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The Fighting Fizzies. An Experimental Army for Chess with Different Armies.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 11, 2010 10:11 AM UTC:
> So Muller's nomination(#30) now becomes instead re-interpreted as for
> all Chess Different Armies on 64, since he dabbles in Betza too
> with approval.

Most certainly not! My nominaton is specifically for Spartan Chess, i.e the
Spartan army vs. FIDE. Most armies proposed for CDA are awful and offending
my taste. Apart from FIDE the Clobberers are really the only army that has
pieces of high-enough regularity to not qualify as 'ugly'. But it falls
short a long way by the imaginative design of the Spartan army, with its
dual Kings, the completely novel duple-check rule, and the alternative
Hoplite Pawn.

So the fact that 'I dabble in Betza' can NOT be taken as evidence
that a nomination of Spartan Chess can be taken as nomination of CDA in
general, anymore as the fact that I dabble in Shogi means that Spartan
Chess meand Shogi, or the fact that I have dabbed in Falcon Chess means
that Spartan Chess means Falcon Chess...

George Duke wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 11:52 PM UTC:
Here is Aronson's different armies and Betza's study,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=622, back at comment only number 622. They all should be 39 points, as Lawson claims for Pizza Kings after his calibration.
http://www.chessvariants.org/d.betza/chessvar/cda/meticulous.html represents Meticulous Mashers by Betza.  There are over ten more Chess Different Armies, some only in comments, and let's put them up occasionally as I know where they all are and in that they are each nominated as per below. To evaluate at NextChess they will all be thrown together. So Muller's nomination(#30) now becomes instead re-interpreted as for all Chess Different Armies on 64, since he dabbles in Betza too with approval. That is the way Schoolbook(#10) represents all the dozens of Carrera-Capablancas as well. Therefore, Lawson's Pizza Kings and Streetman's Spartan, Aronson's F.F. as well as all the Betzas in the genre will mutually reinforce as the one category inclusive. Then the determination will be how the lot on regular slight 64 stands up to Hatch's Fantasy Grand(#17) on big 100 squares.  The intention has been to exclude Betza beyond Black Ghost(#18), but the joint production will solve the CDA problem arising in Betza's already stating it is presumptive #1 of year 2100.

George Duke wrote on Sat, Jun 14, 2008 10:46 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
Aronson to be next prolificist to study in couple of follow-ups, please re-familiarize, even if not having time to play each CV, all of these. Amphora, Anti-King, Chaturanga-4-84, Cyclical Armies, White Elephant, Transactional, Train Wreck, Toto40, Toe-to-Toe, Star Pool, Snark Hunt, Ruddigore, Rolling Kings, Rococo, Royal Amazon, Prisoner's Escape. That's about half for now. Here separating into Right Rhino and Left Rhino also eliminates their multi-path character. The piece named after Betza, the Gnohmon, in this Army for Chess Different Armies is fbNfbWnH. f means forward, b back, and 'H' come from Betza's article ''Ideal & Practical Values V'' for (0,3) mover non-leaping. Gilman does not actually re-name the latter component with (0,3) Tripper, because that one fully leaps the fixed length.

Andy Maxson wrote on Sat, Feb 10, 2007 01:47 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
you're bishop is too strong! how about having either a two square bishop plus crab or four square bishop plus lame barc or crab barc would probably be better being weaker than a crab after all the meticulous masher's bishop was a four square bishop plus lame dabbaba so this should be mid strength but then again if you had the four square bishop plus lame crab the army would be devoid of leapers

Tim Stiles wrote on Sat, Sep 18, 2004 10:45 PM UTC:
Ah, my bad. Saw Rhino, got superglued into my brain that it moved
orthagonally first always.

Should be a Left/Right Single Step Double Rhino... Well, actually, it
shouldn't since it's long, unweildy and sounds like it's contradicting
itself.

Michael Nelson wrote on Sat, Sep 18, 2004 06:08 PM UTC:
The correct value depends on what magic number (square emptiness
probability) is chosen. I go with Ralph's uppen end estimate of .7 With
his lower end estimate of 2/3 then the value of the SS Rhino would be 
2 + 2 *(2/3) = 3 1/3

The Gnomon is a different matter: its lame H move must be multiplied by
.49 or .44 as there are two interventing squres.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Sat, Sep 18, 2004 05:27 PM UTC:
The value for lameness that Ralph was using at the time this was written
was 0.5, which would make the these versions of Rhinos three atoms.  And
while indeed they are perhaps a bit strong, I don't think they are really
3.4 atoms worth.

Anonymous wrote on Sat, Sep 18, 2004 03:30 PM UTC:
A curious thought hit me -- the Fighting Fizzies pieces all gain strength
in the endgame and are easy to develop and seem to work together well.

I wonder what a CWDA army would look lke designed on opposite priciples?
Massive raw power, but hard to develop, awkward to work together, and
lose
value (or at least don't gain value) in the endgame.

Michael Nelson wrote on Sat, Sep 18, 2004 03:11 PM UTC:
Tim,

The Rhino can move one step in any direction and stop on that square (same
as a non-royal king) as well as turning 45 degrees in the appropriate
direction and moving a second square.  The non-royal King move alone is
worth 2 atoms. If the  second move comonent if it were a leap would also
be 2 atoms. To allow for lameness, mutiply by .7, so add 1.4 atoms for
this component for a total of 3.4 atoms. The piece is substantially
stronger than a Rook.

You may be confused by some incarnations of the Rhino requiring the first
step to be orthogonal -- such a piece is indeed worth only 1.7 atoms, less
than a Knight.

Tim Stiles wrote on Sat, Sep 18, 2004 01:52 AM UTC:
How are the left and right single-step rhinos worth about a rook when they're effectively lame 2 atom-pieces, while rooks are worth 3 atoms?

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Jun 5, 2002 04:57 AM UTC:
It's an interesting point that I hadn't noticed before, but indeed all of your classic armies for CWDA have at least some pieces that suffer somewhat in the endgame. I can see now where an army without any pieces with endgame weakness would be unbalanced. So much to take into account!

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Jun 5, 2002 03:34 AM UTC:
The comment about the Knight's contribution was regarding the Cardinal (not
Crabinal) whose value I was comparing the Eaglescout against.  It seemed to
me that a color-switching piece paired with a non-colorswitching 
piece might also have some sort of correction factor, smaller than the 1.15
for colorbound pieces, but greater than 1.0.

gnohmon wrote on Wed, Jun 5, 2002 03:27 AM UTC:
The Knight's contribution? I looked at the page and the Eaglescout is W
plus zFF, no Knight there.

You describe the army as seeming equal at the start, but picking up steam.
This is logical because every single piece has at least one part of its
move that increases in strength as the board empties out; the knight-move
part of the Rhino, the lame 0,3 of the Gnohmon, the halfling B of the
Crabinal, and the zFF of the Eaglescout. Given that you also have two kinds
of pieces with some jumping ability (helps you get developed in the early
game), it wouldn't
seem so surprising if the total army is stronger than the sum of its
individual piece values.

That's my guess, anyway. No warranty expressed or implied, do not remove
this tag.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, Jun 4, 2002 06:11 PM UTC:
No warrentee is provided on the following idle speculation. Any damages resulting from incorrect application of others work is not the problem of the author. <p> Since I wrote this, Ralph has revised his estimate of the value of the Crooked Bishop back down to about a Rook (see: <a href='../piececlopedia.dir/crooked-bishop-revisited.html'>The Crooked Bishop Revisted</a>). (Peter Hatch's revision, if I understand it correctly, if correct, would only make 0.04 of a Rook's difference, or about 1/5 a Pawn.) That means my estimated value for the Eaglescout is off. Using Ralph's colorbound correction number of 1.15, the value of the Eaglescout can be calculated as: <blockquote> <pre>1.15 * 4.5 + 1.5 = 6.67 Pawns</pre> or <pre>1.15 * 5.0 + 1.5 = 7.25 Pawns</pre> </blockquote> depending on what value you use for a Rook. This is roughly equivalent to the value of a Cardinal: <blockquote> <pre>1.15 * 3 + 3 = 6.45 Pawns</pre> </blockquote> (There appears to be missing 2nd correct factor for the Knight's contribution, since the Knight is no longer color switching -- surely that ought to be worth something?). Anyway, that makes the Eaglescout worth a bit more than a Cardinal, but not that much, but still noticable weaker than a Queen. However, given the Army seems strong enough or too strong, there's nothing wrong with that. <p> This downgrading of the value of the Eaglescout makes me wonder again: is the strength of the army due to the combination of the pieces, or is perhaps the value of the Left- and Right-Rhinos and maybe Crabinals higher than estimated?

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