Comments by nelk114

"Motorcyclists may be disappointed that the name Goldwing is not used!"

Wouldn't a Goldwing simply be a wing which can also make one step in the remaining Goldgeneral directions? Likewise for e.g Silvermitre, Brasswing, Foresthorn, etc.

I think your descriptions for the Vicerine and Duchess are the wrong way round...

The turn-order thing looks kind of similar to what I have in my 3-Player Chess I, complete with rules for king threats (although as yet no provision for consecutive checks), although I have also added rules making sure that trades do not go on for too long; presumably this would have an effect on trading tactics. I have wondered about extrapolating to more players; aside from longer escape clauses to accommodate the larger no. of players, would anything else need adding?

I'm not entirely clear on how the bottom-board mechanics work, specifically on two points:
(a) Does moving onto a square where an opponent has your piece buried capture your own piece or the opponent's?, and in the former case what would be the advantage of making such a move in the first place?
(b)When a piece on the bottom board moves, must it capture another buried piece or does it capture a piece on the top board and thereby resurface (or may it do either)?

Overall, this seems like an interesting concept and I might try it if these points could be clarified. Thanks in advance :)

How about this?:
Pirahna plants can emerge from Warp pipes, pieces which cannot move on their own but work in pairs like teleporters and can be carried similarly to shy guys; the pirahna plants could move like a king to any square within a 2-square radius of the pipe and would come along if the pipe were moved while it was outside. Promotes to Venus Fire Trap which has rifle capture. It cannot be captured when it returns to the pipe (and obviously doesn't warp).
Bullet Bills move like rooks in the direction they are fired from a bullet bill launcher, which are similar to warp pipes but uncapturable and unable to work as teleporters. Bills may or may not be subject to Momentum Chess rules and there could be limits on how many can be on the board at one time and I'd guess no double Bills (only one bill on one file/rank going vertically/horizontally respectively), esp. if momentum doesn't apply. If Banzai Bills are desired they could be the same except take up a 2x2 square.
Boos could be mobile (if not quite as much as lakitus) and can ignore all pieces in their path but cannot move if threatened by an enemy (and maybe even a friend). Probably cannot be captured by replacement as in originals.

Idea for moving pipe and bill launcher is from the fangame SMBX where there are versions of those which can be used by the player; perhaps if you decide to later make a 'Great Mario Chess' with more pieces one could try to include things like Bowser, Water (and of course then cheep-cheeps, bloopers, maybe frog suit), buzzy beetles (koopas but can't be fire-flowered), and many more...

This was meant to be a reply to the other thread with this title, see here for original thread.

Wrt piece names, Gilman's Man and Beast series is always worth looking at if you can find your way around (it's invaluable for its comprehensiveness if equally forbidding for its density)

In particular wrt bent pieces, M&B09 suggests Anchorite for W‐then‐B (“after a kind of religious hermit” that sounds like ‘Aanca’, which he rejected for similar reasons). D‐then‐B (Osprey in another variant that came out earlier this year iirc) is suggested as Lama, and its counterpart A‐then‐R is a Zephyr.

N‐then‐B (the GA unicorn/rhinoceros) is omitted, presumably as being too similar to Anchorite (since it can be equivalently described as W‐then‐Ski‐Bishop, perhaps it's a ‘Ski‐anchorite’?).

Cazaux's suggested Dragon and Basilisk are, as HGM found, Betza's Reaper and Harvester (mentioned also in M&B13) — their compund the Combine probably also qualifies as ‘more than crazy’ :D

Piece 3 is, for Gilman, a Fimibrated Gryphon, while piece 4 (if not a typo for “(W-then-B) + (D-then-B)”, which would be a fimibrated anchorite) is M&B13's Ancress, except that the rook component is Ski‐; the ancress' counterpart, gryphon+bishop, is a Metropolitan.

Fwiw, M&B09 suggests Contra‐ versions as well, which make the sliding move before the leap

Not sure if any besides the Tripunch set have been used though…

Any movement (aside from the null move if you count that) has a direction; in the knight's case, as with oblique leapers in general, it happens to be between the usual ortho‐ and diagonals, but it's still a direction just as a dabbaba's or alfil's (2‐square leap ortho‐ resp. diagonally) leap. Hence also the nightrider, which makes multiple knight leaps in the same direction (e.g. from a1 to b3,c5,d7 or c2,e3,g4 on 8×8), and with which many readers will be familiar, hence the confusion over the knight's ‘path’.

Fwiw the queen diagram is cool, if a bit daunting‐looking at first

Or we could introduce a special XBetza notation for virgin moves that cannot be played when in check

If that's the chosen option, it seems like it'd make sense to expand it to any move that can't be made while in check — see, for instance, David Cannon's Lemniscate Chess where a checked king can't move at all. (That variant in particular is probably well out of scope for the applet, but similar rules are concievable for other more mobile kings as an alternative to excluding movement through check)

Are you sure the rather extensive Alfaerie: Many set doesn't have what you need? If not, what do you feel you're missing?

George Duke's comments interpret two- and three‐square leaps as along radial lines. It's not clear to me, however, esp. given the talk of the tarantula being ‘easily most powerful’ and of ‘smothering’ towards the end of the page, that it's not referring to oblique leaps as well, making the Mantis and Waterbugs WFNAD's rather than WFAD's and the Tarantulas full (and indeed very powerful) 3‐square area‐leapers.

This is now ready for editorial review — there are a number of notes/question at the bottom that will need resolving but I'd like the eds' (and any other) input on those.

According to Jean‐Louis' site the king can make an initial two‐square radial leap

Edit: just took a look at the code and saw that those are already there and the question was about knight leaps in addition to those. But yeah there seems to be no indication that those are available

Might it make sense to bump the update time, or some equivalent metadata, when a page is unhidden so that it appears on the What's New page? It seems quite unfortunate that some submissions apparently will miss out on some exposure because they were last updated over a month before publication. And it can be quite confusing to see things turn up even on the most current page as being new the previous week, when it wasn't there back then.

Chushin Shogi (unhidden earlier today but last updated at the beginning of December and thus on the 60–90‐day‐old page) would be the latest example of this.

I've updated this with some rewrites for parsimony, better reflection of historical precedence, typo fixes, and a couple small additional bits of info; also I've changed it to refer to acromantula rather than angryph (though I haven't changed the index info yet), since it seems, at the moment, to be the least controversial choice, and changed some of the text to suit that also.

Would be good to get some pointers on the remaining bullet points in the ‘notes to the eds’ as well :)

Edit: taking a look at the upload dates for some of the linked articles, the history is still a bit off; I'll fix it soon

Edit 2: Done; most historically‐relevant things should now be in the right order, as far as I can find. I've also removed the reference to the alternative spelling of ‘Angryph’ as it doesn't really fit in the *narrative of the page as it now is, and is in any case without historical precedent.

It's not terribly clear given that the diagram lacks horizontal separators between ranks (instead using one text line per rank), but the pawns start (as written below the diagram) on the 3rd rank, not the second.

Though I'm a bit curious as to why 3 generals rather than the more obvious two?

Your comment said that RennChess was “a follow up of Mideast Chess” — if so then it would make sense that Eric would not keep the Cavalier's name but change the move. Thus his understanding of Mideast probably agreed with Pritchard, which would mean that Gollon also agreed (in both sources, if different). In that case Hans' page has an error introduced either by a typo from Eric, or by Hans.

Given that that move is probably erroneous, it makes sense to either remove the reference, or keep it but with a note that it's probably in error. In the latter case, calling it “Hans' account” could risk reflecting badly on him, even though (of course) that is not the intent. Fwiw, “These pages' account” risks the same directed at ourselves(!), while “one account” or “some accounts” is quite unspecific (and the latter may be incorrect if ours is the only such).

Hope that's clearer — English is very much one of my mother tongues (though sometimes I wonder whether it'd be more interesting if it weren't), as is indirection/terseness it would seem ;)

Charles Gilman, rather predictably, is way ahead of us here. The helical Rook, Bishop, and Queen are in M&B09 as respectively Proselyte, Brueghel, and Halcyon. The slip‐ pieces you described in your other comment are the non‐crooked forms of these, respectively the Panda, Bear, and Harlequin (in M&B06 — naturally ‐06 has names for the ski‐sliders too: Picket (after Tamerlane), Pocket, and Fagin)

Edit: just realised you said up to two steps between turns; that may well be new, albeit closely related to the M&B09 pieces

I've done one last (hopefully, for now) update to this page, incorporating H. G.'s suggestion about the ‘Contra‐’ prefix, and a caveat about Mideast Chess' Cavalier. I'll henceforth probably leave this page alone for now.

Gilman calls it the Charolais.

I seem to recall having read somewhere about a variation on the pawns' initial double move which, contrary to the standard rules, allows not only a single pawn moving two steps, but also two pawns moving one step each. Iirc it was described as being played in India, with a popular opening involving one King's pawn moving two steps and the other side moving both bishops' pawns, though it may have been the knights' pawns and I can't remember which side makes which move.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I can't seem to find it anywhere myself.

To be fair, Cattle are ungulates too, and I suspect in some ways perhaps more apt for such a weak piece (not only is its leap quite long and awkward, but it's also bound to 1/4 of the board like the Dabbaba) — certainly Stag would suggest to me something stronger. Ofc in Gilman's case he also wants to be able to extrapolate (to Zherolais, Ghirolais ⁊c. for 6:4, 2:8, ⁊c. leapers) so he's constrained in his naming by that.

I think the rules were clear, just that Betza notation does not describe it unambiguously. Though it seems reasonable to interpret crooked moves as continuing in the outwardmost direction by default, unless otherwise specified, in which case t[WzB] would indeed describe the Harvestman (the other option is then not covered by the original Betza notation, though something like t[WfhzB] would probably be clear enough)

This bears an uncanny resemblance, even down to the name chosen for the extra piece, to George Duke's Variant, though the pawns' multi‐step move is novel afaict.

That game's non‐leaping (‘multi‐path’) falcon was measured as being a little more valuable than a rook (albeit on 8×10), so I wouldn't be at all suprised for the leaping one to be more powerful yet.

It looks like the restriction is being applied over‐eagerly: I tried adding the square‐removal tag to Cheshire Cat and Wormhole Chesses but in both cases it tells me I mayn't tag a deleted page.

It seems that multi‐capturing two‌‐square leapers are oddly popular as knight enhancements: this game has the multi‐capture apparently mandatory for when going to Alibaba destinations, but still allows leaping otherwise; Larry Smith's Li Qi replaces knights with ‘Young’ Chu‐shogi lions, which cannot move back to the starting square, to match its planar linepieces; and ofc H. G.'s Mighty‐lion Chess replaces one knight with a full Lion.

I wonder why?

We seem to be seeing different things then. https://www.chessvariants.com/tag/Parent%3AChild lists the #Parent child under the heading ‘Parent’, but #Parent: Child: Grandchild is, for me, nowhere to be found on that page.

Abdication could be represented by putting [the prince] on top of 2 checkers

Or just replacing it with the king, since the latter gets removed from the board otherwise

Are those now the ‘default’ versions of the Hero and Shaman then? If so what do we call the non‐bent versions in the Chieftan variants: Linear (rejecting ‘straight’ as, like ‘bent’, perhaps overimplying somewhat)?

As for pieces that can only do slide‐then‐step and not the reverse, the only one that comes to mind in a game is the Transcendental Prelate.

While on its own the original diagram on this page was a bit obscure, in conjunction with Fergus' circular diagrams it really clarifies the rationale behind Nadvorney's interpretation of the diagonal move; a bit of thought also reveals why Miller's reasoning in keeping the bishop on its own colour is flawed: if the bishop stays on its own colour you would expect a rook stepping over the pole to change colour as it does on a normal square‐cell board, whereas here (or on any spherical/Klein‐bottle‐shaped board with a multiple of four files) it doesn't. On e.g. a 10‐file board, Miller's reasoning would line up with Nadvorney's.

As for Chess on the Dot, the change in the diagonal's handedness at the poles also keeps it on one colour (on a board of this parity), but isn't stirctly necessary for a closed loop: Nadvorney's version (as can be seen on its diagram) does it just as well, and even Miller's manages, albeit via a much more circuitous route.

Fwiw, here's the original diagram as salvaged from the Internet Archive:

c7  d7  e7  f7  g7  h7  a7  b7  c7  d7  e7  f7
c8  d8  e8  f8  g8  h8  a8  b8  c8  d8  e8  f8
g8  h8  a8  b8  c8  d8  e8  f8  g8  h8  a8  b8
g7  h7  a7  b7  c7  d7  e7  f7  g7  h7  a7  b7
g6  h6  a6  b6  c6  d6  e6  f6  g6  h6  a6  b6
g5  h5  a5  b5  c5  d5  e5  f5  g5  h5  a5  b5
g4  h4  a4  b4  c4  d4  e4  f4  g4  h4  a4  b4
g3  h3  a3  b3  c3  d3  e3  f3  g3  h3  a3  b3
g2  h2  a2  b2  c2  d2  e2  f2  g2  h2  a2  b2
g1  h1  a1  b1  c1  d1  e1  f1  g1  h1  a1  b1
c1  d1  e1  f1  g1  h1  a1  b1  c1  d1  e1  f1
c2  d2  e2  f2  g2  h2  a2  b2  c2  d2  e2  f2 

Charles Gilman called these Zephyr and Lama respectively, though by his description they cannot make the one‐step move that I'm not sure whether you're including. The latter also turns up as an Osprey in Expanded Chess

The Princess' diagram disagrees with the text in omitting sideways moves

Ok so you are indeed including the 1‐step move among the movement possibilities — I suppose your ‘2.manticore’ is different enough from a lame/stepping/blockable osprey/lama (and mutatis mutandis for the ‘2.gryphon’) to merit a different name… maybe. If it's not being distinguished from a ‘true’ osprey/zephyr in a single game I'd be tempted to leave that name as is, though avoiding going too near overlexicalisation is a personal preference.

If the distinction does need to be made within a game (at which point the tradeoff changes imo), then ‘2.manticore’(/‘2.griffon’) is probably fine, if perhaps closer to the (presumably also present in a game featuring both of these) actual manticore/griffin than might be desirable, though I'm not really one to ask for original name suggestions (and M&B13 is apparently lacking names for lama/rook and zephyr/bishop compound with which we could (ab)use M&B8's ‘‐lander’ suffix). Perhaps a name based on lama/zephyr/osprey/ostrich/whatever you want to call them would be more apt? ‘Running Osprey’ isn't altogether without a ring to it…

Does XBetza allow defining pieces that capture by stopping in the square just before the captured piece?

yamcfyambK comes close to defining a Queen that does that, aka Rococo's Advancer; it is, however, what Charles Gilman called a ‘Strict’ advancer, in that it also can't approach a friendly piece (as doing so would capture it), as well as (as a byproduct of the implementation) being unable to approach the edge once it's left it. Adding mQ would lift those restrictions at the expense of making the capture upon advance optional. Idk if it's possible to do better without extending the notation though

Another question I have is, does 0 have any meaning when used as a piece's range? If not, perhaps it could be used to indicate that a piece must move as far as possible in whichever direction it goes.

Afaict (istr it was declared explicilty at some point though idr where) 0 corresponds to unlimited range. gabQ handles going as far as possible provided there's a piece in the way, but is subject to the same edge case(!) as the advancer wrt the boundaries of the board — again I doubt it's possible to contrive a way around that without dedicated extensions

The chance of rolling a double is 1/36. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32313428/understanding-the-probability-of-a-double-six-if-i-roll-two-dice

The chance of rolling any given double (e.g., as in your link, a double 6) is indeed 1∕36. There are, however, six doubles to choose from, so the total probability is in fact 1∕6 of rolling any double.

The chance of rolling a single is 1/6 ⁓ but two dice thence double the likelihood of instances to 1/3

Alas, adding probabilities does not work that way. In effect you've counted the outcome of a double twice. The chance of rolling at least one of a given number with 2 dice is, in fact, 1−(1−1∕6)²=11∕36.

Back‐of‐the‐envelope translation:

este ajedrez tiene un tablero modificado de 73 casillas .

This chess [variant] has a modified board of 73 squares.

las piezas adicionales a las convencionales son :

The pieces in addition to the conventional ones are:

un canciller : torre + caballo .

A Chancellor: Rook+Knight

el omega que mueve dos en diagonal y salta a la segunda casilla en diagonal ademas ,puede saltar a la 2da. casilla en ortogonal con una pieza de por medio.

The Omega which moves 2 diagonally and jumps to the seconddiagonal square; additionally it can jump to the 2nd square orthogonally with a piece in between.

los peones se llaman columnas y pueden tambien mover una casilla en diagonal hacia atras en ambas direcciones si estas estan desocupadas.

Pawns are called Columns and can also move one square diagonally backwards in either direction if these are vacant

el rey es un Emperador : rey + caballo .

The king is an Emperor: King+Knight

reglas especiales :

Special Rules:

_se mueven dos fichas por turno pero solo se puede comer una vez por turno.

• Two pieces are moved per turn but only one capture may be made per turn

_una ficha no se puede mover dos veces en un solo turno..

• A piece cannot move twice in one turn

_por cada 4 piezas que un bando atrape obliga en el siguiente turno de su adversario a que reinicie una de las piezas que haya capturado como aliada.

• For every four pieces captures by a side, his opponent is obliged on his next turn to reintroduce one of the pieces he has captured on his side

_las piezas iniciadas comienzan en cualquier casilla de la 1era. fila de su bando.

• [Re‐]introduced pieces begin on any square on the 1st file of their side

_cuando un rey está en jaque puede salir de un mate intercambiando 2 piezas de jerarquia () por un cambio de posición hacia una casilla que esté libre. (es opcional).

• When a king [i.e. an emperor?] is in check he can escape mate by exchanging two pieces of hierarchy () [sic] for a change of position to an empty space (this is optional)

_el atacante escoge una pieza y la inicia como aliada , el atacado escoge la otra pieza..

• The attacker chooses a piece and introduces it on his side; the attackee selects the other piece

As to the “two” corner squares, removing two squares from each corner of a 9×9 board does in fact leave 73 squares, though whether the second square is vertically or horizontally adjacent to the square in the corner remains unclear. Presumably the promised diagram will clarify.

It looks as if it might mean bringing one's king to a space adjacent to the opponent's)? Would be not unlike Bachelor Chess (and a number of Gilman's) in that respect. Hence the commment about kings meeting on “their” — i.e. ‘one's own’ — half of the board, the case of 4th/5th ranks, and the note about “approaching” the opposing king.

Also the fifth paragraph remains given twice

the players start with […] a queen and a king and 8 pawns on their secind rank

All standard chess pieces except the king

The king isn't royal

These statements contradict each other. How can the player start with a king that's not in the game, and how can said king be non‐royal?

Also the rules regarding pawns are a bit unclear — am I right in inferring that a pawn effectively demotes upon reaching the last rank while adding a new ‘pawn’ (which can still move as a queen) into the pocket? thereby making the pawns a potentially infinite source of new pieces?

when playing the game one is generally attempting to achieve a particular double

Perhaps, but if that's what you meant it might be worth being clearer about that; the way it's phrased aþm suggests that the probability of being able to make any Séj‐dice capturing move (assuming availability of pieces to capture) is 1∕3+1∕36=13∕36, which doesn't really make sense (not least, that'd be likelier than merely being able to move even if the 1∕3 figure were correct). The actual probability is in fact, as dax00 said, 11∕36(=chance of matching the last piece to move)×1∕6(=chance of a double)=11∕216. The chance of any given piece being able to capture is 1∕6 of that again, i.e. 11∕1296.

since the fraction 11∕36 is almost a third, doesn't that in effect equate to 1∕3?

Well 1∕3=12∕36, so… no? It's close, sure, but still an 8.33% difference — if you consider that trivial enough to be discounted fine, but don't expect everyone (especially those of us with a mathematical inclination) to agree.

There is a 66.6% chance that, because each turn the dice MUST match the opponent's piece, thence the game will continue as regular Classical Chess

I also just noticed this remark; even aside from the percentage being wrong — the chance that a given turn will be ‘normal’ is 25∕36=69.44% — it's not clear whether you mean that to apply only to each turn, or (incorrectly) to the whole game. After 2 turns the likelihood of still having a normal game is 25∕36×25∕36=625∕1296 (less than 1∕2) and it keeps going down from there. Having a full game of Séj where the dice do not once allow a deviation from ‘classical’ chess is vanishingly unlikely.

Are there any plans to restore this functionality? Not sure whether the ongoing procedures with backups ⁊c make this a more or less opportune time to look into this, so if the latter it can ofc wait, but it'd be good to have it back eventually

I've been thinking a little about these pieces, as well as the ‘helical’ crooked riders that Fergus suggested here.

It seems to me these are instances of (modulo one detail, which I'll get to below) the same pattern that brought us the ‘modern’ elephant — i.e. the FA — wrt the original 2‐space‐diagonal Elephant: we have an original piece with a non‐coprime (as Charles Gilman would have it) leaping move and fill in the gap.

As such, it seems to me that, in line with mỹ initial intuitions in both cases, it's probably clearest imo to think of the helical pieces and the 2.bent riders as variations on respectively and lama–osprey/zephyr–ostrich rather than totally distinct pieces (or for that matter as immediate bishop/rook/queen or manticore/griffin derivatives)

The main difference between these and the modern elephant is that, the original piece having riding tendencies already, it seems more natural to have the ‘modern’ component be lame/stepping rather than leaping as in the elephant case. The ‘running’ elephant (as coined in the previous comment) would be a lame/stepping FA, or equivalently a B2.

I wonder whether there are many other piece‐types for which ‘running’ (or indeed ‘modern’) subspecies are useful? Running dababba‐/alfil‐/alibabariders, skip‐riders (panda/bear/harlequin), and slip‐riders (Tamerlane picket ⁊ al.) are just rooks/bishops/queens (and ‘modern’ ones the same but less blockable and this probably OP); running crooked dababba‐/alfil‐/alibabariders likewise reduce to lame contrabrueghels/‐proselytes/‐halcyons. Running alpacas/quaggas/okapis/⁊c. (i.e. alternating pairs of orthogonal and diagonal steps) — straight, curved, or switchback — are perhaps more promising, and not, imo, all too exotic; running nightriders/roses/nightfliers/‐sidlers/‐ladies, the same but starting with a single step, also bear considering, even if not strictly non‐coprime to begin with.

There's one other curious difference between the bent and crooked members of this family: as described, the bent ones can only make the remaining part of its move if the non‐coprime part is made in its entirety (i.e. the ferz/wazir move is to the exclusion of the rook/bishop one), whereas the crooked pieces must make both componets regardless (this difference is more pronounced when considering the time‐reversed versions, i.e. running contrazephyr/contraproselyte/⁊c.: the former is committed to a full alfil leap if it starts with a non‐zero rook move — the alternative would be the existing fimbriated griffon — while the latter has to make its final turn and ferz step lest it become equivalent to the aforementioned running crooked alfilrider (as well as curtailing its first, rather than its last alfil run; the pair with one time‐inverted but not the other is also possible, if a bit obtuse)). I'm not yet sure how best to describe that difference without special‐casing.

tl;dr: new category of pieces (tenatively named ‘running’) combining recent suggestions, with some further suggested extrapolations and some unanswered questions re semantics.

Assuming anyone actually makes it through this, any thoughts?

I believe this page to now be ready for publication

I was scrolling through some old comments and have found what Aurelian would call a 3.manticore posited by Sam Trenholme in this comment, alongside the ‘3.griffin’ and a bunch of others (the ’2.manticore’ or ‘running osprey’ is in there as well). No names alas, but still interesting to see these pieces having been discussed 12 years ago (almost to the day!).

It seems to me (on the topic of that thread) that simply the fact of having to count to three rather than either changing direction immediately or simply foregoing any counting altogether (griffon/manticore and hook mover/capricorn respectively) makes the ‘3.manticore’ non‐simple from a player's perspective; the ’2.manticore’/‘running osprey’ is kind of liminal in that respect — two‐step moves are still easily visualised and trivially interpolated — though even it is in some ways arguably more complicated than the component of Tim Stiles' fox and wolf, which only has immediate turns.

When saying ‘four squares’, is that counted inclusively or exclusively? In the former case, both king and rook moving ‘four’ squares each would in fact land next to each other, on the bishops and adjutant's squares on the queenside and the marshall's and knight's on the commanderside.

Originally posted on Pemba, where this piece is called a Crocodile.

I assume JL means this one? His page includes it thrice: that ‘close‐up’ at the beginning of the Rules section, the full page featuring it after the list of volumes in Alfonso's book, and a reproduction on a commemorative stamp at the end of the page

The dragon is indeed a t[FR], in Betza's original notation. However, that part of it was never documented on the Betza Notation page (instead languishing on the Chess on a Really Big Board page, though it turns up elsewhere too), and is arguably a little underspecified, so H. G.'s XBetza (which is what the interactive diagram uses) specifies such multi‐leg moves in its own way. In this extension, FyafsF is indeed equivalent to the original t[FR]

The vulture afaict is mainly a longer‐range relative of George Duke's (and more recently Uli Schwekendiek's) Falcon, whose advantage over the bison (from a game design perspective) is its blockability — presumably the same is sought here. Unfortunately, due to the multiple paths to a given destination, it is quite complex to describe. Idk about the extra knight move though, that's perhaps a little gratuitous (presumably to make up for the basic vutlre's lack of maneuverability?)

I agree the birds are quite complex, if potentially interesting to play with? And whether the knight/elephant enhancements are truly necessary may be worth a playtest as well

Ok, having actually gone to find a copy online, I agree that Tressau specifies the Kb/j–Rc/i castle; in principle one could still object that the example games may not be played by the original rules (while he says they're real, rather than constructed, games, it could still be under the influence of a misunderstanding), but it seems upon a cursory reading that for the Sultan's Game in particular his book may in fact be the original source? The Emperors Game is cited in the Spielarchiv, but Tressau explicitly notes (p.80) that a game with a Marshal had been suggested there but not described, rather being rejected due to the necessary odd number of files being unwieldy (in particular due to either same‐colour bishops or transposition of one bishop but not the other with its adjacent knight).

Unfortunately a quick search for the Archiv der Spiele online appears entirely fruitless so I can't confirm that…

Apparently I forgot to add the link to the XBetza page in my previous comment; I've now added it there.

yafsF is indeed the sliding part. a is as you've found, ‘again’; fs for w's and F's is interpreted as for a king, so for an F it changes to a W direction — and ‘forward’ for anything but the first part of the move is interpreted as ‘outward’ (like Alfonso about the rhinoceros); y is a ‘range toggle’ i.e. it switches from being a leaper/stepper to being a slider. Thus, yafsF is one step diagonally followed by a 45° turn and sliding orthogonally.

Complexity is in the eye of the beholder. It's not immediately obvious (especially compared to t[FR]) but it's apperntly easier to describe to a computer (and easier to generalise), which for the interactive diagrams is a definite plus

Indeed, that was my impression from his book as well; I'd initially missed the detail of how recent this variant was and had assumed it significantly older (and I don't trust people to count like we do today(!)).

I enjoyed the other papers you posted here and look forward to reading this one too

Indeed, it seems that either the knight's verbal description or its XBetza move has been exchanged with the one in the Modern game.

@Aurelian?

Afaict, it looks like Sin-yeon-sang-hui is a historical Janggi variant (though my Korean is nonexistent so I can't confirm any of what Daphne posted), and this is a back‐formation (‘dramatised’ is probably Google Translate or equivalent) of an an equivalent Xiàngqì‐derived variant.

Presumably the Korean original has no river and Korean‐style cannons/advisors/generals

a King, a Xiangqi Elephant, a Xiangqi Horse and a two-path lame Dabbabah (XBetza KaFafsW).

From the description (both here and of the Sliding General), shouldn't it be a three‐path lame dabbabah? Including the possibility of two consecutive same‐direction Wazir steps. That'd give KaFafsfW or KaFafsWnD

The Snaketongue is simple: a vertical W step followed by the outward turn is simply vWvyafsW (same as the manticore but with v prepended to each component).

The ship is trickier, as the first step can be in any direction and by the second step there's no way to specify which is the right twist (as there hasn't been a bend yet and l and r are relative). It may be worth special‐casing z and q here too(?) but meanwhile it can be done in a slightly hacky way involving the mp modality trick (i.e. a square that can either be empty or a mount, so it doesn't matter what's there). That gives two solutions: FvmpasyazW which (other than the F step) moves one forward, ignoring wahatever is there, turns 90° for another W step, then turns 90° again for the rest of the Rook move; or alternatively smpyasW which steps one space sideways, ignores what's there, then turns 90° and continues, now vertically, as a rook (note this latter one already includes the F step)

@HG:

quite incidentally while trying some of these, I input yafqF as a move, which seems to give a pandacub (Gilman's name for the forward‐only Slip‐rook, ft[WDD]) for some reason? Not sure exactly what I expected (though sth gryphon‐like would have made sense I think?) but it definitely wasn't that.

@Max

Game Courier doesn't (currently?) support games for more than two players. Idk how those four‐player variants were done, though it wouldn't surprise me if it's in teams where each player is suppoesd to control both armies in each team. (presumably these are not rule‐enforcing)

I feel like multiplayer games may technically be on Fergus' list of things to Maybe Eventually Add to GC (istr him mentioning it though I wouldn't hold him to that) but there's no support now and iirc probably requires a fairlyfundamental refactor at the very least

the same trouble with the bishop and queen.

It's not entirely clear what the analogous ‘error’ would be. In the REX King's and Glinski Pawns' cases it's using orthogonal moves to the exclusion of hex‐diagonal ones, while this knight apparently just miscounted the diagonal portion, resulting in a piece (which Charles Gilman terms a Student) which is analogous to the square‐cell Zebra.

A queen analogous to the REX king just becomes a rook, but that leaves the bishop completely unaccounted for.

Ofc, there are a few variants which take this version of king and queen as their basis and build the rest of the pieces around them: the oldest is Sigmund Wellisch's 3‐player game (for which this site unfortunately has only a Java Applet, though a more complete description is available e.g. on John Savard's page); the king moves one orthogonally, the knight to any nearest square that the king can't reach (there is a certain logic to calling the hex diagonals ‘leaps’, given that the relevant cells don't actually touch), the rook slides orthogonally, the queen moves as rook or knight (technically a marshal analogue therefore), and the pawn in either of the forwardmost directions (the board being oriented as in Fergus' Hex Shogis).

Alternatively, Gilman's Alternate Orthogonals Hex Chesses do exactly what the name suggests: assign alternate orthogonals as analogous to the square‐board directions, giving a REX king and Glinski pawns together with Wellisch knights, a rook as a ‘queen’, and ‘rooks’ and ‘bishops’ which have each other's move but backwards — albeit this being Charles Gilman, the pieces all have ifferent names. This one had quite a positive reception, and it does preserve some aspects of square‐cell chess that other analogies lack (some of which are touched on in its comments) — it's certainly worth a look

Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

A possible counterargument to 12×12 being too much for a ‘standard’ might be Chu Shōgi — after all, it was the most popular Chess in Japan before the introduction of drops to its smaller brother.

I'd expect a ‘Next Chess’ would be likely to at least have a single set of basic rules (i.e. regarding check, promotion, winning conditions, ⁊c.), probably the FIDE ones, though arguably even there there is some tweaking that might be worth doing; I would be very much in favour, though, of a poker‐like situation where multiple games (probably just different piece sets, in practice) enjoyed comparable popularity — and might even be mixed regularly in both casual and tournament play.

I believe you want checkaride instead of checkride — the latter checks all directions symmetrically (making a full gryphon plus conditional wazir moves), while the former is asymmetric.

Presumably if your suggestion for the Ship is otherwise correct, the snaketongue would similarly be:

def G fn (checkaride #0 #1 1 1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 1
    #1
    or fn (checkaride #0 #1 -1 1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 1
    #1
    or fn (checkaride #0 #1 1 -1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 -1
    #1
    or fn (checkaride #0 #1 -1 -1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 -1
    #1
    or checkleap #0 #1 1 0;

def GL mergeall
    leaps #0 1 0
    ray where #0 0 1 1 1
    ray where #0 0 -1 1 -1
    ray where #0 0 1 -1 1
    ray where #0 0 -1 -1 -1;