WZ or FZ will gain even faster on the WN and FN as the one-steps help combat akwardness :)! (FZ seems weaker as ferz squares can be reached by 2 zebra moves anyway :) ).  Moreover in this last case the LW should be somwhere in between but as LF is colour bound we'd better not include it in this calculation :)!


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