Game Reviews by GeorgeDuke

Draw-less Arimaa unacceptably represents that our beloved OrthoChess on the same 64 is unsalvageable.  Arimaa foregoes Chessic moves except lone Wazir one-step.  Arimaa six piece-types are really one piece-type, since they all move that same Wazir-like one step at a time cardinally.  Well, 1.5 p-ts since Rabbit cannot step backwards (no nibbling).  Call 21st-century 
Arimaa the recidivist Game of Wazirs, http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/wazir.html (befitting certain times?).

It would understandably appeal to small minority of programmers themselves for its strict queued prioritization, Elephant > Camel > Horse > Dog > Cat > Rabbit, to keep track of.   Which pieces so childlike 
Beast-named seem to speak comfortably for the entire 20 million  threatened species outdoors in the real world.

From design standpoint, actually drab as it is, there would be umpteen subvariants of Arimaa, as many as one likes, 1000, 10^4 you name it.  There is nothing compelling about the particular Rules for freezing (immobilizing), pushing or pulling, or serial p/p.  There is nothing sacrosanct about where the four Traps are placed, their variability in number and location making thousands of A-subGames.  Here's a mere one subvariant: Mortal Arimaa lets captured pieces entering or in Traps be held for later drop.  Here's another: Rabbit Roadkill Arimaa requires Rabbit forward one-step to dis-lodge any Elephant only there.  That specialized move, whether 1st or 2nd or 3rd or 4th in a turn, is to be called Hare-Alfing and is always a Push, but any number of squares not just one along legal available orthogonal.

Arimaa so many Rules is inelegant.  There are 8 or 9 Mutators overlaid; any awkward designer can similarly arbitrarily complexify in mediocrity; that enlarges the game tree surely in giant uglification.  Try programming in a month the hugest war-game, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSwaroftheroses , and then try playing it skillfully.  Or Arimaa is like a different Lewis Carroll syllogism,   http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~hile/math100/logice.htm, every turn just to define which moves are legal per go.  Or series of tongue-twisters: He Smells She Tells Sally Sells Sea-Shells.

In half-century old Rotation Chess, players switch sides every 10 moves, and in 17-year-old SchizoChess, http://www.chessvariants.org/boardrules.dir/schizo.html, the board halves right and left interchange every five moves. For mind-bending, just every five moves do both: swap sides and halves, combining two natural Mutators.  All other rules the same on 8x8.

Poor insofar as it is a CV.  Well-promoted with award announced for successful AI program, Arimaa has no displacement capture as such, and everything is along orthogonals, no diagonals.  It's a shame Arimaa is habitually being mentioned in the same breath as great oriental classic Go as hard for computers. (Games Magazine and the rest must be influenced by the "Beasts" for the piece-types) Arimaa has unaesthetcially too many win conditions available; it would be more tolerable on larger boards, for example the way Maxima has three possible win conditions.  There are far better race games those brilliant by Parton and Betza -- isolating the happenstantial Arimaa win route to get Rabbit to rank 8. Further, non-intuitive Arimaa (invented just before 2004)  won't improve natural Chessic thinking for design or for play.


Think of the whole business as a sort of pico-Rithmomachia phase http://www.chessvariants.org/misc.dir/rithmomachia.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rithmomachy. And well-conceived historic Rithmomachy actually has many a worthwhile variation to speculate and test, unlike the above listless distraction of gargantuan game tree.

(II) So this is basically subvariant of old Rotation Chess, http://www.chessvariants.org/mvopponent.dir/rotation.html and http://www.pathguy.com/chess/Rotation.htm -- that pre-dates Neto's 14-year-old Mutators. There are thousands other ways "to elevate the complexity without affecting the theoretical size of the game tree," http://en.chessbase.com/post/a-new-challenging-chess-variant, and all deserve batch or individual consideration.

In SSCC should serial Switching be allowed? The example shows spectacularly Player A moving 14 times in a row to ultimate checkmate.  The '5...d4!'
really highlights onset of one of many possible quasi-Fool's Mates inherent in present SSCC, not a great move by and of itself.  In other words, wresting control for 14 plays in a row so early is either a blunder by Player B or cry for designer to rein things in.  How about enhancement in further subvariant: Switching up to twice or thrice and four times dis-allowed?

Appealing about the Rotation CVs is the ability to catch up. By comparison, other CVs that have that quality somehow are Rococo and Chess With Promoters and many 3d CVs.  SSCC certainly dispenses with opening theory by its extreme single Rules addition.  Also to credit of Rotational Chesses is tilt to strategic planning from tactical planning, favouring biologic intelligence over computer, as M.A.M. Iqbal describes. Since two or more empty spaces are desirable, keeping the same familiar small board 8x8 may be main cause of the runaway takeovers by one player or the other for 10 or 12 moves to Checkmate.  Improvement to SSCC might come by enlarging board to GM Reshevsky-endorsed Zonal form, http://www.chessvariants.org/shape.dir/zonal/zonal.html, or to Morley corridor form, http://www.chessvariants.org/shape.dir/morley.html.

This designer is intent on specializing in unsusual boards: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSmatrixchess,

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSchessonasoccer,

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSroundhoneycomb.

Besides Uri Bruck's attributed 'prophet' from Arabic, Nahbi means in Korean butterfly and also cat or kitty.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabi.
 Nahbi moves to Knight and Zebra squares as one-path slider. The two Zebra patterns of Nahbi duplicate 2 of the 12 Falcon patterned moves discovered  in 1992.  Also year 1999 Cardinal Super Chess, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/external.php?itemid=CardinalSuperche, by other inventor has piece Cardinal which too duplicates 2 different of the 12 Falcon patterned moves, one-path slider Cardinal going to Betzan-atomic Camel squares.  In both cases, the two patterns to Zebra and two to Camel are mirrot images.  Fundamental Falcon has 6 patterns and their 6 mirror images for the twelve; thus together the two CVs Nahbi and Cardinal Super Chess have 4 of those basic fundamental 12.

 Bruck may or may not have been aware of Korean word Nahbi, insofar as his background at Ackanomic Party Chess -- which uses other longer-range "Nahbi" -- mentions the Arabic but not the Korean. Now interesting coincidence, because of the homonymous finding, is that centuries-old Korean Chess Elephant itself, http://www.chessvariants.org/oriental.dir/koreanchess.html, also goes of course to what CVers call the Zebra squares, just like recent Nahbi.  Korean Elephant is piece-type not the same as Chinese Elephant.  Xiangqi Elephant goes to Alfil destinations numbering only 7 possible points. Korean Chess has both fixed sliders Knight to (1,2) and Elephant to (2,3) and no piece-type Alfil-like.

Korean Elephant goes one orthogonal, followed by two diagonally outwardly. Those two mirrors are not the present Nahbi's  two diagonal same direction followed by one orthogonally. Their "Zebra" destinations are the same but pathways are unique. Korean Elephant two patterns to notional Zebra predate by far another 2 of the 12 Falcon fundamental movement patterns.  Among the three CVs, Korean Chess, Nahbi, and Cardinal are to be seen then 6 of the 12 Falcon movements. Falcon's potential arrivals thus do include both Camel(1,3) and Zebra(2,3), the squares naturally just beyond the Knight, http://www.google.com/patents/US5690334.

Antoine Fourriere's ten CVs were made 2002 to 2006. The term prolificist has been used in CVPage for those designing fifteen or more CVs during the heyday of CV design about 1999 to 2009. Then were 'over-fifteen prolificist-club-members Paulowich, Joyce, Gilman, Lavieri, Duniho, Betza, Aronson, to name hardly 20% of them. Do the arithmetic: if there were 20 prolificists making average of 25 CVs during the Aughts 2000-2009, they alone have 500 CVs to study let alone play. 

This Bilateral is not one of Antoine's fantasy CVs like excellent Jacks & Witches, but an intended Next Chess solution.  Added to Bilateral to go along with the Orthodox six RNBKQP are Wizard, Elephant, Lion, and Cannon/Canon. Short-range Wizard is the better half of the two new pieces put into Omega Chess, but Bilateral Wizard has altered modality.  Though invented accidentally, the Murray Lion makes more natural fit than older large Shogi Lion because its value is weakened leaping two squares to move. Capturing like King, the Murray Lion can command all the squares on board eventually after the right captures. Whereas original large Shogi Lion would be near Queen value 7.5 or 8.0, Murray Lion is more desirable 4.0 within Bilateral. Focus in follow-up on Bilateral will be on Murray Lion and Cannon/Canon, since the other two new piece-types are intended more fantastically.

Also to consider are Antoine's current comment's subvariants of Bilateral and Paulowich's comment on the 8x12 board in general. '8x12' of course as alternate Chess solution has long history nearly a thousand years in European mediaeval Courier Chess of Germany.  At once Courier board of 96 makes a CV larger than conventional Shogi 81 and Xiangqi 90. As a result, 8x12 and a fortiori 10x10 are suspect solutions, consigned in most minds for fantasy CV workings not "Next Chesses."  Yet let's look in more detail since 12-wide does readily accommodate 5 natural pairs, not only four.

Okay, Jumper is Trilby, that is Trilby compounded with non-royal king move. Trilby is the Trebuchet plus Tripper under recent discussion at Gilman's Symgi and J. Good's Archabbott, where historian Ayer asks of the still rather few examples leaping radially three squares. Jumper is the only explicitly new p-t added to Big Outer. 
As far as that goes, Big Outer really has Rings, three separate ones, unlike other current topic, Gilman's hexagonal Ringworld's name would suggest for itself. What else? In jumping diagonally three spaces, Jumper may leap over one or two squares of the middle ring. Jumper loses the Trilby portion of option within the middle ring, it's just an outer phenomenom. Christine Bagley-Jones citation finds Three-Star General at Operational Chess II as Trilby, that and Operational I being wargames without King, some variantists may not (have) read.
 The ring around a starting square three-removed is particular interest for including the oblique, not radial, end-points in full as the simple Bison, complexified with pathways to Falcon -- become the correct match-up complement of Rook/Knight/Bishop, unlike straight jumper Bison the merely broadened Knight.
Finally, let alone for the moment their cousins Amphibean (which need special definition attempted by Knappen), all of the strict three-square movers Tripper, Threeleaper/Trebuchet, Trilby, Falcon/Bison, Camel, Zebra, Nahbi and so on, can be variegated to still dozens more yet unclaimed differing p-ts by just commonsense Forwards/Sideways considerations, non-displacement capture combinations or restriction, and not least some area effect conveyed by the three Rings of fine cv of Blanchard, Big Outer Chess. And Big Outer has a genuine Trilby thirteen years ago! Actually I think there were either one or two  '(0,3) plus (3,3)' in 1994 'ECV' should anyone take the time to page through it again.

Great. Chessboard Math 11 also explores rare use of triangles, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25236. Triangles are far more important, natural and basic than hexagon and 3-D all types. Anything that can be done here is important catch-up.