Ratings & Comments

updated March 30, 2002: Corrected the Bowman move (it wasn't registering
when the square to capture was off-board).

updated April 7, 2002: Corrected castling in Quantum-0, -I (one side was
impossible, both sides ignored intervening pieces.  Argh.)

Oops. It seeme I misremembered what the Spirit told me in my dream, for
when I tried to play the game it was too easy to end up in an impasse with
no good way to break it; and the reason was clearly that the Go Aways were
not performing their intended role.

Then I tried a few games in which the Go Away moved by leaping two squares
Rookwise or by moving one square diagonally, and things seemed to work much
better -- in fact, just about exactly right, in conformance to the original
vision of the game.

It is funny how the Wounded Fiend seems to be such an unimportant piece,
when it was the original inspiration for the game.

Under 'Interactions', it should be added that

'Leaping pieces can cross unharmed a square seen by a Basilisk, for their
talons never touch the ground and therefore the Basilisk does not see
them.'

The interactions are so complicated! I need to make a chart to see if I
left anything else out.

If we created higher dimensional analogues of the Feeble/Weak/Weakest
pieces, would we be able to make a playable higher-dimensional CV with them
(perhaps even a Chess For Any Number of Dimensions)?

I am grateful for your effusive comments.

There will be more on the subject, as I like the game and have analyzed the
Weakest K versus Weakest King endgame -- it was very interesting.

But at the moment, I've gotten out a chessboard and some coins (with which
to mark mummies and statues) and am studying the play of the Game of
Nemoroth.

A Wounded Fiend (not 'friend' unless you are a truly scary creature) is
impeded by mummies, as indeed a Rook would be. Notice also that it cannot
retrace its steps because of its own ichor, and therefore, as Azgoroth once
said, 'carries within it the seeds of its own destruction'. (The endgame
where each side has one Wounded Fiend and nothing else can be quite
interesting.)

This game is tough to get used to. For a while I thought I had made a major
rules error, but in fact when a Leaf Pile engulfs, the mummy does not
appear until it moves on, and so the Leaf Pile is vulnerable to being
engulfed by an enemy Leaf Pile. If it were not so, the first player would
attack with Leaf Pile (engulfing his own Human for greater speed) and win
by force.

Rook-Level Chess is a very nice idea. Of course, the Queen isn't
R-level...

As for K+ND versus K, confining the K is tricky but it can be done.

Example: BKb8 WKc6, White ND e4, Black's move 1...Kc8 2. Nd6+ Kb8 3. Kb6
Ka8 4. NDc8+ Kb8 5. NDc6+ and 6. ND a6 mate.

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.

I've heard vague rumours that this game, or a game very much like it, is
still played at Miskatonic University...

The excellent rating applies to presentation and originality. I have not
playtested this game (yet). Truth be told, I'm not sure I *want* to! :)

When Nemoroth finally appears, you will be amazed by the piece called the
Wounded Fiend, and the distant resemblance to the Tron Queen.

There must be something in the air that makes people come up with similar
ideas at nearly the same time.

A Pawn or piece must be attacked in order to be overprotected. I said that,
right?

'and dynamic' ... 'where checkmating the opponent could also checkmate
you!' means that the enemy K is defended several times (but of course not
attacked) so that when you attack the enemy K it becomes overprotected and
gives check to your nearby King. I could have made that clearer, right? But
you're correct, even the closest reading of this doesn't really say whether
it's recursive. Yes, why not recursive, gosh darn it and gosh darn it
again?

If you could overprotect an unattacked piece, this would 'merely' be a new
(and perhaps an excellent) form of Relay Chess.

So, should add a line that the powers gained by an overprotected piece can
be used to overprotect another piece.

Should add a line 'therefore you can destroy your opponent's overprotection
by moving your attacker away'.

And should add the explanation of how giving check[mate] can check[mate]
yourself.

Better now?

Author's note: I'd like to see this in Zillions.
--Adam Norberg

It's amazing what range can be found among these entries, unified only by
one simple requirement and the ethereal concept of 'chess'.  This was fun!

This appears to be an excellent game, with a lot of thought and effort.

Is it a chess variant? Not really, even though it uses chess pieces. It's a
mathematical (topology) abstract game, and you might find many fans for it
in rec.games.abstract -- give it a try!

Many abstract mathematical games become popular and widely played, but the
market for them is not 'chess variant' people. 

I haven't tried Chain of Fools, but if it's as good as it looks you'd be
doing yourself a big favor by taking the game over to rec.games.abstract,
where you can find folks who will really appreciate it.

Detail mode.  This is how I use the comments:

   I arrive at the What's New page via bookmark.

   If there is a new topic of interest, I investigate, and comment if
inspired.

   If the 'last comment' time is more recent than the last time I logged
on, I review the recent comments. 

A minimal visit is two clicks (What's New, recent comments).  Usually I
visit at least every other day.  If the comments were in summary, I would
have to expand each one to see what it's about.  

By way of explanation, I attempt to reduce the amount of typing and mousing
I do to a minimum.  Many of my older, professional IT colleagues have
become diabled due to repetitive motion injuries.  I have many years left
to work, and I spend 8 hours a day in front of my workstation earning a
living, then come home and play with my personal computer.  I would like to
be able to enjoy my computer in retirement without wrist braces and voice
response.