Comments by GeorgeDuke

Here are some gems from Ralph Betza in days of yore:

History. That one happens as the 513th comment in this system now over 33500. Betza's "variant skill" would have to be split realistically into ten or twenty or more categories. Magnus Carlsen, it was said by grandmasters in last month's match, has not fared well at Fischer Random Chess. He is only good at the hoi polloi seven-million-times-played Simpleminded Chess. There is no guarantee who would continue within the top if they tried changes in the Rules on 8x8 or variant boards 8x10, 9x9, or 10x10. Presumably some of the top ten would struggle at Shogi or Xiangqi or Go. Betza claims to be better than Fischer would be let's say at Orthodox Chess and Chess Different Armies; Betza would have to say he might take on Carlsen if allowed to play both games.

Also under Chaturanga, John Ayers describes a proto-Chess historically evident with Jumping Rook limited to "three squares" at a time when they counted the starting square:

Rook_Alfil.

Recently Knappen found from index of Jelliss Ski-Rook type, to compare to pieces in current Chess Different Armies Asymmetrical Chess. There are twenty or more long glossaries of piece-types from Charles Gilman's to David Howe's. So let's put many lists of types here in new topic saving going back to locate them. This French one came to our attention eight years ago: Christian_Poisson.

George Jeliss' best list for types: Fairy.

And Knappen cites German one then too: Types.

M. Winther's own Bifurcation pieces, inventing and adding to renaming about six Jeliss had earlier recorded: Bifurcators.

In Ralph Betza's Pied Color Chess, all the pieces except Pawns are changed in their movement by the piing, unless they happen to have normal dark and light (eight)-square surrounding. In the Example the Rook on b1 starting to c2 can stop there or continue -b3-c4-d5-e6-f7-g8. In the coloration exampled there are no, zero, "normal" squares so far as adjacencies let alone two away and beyond. Watch what's beneath you!

Today is Boxing Day: Boxing.

Jianying Ji left off here in 2002 Betza, in reply to having Chess history.

Maurice Richardson begins year 1948 "A Quiet Game of Chess":

It was the Boxing-day after the last Christmas before the End of the World..... I don't know whether you've ever played surrealist Chess. It is played with additional pieces, human Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights and Pawns, with genuine old machiolated castles for Rooks, all on a board of positively cosmic dimensions. The screams of hapless Pawns being dragged away to captivity with all its nameless horrors, the wheezy death rattle of Knights, the whining supplications of crafty Bishops, the sadistic frenzy of Queens, resounded on all sides. --Maurice Richardson, "A Quiet Game of Chess" 1948. Its full text is chapter of 'Exploits of Engelbrecht'.

Today is also Charles Babbage's birthday, Computer, heralding computer theory epitomized by chess-playing as well as anything. December 26 is also Mao Tse-Tung's. Yesterday the 25th is Isaac Newton's birthday, Physics.

Next, this is the piece section of David Howe's "Concise Guide" put out in 2011: Pieces.

And not far afield Howe's list of categories of types from earlier 2001: Types.

And then Christine Bagley-Jones' historic 150+ Shogi variant pieces found in this 2012 article: Fairy_Shogi All 154 piece-types exactly are in fact indicated in the one 12x16 first board of "Fairy Pieces." Frivolously, if you make the board 24x16, there can be two sides with 154 different-moving pieces Shogi-derived from actual recorded Japanese CVs, but of course most of them are unable to move from respective array.

It was found that Gilman's combined indexes define about 2000 differing piece-types, only 75% or so newly made up by him. Thus to show all Charles' the way Christine does diagrammatically on just one board can easily by done for the Gilman 2000 on a given 70x70 chessboard, providing for both sides. Again, most would be immobilized at the start until things open up by areas of board size 70 square. [By coincidence -- more precise than rounding to tens -- 64x64 board gives 4096 squares and that is the first size more than enough too if omitting Pawns, to exhibit often-repeated 2000 piece-types each force, plus a King and some space between.]

Viking Chess.  

Then there are Betza's "Ideal and Practical Values" that also list pieces. The basic or atomic chess pieces: Wazir+. I don't like Ralph's use of "fundamental" for W, A, D, N, F, because fundamental should be reserved for Rook, Knight, Bishop, and Falcon; but those five FWAND are certainly the atomic ones for 5x5 around a starting square.

Just as Winther has "Bifurcators" in earlier list here, Howe has "Mimics": Mimics. There is much unrealized potential in having CVs with Mimic/Mime/Imitator.

Next, I list pieces that are riders with more than one path: Multi-path

Joe Joyce's and Christine Bagley-Jones' Short-Range_Project.

(Negative-value pieces fit this topic as well, Nattering_Nabobs, because Negative Relay, as one way to achieve over-all "minus value," could be generalized as Mutator to cover the 2000 Gilman types and approximately 500 other types in these lists so far Gilman happens to exclude or overlook. Just operate the Mutator not on the game-rules per se but the individual piece-type directly. Presto, 2500 different piece-types become 5000.)

This topic, BN+RN, was to critique Carreran Centaur and Champion, same as Capablanca Archbishop and Chancellor, same as Cardinal and Marshall. The demonstration boards of weird positions caused by them need to be reformatted. They are still so popular that Seirawan Chess uses them on 64 the way Betza and Cohen did in 1970s Tutti-Frutti. H.G. Muller calls Centaur the best fairy piece of all because of "synergy between Bishop and Knight."

Xiangqi has only one piece of interest, the Cannon, a great idea and probably the best Hopper we can think of -- along with its diagonal equivalent Vao by T.R. Dawson. The challenge of Xiangqi then comes from the sections of the board, the Palace and the division into two, not creative pieces like the Japanese were able to do for so long in large Shogis. There is less potential applicability by Chinese Chess to Western Chess, that is real Chess, than say Grande Acedrex or Carrera's or even carefully-chosen Shogi short-range pieces.  I will re-make the boards demonstrating unaesthetic positions from BN and RN not engendered by more logical Queen (and company). An argument against Carrera's two is that they do not get paired as individual types. One cannot exist without the other, and there is no way to tell which of the three pairs is best RB and RN, or RB and BN, or RN and BN. Just plugging in all three is too powerful piece-mix up to 81 squares. Here is one CV that does single out Centaur: Janus, dispensing with Champion. Janus may be more effective than Carrera's or Seirawan's or especially low-density Grand Chess, but Janus is not much better than those.

In only eight comments here are Lists of specific piece-types clearly defined, one by one, numbering about 2500. 2500 different pieces not enough to choose from?

Suffix Use Charles Gilman's Suffix Index to generate multiples more.

Take the first one ALTERNATOR:

ALTERNATOR after angle (rounded to nearest degree on these pages) and full name of 2 pieces square hex a piece whose move's odd stages are those of the first, and even ones those of the second, piece, each in one direction. An alternator can be prefixed MIRROR to start with the second-named piece, CONTRA- to end with the first-named piece (and start with either), MIRROR CONTRA- to end with the second-named piece (and start with either), and DOUBLE that to be free to start or end with either.

Say you want to combine Wazir and Knight, not as compound but as combination or sequential piece. The first new type of piece is "27 degrees Wazir Knight," meaning a piece that moves first as W then N in the narrow direction as one move. 'Mirror 27 W N' starts with Knight then Wazir, and in a class you may want to keep the naming order the same and so actually use "Mirror." "Contra 27 WN" must stop with a Wazir but can start with either. "Mirror Contra (implied 27) WN" has to stop with a Knight. "Double WN" is higher value because can start or end with either. There are other possibilities including making the angled change of direction 63 degrees for the wide Knight mode. And there is the opportunity to allow both 27- and 63-degree angled changes of direction. Estimate there are about 20 reasonable p-ts by combining Wazir and Knight in different ways as ALTERNATOR.

WEAVER is the last suffix alphabetically. A weaver is an alternator by definition. If we make all the above special-case Weaver instead of plain Alternator, it means the Knight's direction changes systematically every other step in its leg of a solitary move -- that is alternating between Wazir and Knight as well as weaving like a crooked nightrider. Jorg Knappen finds in "Nachtmahr" there are quite a few Nightriders so it needs specification between which two the Knight weaves as part of the ALTERNATOR. That is just a matter of putting two different angles in the piece description, or else using accepted name for it from Knappen.

Probably 100 reasonable piece-types can come about from combination piece -- meaning more than one leg -- of Wazir and Knight. Gilman's system can describe the movements well enough, and it's not worth trying to adapt simple Betzan notation become anachronistic.

Since this is Piece topic, it is new idea to have one or few pieces that can be moved by both sides (not that it has to be "popular"). Or that could be way to introduce the greatest, most popular all-time piece Centaur(BN): start it on e4 and let both sides own it and optionally move Centaur in lieu of regular move five times a game -- a difference from Seirawan Gating. Necessarily such "Blue" BN is uncapturable but figures fully in capturing opponent and mate. Starting the immortal Blue Queen(BR) or Blue Centaur on e4 will create more a-, b-, and h-file flank-play to avoid her/him, but Pawns may still vie for the center.

I submitted a CV as Blue Queen last fall and will resubmit it in final draft. Blue Queen is the problemists' piece owned by both sides. Actually any of the 2000+ pieces could be introduced this way at central square and available to both on regular 64. This is a whole new class of pieces uncapturable, befitting prefix "Blue." For example, BLUE DABBABAH, or stronger BLUE ALIBABA, not two per team or even one per side, but one for both shared at e4, or d4 or e5 or d5.

Or Gilmanesque BLUE MIRROR WAZIR CAMEL ALTERNATOR, starting at e4, and thus moving Camel-Wazir-Camel...stopping on either type of leg -- and movable by either player (because Blue). By extension, we could carefully sprinkle very large boards with several these very best available immortal Blue pieces, not too powerful to disrupt judicious play.

(On small 8 by 8 the Blue Queen or Blue Centaur phase starts Move 11, precluding 1 e4xe7 #. Blue Centaur quick mate is 1 e4-f6 #, dis-allowed by having ten normal opening moves then up to five optional Blue moves to end.)

You can Name the Baby anything you want but over half name it by these 100 in both lists: Top_100. Likewise variant pieces draw from about 100 choices more than half the time (popularity in the eye of the beholder). For convenience in comparison, educated guesswork can deliver specific match-ups: that #1 is Mary/Centaur(BN) about same-percentaged, #2 is John/Patricia/Camel, #3 Jennifer/Alfil, #5 William/Linda/Commoner, #10 Sarah/Cannon, #15 Donald/Champion(RN), #100 Howard/Kathy/Padwar of Jetan, and so on in between.

If we liberally cut piece-types off at 2000 and CVs at about 9000 from all sources, including some subvariants, and assuming about one new type (not rnbkqp) per CV, it means 2%, or 180, CVs use Centaur/Sarah and 90 CVs use Camel/Patricia. Centaur and Camel may be low a bit from more expected 3% and 2% respectively, but most others being employed near 1%, or less, of the time make for good comparability between Babies and Fairy pieces. Remember half of CVs are on small 8x8 where #1 Centaur(BN) appears only rarely, and half again of the 64-square ones may have zero additional pieces. And more pertinently, there are many important specified pieces used only once or twice -- once per 9000 is about 0.01%. Most types will fall in the range 0.009% to 0.7% usage.

Beauty and eventual popularity can come about by developing formulaically: just see the 'Man & Beasts' project. For example, try compound of more frequently-used p-t and infrequently-used p-t. Noting "Howard" is #100 on the Boy's side, and William #5, there is (Commoner plus Padwar -- Padwar moves two steps diagonally allowing the bend). The compound is neat brand new type, and is fitting because William Howard Taft is USA President and Chief Justice. Taft is the ...er heaviest, well fattest USA Pres and Trump number three after Cleveland. In addition to the oldest ever Trump is third in ...weight. What is Donald John Trump's piece-type? See above that is (Camel plus Champion(RN)) already named "Carshall" (or Car-shell? or Car Shill?) by Gilman: Marshall+Camel.

Name_Game.

Alphanumerically, trump and truman are only off by one. Trump's butterfly in hope he'll do about-faces on Nature.

Unusual connectivity here in board lacking symmetry made Ultra Slanted the runner-up winner in the 84-square contest over decade ago. Crabs and Ultras and all the pieces are hard to get across to the other side to attack, threading the needle. David Short recommends for best play keeping Knights as 'stay at home' defenders. Without specific color-switching, Bishop is able to reach every square by nature of the board.

If Short won copy of 'Encyclopedia Chess Variants' as stated, notice that can be $1000 online now and hard to find for $100 used.

I noted in other comment 2007 only a little cynically because it is in fact accurate for most designers, the bell-shape output: "Here is record of the years of invention: 1999-1; 2000-2; 2001-3; 2002-9; 2004-1. The typical bell-shaped design trajectory can be detected albeit skewed right by so many in the one particular year."

As player, would you rather have the '2 for 1' transition nearby as for White, or a ways off as for Black?

Waterloo -- better than all-empty-space Grand Chess anyway.

Then this one mentioned as also using Commoner/Man is even better and meeting CVPage standards: Medieval_(europe).

The world expert at values, H.G. Muller joined this discussion, and I still hold out for value of nearer 6.0 for Falcon than Rook 5.0. I just played three Falcon games on Game Courier and early Falcon uses and forks were decisive in all of them whilst the Rooks mostly sat in place. It's matter of teaching programs maybe to open with Falcon; then the gap is filled in value between Rook and Queen, the way Man/Commoner/Guard can fill in between Bishop and Rook lower scale for beginners. (But Muller is right that anything towards 7.0 for Falcon among the four fundamental chess pieces was irresponsibly unsupported.)

Vickalan's point is good one, that better CVs have clear value in exchange. That was recurrent theme for years in our thread on Game Design: Value_In_Exchange. When most though not all pieces have different distinguishable values, there is intriguing Flight and Fight.

Anyway Man is just a Queen, and that's how to get its value. If full Queen is 9.0, then develop method for Queen limited to 6 steps not 7. Then get limited Queen up to 5 spaces, then Q4, Q3, Q2, Man. Since Q6 is near Q7 but others progressively detrimental, it might go: Q6 8.6, Q5 8.0, Q4 7.2, Q3 6.2, Q2 5.0, Man 3.6. No values in isolation since it depends on other pieces as well as array and rules.

Principle of value in exchange is why I dislike all yes all 50 Carrera variants, that three pieces are boringly near-same-valued.

Beginners Chess just had one of its big tournaments, http://en.chessbase.com/post/2017-tata-rd13-deserved-winner.  Winner Wesley So came in first and in the February elo index ranks second now just a few statistical points behind illiterate Magnus Carlsen.

Since the 1820s backranks have been altered to thwart opening theory. Fischer was just as ignorant of chess history as Seirawan in the latter's re-introducing compounds of RN and BN to whatever he calls them in Seirawan Chess. Fischer's re-invention in the recent nineties of up to 960 set-ups led to also variants Slide-Shuffle and Deployment and Free Placement. Randomization of array is Mutator applicable to any CV. Instead at the same time of FRC, Ralph Betza proposed changing connectivity of the once-sancrosanct little 64-board. Besides Betza's two-ranks displacement, here are some other board possibilities: http://www.chessvariants.com/d.betza/chessvar/quake/quake.html.

There are also things like Transcendental, T_Chess where the two sides' initial positions do not have to match, and Chaos Chess in which pieces start dropped to other than only the nearest rank.

My second favorite Chess website, after Chess Variant Page, and well equal to all-purpose ChessBase has been considerably restored since catastrophe. That is Goddess Chess: http://www.goddesschess.com/. Up to half of it may be back, I'm not sure not having checked yet the Archaeology and Astronomy; but not much ongoing, copious Goddess more or less ended around 2012 for new material. Recommended are history articles by our own John Ayer and the original Weave from early internet 1990s. 'Weave' was much inspiration for the twenty, XX, Chess Moralities, all 42 lines long after also 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' and that one's "42" the answer to everything.

CMXVI.

The Kremlin towers, http://en.chessbase.com/post/2017-moscow-open-all-for-one-and-one-for-all, look like so many Chess pieces.  That is, to outsider superficially who has not been east of Austria myself, just by the photos. Kremlin_Chess. Of course I am always getting new CV board potential, and even variant piece moves in any tiled floor a given day -- like Gary Gifford once described coming up with new CVs while driving.

Not the artistic association of Kremlin to Chess pieces, there is the actual deliberate Chess-building in Kalmykia under Ilyumzhinov inspiration: Chess_City.

The most featured Angel Problems are situated on infinite chessboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_problem.

On 30.Jan.2017 H.G. Muller brought up pawn-accompanied 7N versus 3Q: End_Games. Here is where he originally broached researching this match-up among others, http://www.chessvariants.com/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25357, in several Peasant Revolt statements of different unusual endgames -- because not normal Beginners' Chess piece mixes that get memorized from tables.

George Svokos says too(All Comments PR) it takes K+N+N+N+N to defeat K, that three Knights are not enough. Of course games are won with definitional insufficient mating material depending on the leftover position. Usually you want the best definitions to exclude such cases, but the present example you can arrange K+3N to a mated position (not all of them necessarily Helpmates).

Muller's very insight then that "that the Knights could do better than they do now, with a bit more strategic insight" has parallel in my on-again maintaining that on 8x10 Rook versus Falcon should turn out to be 5.0 to up to 5.75 maximum, if Falcons are instructed to strategically open as early as possible.

Board size almost always factor, and on 8x10 or certainly 10x10, the 3Q will defeat especially 6N more or even most often(majority); on 10x10 the Peasant Revolt mix tilts way towards the Knights and Black. Rules are crucial too raised by Charles Gilman's query, is promotion in yQs v. xNs to Queen both sides, or not?

Man/Commoner Sovereign Value is 1: http://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=SOVEREIGN_P_Ts. That means King plus Man versus King should win, already mentioned here. Bishop S.V. is 2 regardless exact piece value; one Bishop is insufficent material. Knight S.V. is 3, as Knappen clinches from table reference; two Knights are insufficient material. That in itself on smaller 8x8 makes Man equal or greater than Bishop or Rook.

The development, Queen_One, for Q7, Q6, Q5, Q4, Q3, Q2, and Man as Q1 I am only concerned about being off a bit for the last step Man because the next step would be Q0 or some Null piece. So the last Q1 or Man may be too high at 3.6, instead dampened to 3.4 or 3.3, but ahead of Bishop and Knight on the standard little board.

Altair is CV where "piece values are not a good indicator of one side's advantage in chess" to use V's current words, because most of the pieces for a move can also be dropped to empty square in rank nearby of the same color. Also they most of them can slide along their rank unimpeded. So if coming up with guide-values for stronger Mage and Lion and Diamond around 7, 5 and 4 respectively, good use of the board itself makes all the pieces closer to heuristic 3.8-4.2 each with only Pawns in some 2.x range.

Muller wrote up problem theme 3Q v. 7N in "Charge of Light Brigade." If you keep 8 Pawns, the 3 Queens versus 7 Knights may go to 3Q by already 8x10 any array, certainly by 10x10. Board used and Rules interact piece values, and cannot really be safely generalized even as to '<' or '>' for all cases; with special rules (or board) we can think of CV where even N>Q one on one!

For ex., make narrow stair step where Q can only occasionally go 3 or 2, but N leaps cross empty space and get values maybe N4 Q3 as convenient.

The style of commenting here is practically worthless to a hundred casual readers who don't know what Joker or Jester is.  The terms need to be put into context over again each time it is brought up or only a few readers get the point.  I understand the advertising of this piece and the CVs using it because of knowing so many CVs.  Here is contribution to the topic even though this thread is confusing: the Spy from 1937.  The Joker or Jester or Fool being talked about moves like the last piece opponent moved.  The Spy, http://www.chessvariants.com/wargame.dir/novo/novo.html, from Holland pre-World War II also moves like the enemy piece, but Spy moves like the piece it sits on.  Spy has to sit on another piece in fact, friend or foe.  There is a family of Chameleon-like piece-types not just Fool etc. (Of course use of Fool is also Bishop in France.)

White is going north and Black south as usual in the CV Upside Down Chess.

For OrthoChess problem by Lord Dunsany, solve this:

White is to play and mate in four moves. The position is one that could occur in actual play of F.I.D.E. Chess.

Swap Chess allows serial swapping as a move along subsequent lines of attack.  Swap Chess has never been put up in Game Courier like Switching Chess.

Here is the only 3-handed circular chess so far.

The first move has to be illegal, so Black Pawn cannot on the first move take a White Pawn that has moved 1 P-a2.  Since it is legal move for Black, he cannot do so on move 1.

Another advanced pawn starting formation.

 

Squares increase in power.  Each time a piece leaves it, it leaves a trace, so a square can eventually confer Amazon power even to lowly Pawn when he arrives.

Go -- Go and AI is one year ago now. Go_by_Google.

Actually I haven't even looked at the Apothecaries properly because there's no write-up, except they have the lead record of most comments by three or four times of all 3000 CVs here. And having noticed Joker. But the Huygens there are two others with prime numbers of interest.  Since this tablet is harder to comment on, V R's attention to the other prime, Lucas, Fibonacci etc. CVs will have to be directed in future. Huygens may not be unique, and it has article now to explain that.

The only other comment all twenty years(!) on this was actually recent last fall. A. Missoum made these "Fibonacci-Lucas CVs" if they can be deciphered.

Hyperbolic Chess 8x8 was invented 20 years ago 1997.

The criticism was there are no discernable complete Rules, but Jianying Ji once explained Missoum's intent:

"Rich I think is more correct, this is an attempt to use catastrophe theory to chess. I'm not sure it succeed in anyway. Essentially the author is arguing that if a move is bad if it crosses a fold in the 'evaluation surface', that is the surface created by giving every square a value depending on its importance. The surface is then warped to show moves that would cause irreversible changes in evaluation. Missoum applies this to one move in one game which allows for the nice graphics he drew. However as a general theory I do not see how one would begin to create one. Personally some kind of quantum set theory or more classically combinatoric game theory is far more apt. "

In the one other comment here, Charles Gilman liked this year 2000 CV, because of the Bishops. Notice the four Bishops are arranged symmetrically and on opposite color bindings even though there are odd number of files, eleven. Beyond that novelty, the goal of bare King requires each player to give up a piece each turn in addition to regular move. This was a 32-turn contest, and Attrition games run a maximum of 32 moves. Squire has its own move as medieval "Man" and also enhances the side's Knight move two different ways when the two are adjacent (see the effect in Attrition rules). That keeps Knight apace the others on large board without adding some arbitrary Camel option.

The SuperKing moves like a Queen but cannot move through check.  Gilman clarifies in the one other comment that that means Kings can face each other along radial lines, unlike Xiangqi.

Free Chess is the only game made by Scarmani.  There is attribute reserve of 32.  A turn player places an attribute or moves a piece.  Several may stand on the same square because they may be attributes or combinators. A combinator-attribute may be captured without its even being a piece. One clever rule: an attribute's, placed on opponent's piece, subtracting that one's same attribute. Opawns are 'o'mni-directional.

From 1999 year check out how piece may swap with Stone in place of regular move.

Pawns do not promote. The Pawns reaching promotion zone cause other pieces to promote and the Pawn leaves the board. The four-square occupation of King requires all four attacked for mate.

 'Half of my team eats drinks, and sleeps Gridlock Chess (they are trying to catch up). The other half of the team is the best'.

 A square that a main Middle board piece sits on has corresponding square in Above and Below boards. These locations (departure square) 'influence' whether a move can be considered or not. To make the move, it also must be legal within the Middle board. Sometimes the Above or Below two piece-types move their one- or two-square way, and other times they duplicate a Middle board movement. Rules may very well be interpretable (including moving opponent's piece) in all cases.

Gridlock Chapter 5 has the Great Diagonal Wall.  "The other game promised you up to nine Queens. Did it ever deliver?"

Player must keep a Ring of 3x3 made from the stones, and to win is to destroy opponent last Ring.  Stones move in 3x3s. This appeared first in Spektrum der Wissenschaft.

3-14-17 is Pi Day. This board-variety brings some spaciousness to usually-constricted play on ''round'' boards.

Another interesting circular CV for this week's Pi Day.  RNBKQP get two additions, weak Tocop and strong Starman, which could be explained better. The inner circuits will have most of the action. Really the Nexus, or tunnel, or lift, is not common to the different teams Topside and Flipside, because player specifies which it is on if a piece stops there. Tesselations mixed square- and triangle-boards, like Round Table Chess, stretched topologically to over-all roundness, can play with more clarity than hexagonal ones. Yet Flipworld may not have erased all ambiguity about transit through its six Nexus cells(triangles).

Zubrin got his board patented to show who invented it.  Most applications get rejected after year-long background check of "prior art."   In informal NextChess project, Three Player has been ranked in the top ten:  " (1) Bifurcators > (2) Great Shatranj > (3) Time Travel > (4) Mastodon > (5) Three Player > (6) Unicorn Great > (7) Sissa > (8) Big Board > (9) Eurasian (10) Schoolbook ."

Quex has to be read too to understand the moves in Keyles.  Keyles unique win conditon is to get King across the board.  Whenever King is captured along the way, he returns replacing another chosen piece.

Jester mimics method of movement of last opponent's piece moved. Short-range Archer moves without capturing or captures without moving. It is two moves per turn until one's first capture, a rule which could benefit some other large chesses.

Lene Hau and light slowed to a fraction of 3.00x10^8 m/s, http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/people/hau.cfm, and so this CV by Betza.  Rook piece takes 7 moves from b1 to b8 for instance. Also Liar's_Chess and

Hyperspace_Chess.

Yes Charles, I think it would be fine to drop this (he asks advice on this in red). "sidewaysmost, 'Halfcamel', 'skewed Dabbabah', 'Colourbound analogue' and 'river-straddling zigzag' are turgid and off-putting without any of Ralph's deadend tongue in cheek. However other CVs that get deleted also lose the scathing review.

Contrary to Kevin, Rococo is the most played not the least played lately in recent finished Games (rhymes with Trump and crowd size). The article is too lengthy for having two inventors. My top CV of all 3000 in sixty words, enough to start playing immediately, the whole simplified rules:

All pieces have to move the same  like Queen but land on border square only if/in capturing. Pieces capture along Q lines like in  Abbott's Ultima and in Parton's classic CVs. See Advancer, Withdrawer, Chameleon, Swapper, Immobilizer capturing in video. King is f.i.d.e. and the only one moving and capturing the same. Cannon Pawn is specialized one- or two-stepper, also having unique capture.

A Chess Puzzle was to devise a game on 8x8 with no legal moves for White. All 8 Pawns(any kind) and 8 pieces(any mix of types) must start in own half of board, King only required to be within back-rank. Use already-invented pieces and Rules. Describe an initial set-up. This has Ibis(1,7) on f8, Crooked Bishop f7, Dragon b6, Elbow Rook c6, Immobilizer b5, Wazir d3, Ferz e1 and so on. To follow is the justification that it is solution.

April spoof at Chessbase in a few hours, anyone thinking of outdoing them please feel free  putting it here.  See past examples in this thread from a match on an oil rig to Martian chess.  Make up an archaeological find of Neanderthal game artifacts or something. Chessbase April Fool to follow here for sure once they swink everybody again.

Before Fischer and Fischer Random Chess, GM Reshevsky endorsed this Zonal Chess. Larry Smith who designed forty CVs of his own in CVPage wrote this, as he did another article about Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Chess, and also history about medieval Rithmomachia.

Bo, the reigning champion, saw no move to make. The tournament committee set up on a larger board ten normal Pawns for each side and two Queens and also two Cardinals for White. Cardinal can move as either Bishop or Knight. Those were strong pieces for White to go with Rook, Bishop, two Knights and Wolf. Quintessence is on c7. Dragon a6. Fox a5. Cannon e6. Elbow Rook g5. Immobilizer j5. Wolf g6. Sissa h7.

Again Bo was puzzled and embarrassed to find a way, not to say hamstrung, and the championship was at stake. Moving Knight-a1 gives Fox a pathway. Pawn-c3 or the Rook open up for five-step Dragon. Queen move allows Quintessence in. Either Cardinal (aka Archbishop, aka Centaur) brings on Cannon prohibition. Bishop moving gives Wolf its path needed, and Knight does so for Sissa. Unbeknownst the sudden death playoff game has not opening at all possible.

"Hustle up, Bo we're ready to watch. Show us what you got."

There are other integer number sequences.  You could add diagonal directions and make these sliders too.  Then the board could be fixed at 30x30.  Huygens is orthogonal leaper but a variant piece would be Queenlike to the prime number squares five and over or more inclusively three and over. 

Then there are more pieces to expand the idea to other sequences.  Fibonacci moves Queenlike to 3,5,8,13, and 21 distance.  Triangular number piece moves along radial lines exactly 3,6,10,15, 21, or 28.  Square number piece to 4,9,16, and 25, a weak piece.  Deficient number sequence piece (since perfect numbers are so rare) is the strongest going to 4,5,7,8,9,10,11,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,22,23,25,26,27,29. Tetrahedral number 4,10,20, weak mover again.  Abundant number to 12,18,20,24 (keeping all these less than 30 to fit the board). Lucas to 3-distance, or 4, 7, 11,18 or 29.  Pawns should be Man to all eight directions one or two steps, squares which the mathematical pieces cannot any of them reach from the same starting square.

Lucky number unit can go radially 3 or 7 or 9  or 13 or 15 or 21 or 25 only.  Pancake number type moves 4, 7, 11, 16, 22, or 29.

However, never design a chess piece based on Weird Numbers. They are too few and too large.  '70' is the first weird number because it is abundant being less than (1+2+5+7+10+14+35, its factors), but no set of those divisors sum to 70 itself.  The only other less than 4-digit weird number  is 836, and the sequence 70, 836, 4030, 5830 is unsuitable -- except on that infinite board.

 Looking back again ChessBase currently runs a 1972 interview before the two-month match.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/bobby-fischer-on-the-dick-cavett-show.  Fischer gives a quick television lesson right before the Fischer-Spassky Reykjavik match, "Lose the King, lose the game," but since you  cannot capture the King it almost suggests a CV.  He uses "straight" for Rook and may not have known the word 'orthogonal' as alternative. Queen "a very powerful piece." His describing Knight as two straight then one straight is inferior to perception of Knight to oblique nearest squares automatically.  This is really Chess for Dummies.  It is easier for us in wake of Gilman's so many non-radial long-range leapers and also oblique Falcon, claimed first of the four fundamental chess pieces.    Fischer says he actually dreams of detective mysteries not Chess.  He answers Ralph Nader presciently about Chess live tv events, saying just reduce time controls to avoid 3 hours. Also it is second nature to Fischer already 45 years ago that Chess is finite but "beyond the mind's comprehension," he means all at once.

The maximum number of pieces into which a pancake can be cut with n slices: 1 slice 2, 2 slices 4, 3 slices 7, 4-11, 5-16, 6-22, 7-29, 8-37....

The Lucky numbers in texts come about by striking out every other number, then from remaining 13579... strike out every third number, because that's the next one left. Then since '5' is stricken and what remains is 1,3,7,9,13,15,19..., now strike out every seventh number starting with 19. '1,3,7,9,13,15,21,25,31,33,37,43,49,51....' never get stricken and are Lucky. It's related to the Sieve of Erastosthenes to generate the prime numbers. A Lucky Chess Piece allowing one-step should be Bishop value on 10x10 and up.

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1340520/10-greatest-chess-games-From-Kasporov-vs-Bobby-Fischers-victory.html.

Game 6 routinely gets listed in top 5 or 10 all-time games, 1972 Fischer-Spassky. The position after 15 dxc5:

  But instead of Black taking with Pawn, 15 ...Rxc5 stands Black advantage, and nowhere found yet is this annotated (several versions checked back in 2012).  See what programs say since I have not bothered yet.  The 'Rxc5' was discovered when this thread reviewed all the games in 40-year anniversary 2012 as  the day they occurred. Game_6.  GMs have observed Spassky's supposed mistake 14 ...a6 instead of 14 ...Qb7, called ''correct."  Where is the fallacy?  No offense if someone can explain why Black does not easily at least equalize that way -- since we variantists are expert at dozens of games, not just the one peewee 64-version of Fischer/Kasparov/Carlsen.  Is there some sure attack against the unguarded Queen -- or Rook -- lurking, or something else?

There could be other sequences used for where a radial piece is allowed to stop. A compound piece of pentagonal, hexagonal, heptagonal and octagonal numbers can move: 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 15, 18, 21, 22 or 28..., keeping to the lower lengths for 30x30 board. Aligning the primes and Fibonacci and Deficient and others pairwise, both orthogonally and diagonally, may discover hidden relationships just by tooling around, for applicability beyond the chessboards. For example, applying some Knights Tour like V. Reinhart mentions. Another piece can have numbers of distinct integral squares dividing a rectangle: 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 18. Call that one Squarec, and it is good piece to cross quickly the boundaries of boards either 12x12 or 16x16. With 15 steps specifically allowed it traverses 16x16 diagonally, or orthogonally, all the way without being just plain Queen

In Bob versus Bo 1972, you know Fischer-Spassky Game 6, Spassky stood and joined the audience upon completion in applause it was supposedly so great a game.  Yet instead if 15 ...Rxc5, there are 1 0-0 Ra7 or 1 Rxc5 Qxc5 or 1 b4 Rxc1.  First impression proposals, correct them if they're wrong.  Annotations  never seem to have mentioned the obvious.  Where is the  fallacy that Black now stands better after Rxc5? I would look at programs for Bifurcators or Rococo or Eurasian or Three Player or Time Travel or Falcon Chess, when they exist, but not  for peewee famous Game 6 a la Fischer/Kasparov/Carlsen.  White's position is not so good and Black has to capitalize immediately.

  What do the engines say? Game Six 1972 is considered a top ten sort of game for OrthoChess: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1340520/10-greatest-chess-games-From-Kasporov-vs-Bobby-Fischers-victory.html.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044366.  Throw out the frivolous ones K. versus world, C. versus world, Astronaut versus whomever, and the above is about the best game ever played, but it should never have reached the great finale.

By play here, Latrunculi by Jose and Symmetric by Carlos are way ahead of every other one by modern designers, looking at last year and other lengths. I don't think of Korea, Thai, Chinese, or Shogi as chess variants, because I've always known of them. So that even more puts  Latrunculi and Symmetric the top two. If you don't play it, don't rate it used to be the maxim, too.  Face it, that any newer CV has long odds to be played formally more than couple of times all of 2017, except by the inventor. There are not just the thousand Game Courier ones, but another 2-3 thousand without presets, and most of my recent 'excellent' to CVP games I notice have no Preset.  Then there are generic ways to generate thousands and even millions of CVs. For examples, "Polypiece" by Betza for millions and "91.5 Trillion" for...you guessed it. There are as many rules combinations as possible game scores -- or two different orders of infinity. 

Interesting, thanks for the links, but "Chess Variant amateur Pages" is just your amateur talk. We know how to change the rules with integrity every step even every five minutes so that nothing you ever develop cannot be smashed our best players.

No problem, sorry for the inconvenience that it was doing that. I (practically) never look that email, which is just for games here and Brainking.  I always just play in and out G.C.

The Simpleminded Chess leading site touts a CV last week.  http://en.chessbase.com/post/nunn-again-victory-after-38-years.  The new piece, owned by both sides, Duck is a blocker like in Eight Stone -- repeating a concept used also in a few other CVs that have been around for decades. But let them of ChessBase think of it as new idea if they want.  The concept is related also to the Blue Queen chess forms in that both sides get to move the piece.  The best CV developer Parton is cited in the ChessBase article for CV proliferation, but anymore publication in monographs is not everything, so I think legitimately Charles Gilman is five or six times more prolific than V. R. Parton was with CVs of reasonably consistent good quality. Parton's Alice though certainly is one of about ten CVs that are standing the test of time.  Specific Duck Chess rates  '6' out of a 10. It would grow old quickly with not that much really exciting tactics, nothwithstanding the one good problem presented.  The exact Duck Chess embodiment is unique, since of course it takes minimal competence to tweak a rule, or throw together a new combination of pieces,  and call it a new CV of one's own invention. (See Aiken's Eight-Stone having several blockers at once not on small 64 squares, but average 72 as 8x9,  for more intriguing chess variant in the genre.)

The medieval Chess Moralities went on for thousands lines. Chess Morality I to XX here 2000-2007 add another 800. But iambic pentameter is intellectual for being a long thought per line, so am working on crisper version with seven beats for low attention spanners.

Things like: ..../King and Queen and Horse must move/ Each within established groove./Hours well spent and mind engaged,/ Checked and mated when outraged./ Pawns but move one step at time,/ Bishops vowed to turn on dime./ Rooks befall the straightest path/ And only Queen more power hath. ....

 

11.November.07 here, exactly ten years ago,  I rated Pocket Mutation having played it twice in G. C.  It was described as below

poor, worse than poor then, so let's upgrade it to Poor now.  This type of CV of too much complexity in implementation is total waste of time. I like the streamlined one-idea concepts like top CV of the nineties decade Hostage Chess. Yet ironic  that

Hostage is hardly ever played.

Last month was the eleventh anniversary of this the 19th and penultimate Chess Morality.  They celebrate that

there are four and only four fundamental Chess pieces.  I may do another series in the twenties upcoming.  The original Moralities 1200-1500 were by various authors, John of Waleys, Alexander of Hales, Jacobus de Cessolis.  They were based on all six regular pieces but Pawns were treated eightfold as farmer, sailor, smiths, merchants, taverners.  Each would actually have two or three tags: Pawn 2 for example "smythis and other werkers in yron and metall."

'The Innocent Morality' attained its final form amplified with other polemics only in 1429 -- and about 60 years later the across-the-board Bishop quickly became part of Chess, not just in the occasional variant where it birthed.  In IM, the predecessor "Aufins move and take obliquely because every bishop misused his office through cupidity," but that means only the well-known fixed two-step jump.  

The twenty Chess Moralities were half complete fifteen years ago this month 2003. CMX associates each basic Chess piece with corresponding utmost construction of Antiquity:

Falcon - Pyramid; Pawn - Temple Diana; Knight - Colossus Rhodes; Bishop - Lighthouse Alexandria; King - Statue Zeus; Queen - Gardens Babylon; Rook - Mausoleum. Falcon Chess was first played December 1992 when adding the option of "split block" two changes of direction to the piece.

A lead-in to this tenth Morality does quote Lewis Carroll, and current Chessbase article by Carlos Alberto Colodro  trenchantly places the same 'Through the Looking Glass' in Chess literature, focussing on the game Alice joins: https://en.chessbase.com/post/lewis-carroll-y-su-alicia-jugando-al-ajedrez-por-sergio-negri-2018. .

Carlos Alberto Colodro's current article reprises symbolism of Lewis Caroll's contribution to Chess literature in fantasy and allegory of 'Through the Looking Glass'.  The first sentence mentions Borges: https://en.chessbase.com/post/lewis-carroll-y-su-alicia-jugando-al-ajedrez-por-sergio-negri-2018.  Jorge Luis Borges' "The Chess Player" introduces this Morality XI too.  Each piece of seven is associated in different moralities with, in turn, solar system bodies, animals, birds, days of week, metals, Wonders -- sets of 'seven' somehow being a popular way to organize the cosmos down through philosophy and religion.

Greek mythology has the Pleiades as daughters of Pleione and Atlas. Pleiades.

Here the seven sisters of mythology, Pleiades, conduct dialogue, each representing a Chess piece with unique perspective.  The actual stellar Pleiades of constellation Taurus have had their major stars named specifically after the same goddesses.   

There are reams more nightriders mostly unutilized than the ordinary hack one developed by Dawson a century ago. So far they remain in problems and thought experiments.  Classic essay here proposes Straight Wide Crooked, Diagonal Narrow Crooked, Diagonal Wide Crooked, and Straight Narrow Crooked.  Best of all, the essential nightrider Quintessence.  Each one makes better more interesting play than Betzan-tagged 'NN'.  Play of that ordinary Dawson nightrider is inferior because it just duplicates successive Knight moves same direction.  It is no more interesting than "limited" pieces like an up-to-three-step Bishop or Chess Different Armies Short Rook.

Quintessence itself gets play in odd-shaped 84-square Quintessential Chess, adding also  Leeloo compound R + Quintessence.  

Quinquereme takes it up to 12x12 with the same Quintessence.  Each of the various nightriders in combinations, one and two of each together with some of the other 6 or 8 piece-types in the set, on different board sizes can create thousands, well millions easily, of individualized CVs.  Worth exploring in the abstract are the standard boards 9x9, 9x10, 10x10, 10x12, 12x12, 10x16.  All the large sizes should have a variant nightrider species for improved implementations. Even rudimentary Dawson NN of such wide appearance is superior to also-overused Carreran BN and RN, four hundred years beat to death.

Next Chess has Bifurcators ranked number one.  They are the problem theme solution to the OrthoChess crisis in that they have mathematical appeal.  At our leisure Joe Joyce, myself, Jeremy Good have made successive nominations, and the target date is 2030.  The project for fun is unofficial informal series of threads started in 2008.  

#1 Bifurcators including Winther's 40 new ones would need more than Gustavian  board, at least 8x10.  #2 Great Shatranj actually has debt to Kozune where its compounds were already used and board size does improve to the 80 squares from Kozune's 9x9 attempt.  #4 Mastodon takes up with century-old Pasha, appealing short-ranger in being leaper without oblique direction.  #5 Three-Player dynamics are not so easily simplified as four-player implementations  of Chess.  

#6 Unicorn uses the conventional Nightrider together with the Carrera compounds that torture the Knight.  Schoolbook is the chosen variant at #10 for those very Carreran Bishop-N and Rook-N, the two most popular fairy pieces, because of Trenholme's detailed game annotations.  Big Board of 8-rank is the pre-placement game with all orthodox pieces of Shoenfelder.  

#11 Fischer Random, really almost 200 years old now as CV idea, is getting current revival with much chatter at ChessBase about singleminded Fischer himself.  #7 Sissa has unique solution in brand new type.  Eurasian #9 is perfect Western-pieces implementation of 100-year Dawson Canon, hopper to go with Chinese cannon. 

Time Travel #3 is promising wildcard like other 4- and more dimensional games that could be considered.  It probably belongs in Track Two with Rococo and Tetrahedral as forever to remain variant not Orthodox.

Themed CVs were further developed by Charles Gilman starting with also biologically inspired Great Herd in 2005.

Praying Mantis is D+A+F+W, only Mastodon replay.  Cockroach is N+W+F. Locust is D+A+Q, a piece-type about Amazon value. Those two Amazon and Locust would be interesting match-up in some Chess Different Armies version of Insect Chess.

Insects. Techies and game geeks in general are relatively unaware for well-educated of the ecological crisis not to say catastrophe under way: Trends.

Forces plan for next year's Chess Championship, Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, and even ten years ahead activity, speculative and problematic that they occur at all. In Tim Bostick's CV Insect, 'Monarch' would be better name and image for royal figure. Tarantula and Black Widow are arthropods but not insects, though can be thought of as "bugs" in rude vernacular.

Short-range. There could be up to a million short-range piece-types that comment claims, and a lot more CVs.

It is better in principle to protect all Pawns in array.  Each of the 96 starting line-ups have a name, some offhandedly sprinkled around comments in several articles.  A dozen or two -- they have to be counted up again -- do have all guarded Pawns initially.  Of those some are nevertheless ugly with King and Queen in abc/hij files. The two most favored arrays Old-Standard RNBF and Sibahi RFNB do not do so.  The first is played 47 times in Game Courier now and second 12 times, and other arrays of the same game 3 more times, a total of 62.  However, I have played in all but few of those.

http://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=17706.   Following is reference to arrays that do protect all Pawns: 

Pawn_Protect. Somewhere we surveyed the large Chesses and found about 20% of 300 do not protect all Pawns, and am looking for that comment; if not found will cite several examples of respected games with incomplete array-coverage that way.

In "91.5 Trillion..." the goal was to avoid prolicificism and to generate millions/trillions of CVs formulaically. It is inelegant to deal in specific write-ups one by one. Many_CVs. There only one of the Mutators hinges on starting set-ups varying.

ChessBase current series starts on early OrthoChess history and origins:  https://en.chessbase.com/post/on-the-origins-of-chess-1-5. 

This book by Harry Bird in 1893 was put up by CVPage in 2002.  H.E. Bird (1830-1908) of course revived Carrera's Chess in the 1870s after 250 years, and Capablanca made his version 50 years later.  Capa gets the credit because doing more with it in public play and being GM too. Bird's meandering style and coverage of chess history must have influenced countryman H.J.R. Murray's 1913 'History of Chess'.

'gnohmon' is Ralph Betza nom de plume, and Betza weighs in on Bird in this comment under the Gutenburg book : 

gnohmon wrote on 2002-04-06 Excellent ★★★★★

'More than excellent, superb! Harry Bird is one of history's greatest non-GM chessplayers. His originality combined with his longevity (he played against Morphy, and he played against Lasker, maybe even against Vidmar, if I remember rightly) combined with his strength (not a world champion, but surely stronger than me) make him one of the more interesting personalities in modern chess history. I have often heard of this book, but was never fortunate enough to find a copy. Now I can read it at last. More than superb, optimal!'

Vidmar (1885-1962), mentioned by Betza above.

[ Use of "meandering" style of Bird and Murray reminds of why rivers meander by Albert Einstein in 1926: Meandering, off topic in that Einstein friend GM Lasker (1868-1941) competed with Capablanca so much -- including Capablanca Chess. Physicist Einstein and mathematician Lasker colleagues: Science/Chess. ]