Ratings & Comments

Okay, but I don't believe that the Chancellor is worth less than the Q. The
midgame forking power of a piece that moves in 12 directions is quite
amazing, the Chancellor has exceptional ability to save an inferior game by
giving perpetual check, and finally,

the drawn cases of K+Q versus K+P are wins in the endgame K+NR vs K+P.

Of course there are positions that favor the Q, but all in all, my
experience says they are equal.

Question: can a wounded friend move over (but obviously not stop on) a
square occupied by a mummy?  i am not sure.

if anybody wants to try this game with me by email, send to
good7972@hotmail.com

Leaving rubble pieces behind as the TronQueen slides is the problematic
part, because (and I've run into this problem again and again) there's no
(direct) way to generate a move that creates more than one piece.

The solution that leaps to mind is to have so-called 'empty' squares be
dummy pieces with no images, and turn multiple ones into Walls at the
appropriate time (which is also problematic, but doable).  That's probably
what I'll have to do, but it means reimplementing all the Chess moves so
that chess pieces are trading places with dummy pieces instead of moving to
empty squares.  Capturing means trading places with the captured piece and
turning it into a dummy.  There are lots of things that could go wrong and
strange bugs that would surface.

The two-board approach meant that the dummies could cover the underboard
while the chess pieces moved about on the overboard.  When you play the
game, you only see one board.  The second board occupies the same pixels. 
It's just an implementation device.

Um, okay, but Black has 2 doublings on each flank and W only one; and
1...a7-b6 already exploits a doubling to tie W down a tiny bit. 

Have you considered slanted escalators on a 9x9 board?

On the 8x8 board, it seems to me that the clumsiness of Bishops should be
regarded as an opportunity to find some other piece that fits the game
better. Perhaps not as strong as a Rhinorider.

Pieces have to use their own movement powers, so isn't it more of a
staircase than an escalator? And so wouldn't ascending pieces get tired?

It's too late at night, I'm getting silly.

Very interesting.

1. At first sight, the board seems unbalanced because a Black R at b6
attacks
both b2 and c2, but a WR b3 does not get its power doubled.

I would suggest that in the long run this advantage is much greater than
W's advantage of first move.

2. The Bf1 can't go to c4, right? Perhaps Bishops should be replaced by
something else. (Not zFF, that would increase Black's advantage.)

3. A Knightrider on a6 attacks both f2 and e2, right? And a Rose on h6
attacks both d3 and e3, and therefore... interesting.

It recently occurred to me that I might have named the Zombie an Iron
Golem so that its dissolution by ichor would be a nethack reference.

But perhaps that would have been inappropriate after all. Lovecraft never
played a game of Nethack in his life.

'Favors Black, you think? Then perhaps you will be willing to offer me
substantial odds as we play a game for some enormous stake of money, 
perhaps a penny on a1 doubled on each successive square?'

I had almost put the above statement into the story of getting a regular
chessplayer to play Chigorin Chess, somewhere after the part where 'variant
rhymes with deviant and that starts with d and rhymes with t and stands for
trouble.', and way after the part where the regular chessplayer says with a
sneer is that some kind of fairy chess.... (I'm not suggesting that
you're
the offensive non-PC 'regular chessplayer'; the misinformation
about relative values of N and B is part of general unwisdom, that's
all.)

Read any monograph on the Chigorin Defense. You'll find that many 
players now believe the N to be superior in the early stages of the game,
which agrees with my findings on the theory of chess values so I think
it must be right.

Given the advantage of the first move to go with the advantage of fast
development, the *white* side in Chigorin Chess probably has a large
advantage. In order to Castle K-side, Black needs to move two Pawns and two
Bishops; and one of those P moves looks suspiciously like a weakening
move.
White can go 5.O-O at the earliest, but Black can choose to go 3...O-O;
think about it!

And, of course, this is the whole point of Chigorin Chess! You can get a
'regular chessplayer' to play, because he will want to prove that the
Bishops are so much superior...

Wow!!  

Who said theme doesn't count in abstract games?  I want to play this, but I
think I'm going to be disapointed when the pieces remain silent.  I want to
see a ZRF, but not too soon.  Whoever does it needs to do a good job on the
graphics, not to mention audio, to do the game justice.

'What eldritch noise did I hear?'  Perhaps the screech of the El.

I thought this page was good becuase it gave you all the rules.  They wer
eeasy to understand and showed diagrams for furthur clarification

Apart from the paradox problem, the need to take into account temporary
powers makes assessment of overprotection a bit complicated. 

I would suggest ignoring temporary powers in assessing overprotection.