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Ideal Values and Practical Values (part 4). Additional details on the values of Chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Joe and Jeremy are talking about fundamental chess units subdivided different ways. Under ''Useful Atoms'' the Master's ''basic geometric units of chess'' here are Ferz, Wazir, Dabbabah, Alfil and Knight, ''the atoms from which other pieces can be formed.'' If anyone is diverging from these five, it takes a lot of explanation to grab the attention of other variantists. Of course 1000 regular Chess Grandmasters would never get beyond Knight, Bishop, Rook and Queen. 95% of them would not even think of a Seirawan-type Queen with Knight compound. Different perspectives, orthodox and variant. Are Rook and Bishop not fundamental to Betza? Actually, Ferz are Wazir really are not fundamental chess units, and Betza is wrong about that, except as recreational discipline --divertissement, entertainment -- because there is no reason to stop at only 1 or only 2. Lavieri's Lion is recent use of one- and two-stepping King-Queen non-royal [different from Winther's Mastodon, updating Paulovits' Pasha and Betza's Woody Rook,in lacking Alfil/Dabbabah knowhow], and it becomes no more natural than mediaeval Courier Chess Man just one-stepping. The only right line chess pieces fundamental are in fact Rook, Bishop and Queen. Every kid from Africa to China knows Rook makes sense and feels right, and ''Wazir'' does not at all. If you show him to go one step straight only, he goes two for contrariness and naturalness both, and so the only agreeable stopping point is none at all, instead all the way across. They didn't realize this about Bishop (as they did about Rook), to the extent Bishop came out of the old Ferz, for couple of centuries. Of course, historically far the oldest chess piece in use is Knight Knight Knight, predating the two millennia in chess-related games; so even Rook and king come out of Knight Knight Knight. But Betza's playthings nonetheless, the fun as can be F-W-D-N-A, are great for just that, playing at a pastime of whatever the syndrome may be called, designer game syndrome.
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jun 1, 2009 11:25 PM UTC:I'm sorry, George, but I would have to disagree with your assessment of the Wazir and Ferz, and the Gold General and Silver General of Shogi would be my counter-example.
Granted it's a toss-up. Wazir or Rook. (''Rook'' would go up to whichever the long dimension of the square-composed rectangular board is, minus one. And please note not like Ramayana's Buddha.) Let's take a vote worldwide. Who's the right line orthogonal/straight guy? I am glad Ralph's IVaPV4 gets now its first three comments in the whole decade of publication.
Actually, this page received a fair number of comments back in 2001 when it was first posted, but they were in the old comment system: see here for the older comments.
(Actually, most or all of this series of articles have comments in the old comment system.)
Can anyone explain to me why color-switching it supposed to be a disadvantage? The colors of squares have no inherent mechanical significance. Color-boundness results in some squares being unreachable, and this can be generalized in a way unrelated to colors; e.g. D plus narrow knight can reach only half the ranks, while D plus wide knight can reach only half the files, and thus presumably have an equal disadvantage even though they can change colors. Trying to generalize 'color-switching', I've come up with: 1. Any series of moves that returns the piece to its starting square will involve an even number of moves, never an odd number. I don't see any obvious reason this would be a disadvantage. 2. The piece does not attack any of the same squares both before and after any move. I can see situations where this would be a disadvantage, but it also seems like an advantage, since it means you can attack more new squares after a move, and thus increases 2-move mobility and (presumably) forking power. By #2, I think NA, ND, and WA are also 'switching' despite having color-preserving moves, as are F, D and A alone.
NA, ND, and WA are definitely not switching. NA can move c1-d3-b2-c4-a3-c1. ND can move x1-d3-b3-c1. WA can move c1-c2-b2-b3-a3-c1. All of these are odd numbers of moves.
Which is why I said they fit the second definition (never continue to threaten the same square after a move), not the first one. I still don't know the 'correct' way to generalize 'color-switching' to generic 'switching' because I don't know why people think it's important.
I was wrong about ND, though.
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