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Symmetrical Chess CollectionA game information page
. Collection of several large symmetric chess variants with only line pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Joseph Ruhf wrote on Thu, May 4, 2017 03:01 AM UTC:

True as it doubtless may be, your comment about the minimum amount of material loss which will be decisive in top-level Chess is not really terribly germane to the subject. Nor, in fact, do you yourself seem to think the same of the rarity of checkmate in top-level Chess as you have mentioned it only parenthetically.

More germanely to the subject, this game has no non-royal piece type which has a move set which is not strictly a subset of that of the royal piece. This is a problem because it now requires a two-piece battery merely to give a safe check to this royal piece, to say nothing of what it would require to give a checkmate. On top of this, the proposed royal piece is a Queen, which is already problematic on its own due to how freely any type of line piece may run around the board unless it is restricted from passing through an en prise position, notwithstanding that the proposed board has no horizontal or vertical edge. Thus it is that perpetual flight of the final opposing royal piece should appear to be the only reasonably possible conclusion to play, which is why he had to make it a victory condition to "allow" this to happen.


Glenn Nicholls wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2017 10:31 AM UTC:

Of course, at the very top level of Chess, the loss of a Rook or even a minor piece is usually decisive.


Glenn Nicholls wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2017 10:24 AM UTC:

I made this aforesaid comment because an encirclement or trapping and then capture of a Queen (King in my variants) is a rare (at high level Chess) occurance, and one that I find very exciting in a game.


Glenn Nicholls wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2017 10:14 AM UTC:

Of course the straightforward capture and loss of a Queen (King in my variants) means a loss of the game almost as certainly as that of the "Prime" Royal-piece - other perhaps than total beginners.


Joseph Ruhf wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2017 01:03 AM UTC:Average ★★★

Are you talking about victory by "allowing" perpetual flight of the opponent's final Queen? That is not the same as eliminating or subjugating a royal piece, which is the real object of a Chess variant. If it was necessary for that to be ruled a victory condition due to the mix of piece types in play, then the game is not really perfect.

Besides this, when any piece may ultimately ascend to royalty, the paradox is then whether the piece type named as "royal" is "really royal". The problem with naming a game which throws up this paradox as a "Chess variant" is that it then has no real royal piece, and Chess is defined as having a set of piece types which are royal and another set which, and any promotion to royalty must be a privileged promotion open only to certain piece types. Once again, if you were so strict about what the rules were to be like that you made yourself need to do this, then the game is not really perfect.

In summary, the game, although interesting, is not really perfect nor really a Chess variant.


💡📝Derek Nalls wrote on Wed, Oct 19, 2016 01:07 PM UTC:

Spherical Chess 400 description

http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots/texts/descript.pdf

The section entitled "game-ending conditions", pages 35-40, addresses this matter that you mistakenly presumed that I neglected.  Apparently, you are stuck in conceiving of endgames in terms of standard Chess with a crippled king.


Joseph Ruhf wrote on Wed, Oct 19, 2016 04:55 AM UTC:Average ★★★

You have done much excellent work on this game. However, you have evidently missed the point that a game about subjugation or elimination of some royal piece(s) needs said royal piece(s) to be tamed by some form of restricted mobility-whether by design to be range limited or by soft or hard prohibition from seeing its/their opposite(s) along an otherwise open “line” (in Dr. David Li's terminology telepotency)-and also by check if it is a singleton. In your case, telepotency is the only restriction which will allow you to keep with your idea of using only line pieces (I do not dismiss it as entirely uninteresting although I find flawed your reasoning to get to it and disagree with its premises).


Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Fri, Jun 23, 2006 01:05 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
well done, congrats

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