Ratings & Comments

It already is: https://www.chessvariants.com/play/enhanced-courier-chess

I hope this game will be coded to be played on Game Courier with enforced rules in next future

Let's take the starting position with the black royal on e8 and white on e6 and b4. The white move a1 to a8 or h1 to h8 checkmates the royal. Or am I wrong? If not, it took 3 avatars to checkmate the royal.

You don't get the point. There is a difference between forcing mate, and showing that a mate position exists that can be reached if the opponent is so helpful to run into the knife. With a pair of knights there also are many reachable mate positions. (E.g. white: Kb3, Nd2, Ne3; black Ka1; Ne3-c2#) Nevertheless KNNK is a dead draw.

It is quite possible that avatarius plus two avatars can force checkmate. But to show that, one must start from a position like one with white on a1, b1 and b2 and black on e4.

It'd almost be straightforward to force mate with two avatars (plus the friendly avatarius) occupying rook or queen cells in consecutive files, except for forcing the king away from the e file.

The two sides aren't symmetric: an avatar on the black queen-start cell d8 can move and remain queen-powered at f6 or g5, but one on the white queen-start cell d1 cannot. I wonder if exchanging the king and queen starting cells on the 8th rank (completing rotational symmetry for the whole board) would be better for both points.

I must have answered too quickly and was apparently asleep. Only the moves from a1 to a8 or from h1 to h8 are relevant. Please forget everything else.

Let's take the starting position with the black royal on e8 and white on e6 and b4. The white move a1 to a8 or h1 to h8 checkmates the royal. Or am I wrong? If not, it took 3 avatars to checkmate the royal.

"But why would the King ever move to e8 on the preceding halfmove?" I can't answer and only refer to the gameplay, which causes the initial situation I described, namely black royal on e8 and white on e6 and b4. Then follows the white move a1 to a8 or h1 to h8.

The piece indicator is always redundant when you give the origin square, in variants where there can only be a single piece on a square.

I don't understand wfhat you mean by the mating example. What is a1-a8? A move? Is g5-g8 supposed to be an alternative for that? From g8 the avatar would move like a Knight, right? So that would not even be check, and black would just move e8-d8. On a8 the avatar would indeed remain a Rook. But why would the King ever move to e8 on the preceding halfmove? If it was on d8 it could have moved to c8 or c7, if it was on f8 to g8 or g7. This seems more like a helpmate.

I am still a bit concerned whether this game is winnable. If the number of new avatars one can obtain through promotion is limited, and the limit has already been reached, how many avatars would be needed to force checkmate on a bare royal (moving as orthodox King)? Has this been investigated at all? It seems far easier to promote in this variant than in variants where pawns have to cross the entire board (and pass each other) to do it. So if there is any limitation on the number of extra avatars it is likely to be used up in an early stage of the game, and end-games would be conducted in the 'no promotions' regime. If there is no limitation, the game might never reach the end-game stage, as people would replenish their armies all the time. Securing a 'rapid-promotion factory' (e.g. a few white avatars in the trapezoidal region d7-e7-f8-c8 shuttling between 7th and 8th rank) might become the main strategic goal in the game.

Does a royal moving as orthodox king also trigger a promotion when it moves to 8th rank?

There is nothing to add to this!

I think Smess, which has a similar theme is a better designed game!

Hi Gerd, hope your fine and well. I'm sure you haven't upset or hurt anyone!! I understand what you said, and it is extremely interesting idea indeed how you describe your game about the board etc.

I don't want to go on about the pawns, but still, I have to say, the game would maintain your 'theme' even if the pawns remained pawns. However, the game as you have it must have a unique feel and play to it!

Would be fun to see the game in action.

Thank you Christine and thank you Greg,

let me be a little provocative: In normal chess, the board is - please don't be bad - a hole nut. The board is where the game happens, but where the board has almost no influence on what happens in the game.

In Avatar Chess, the pieces are only substitutes and the board determines the rules. This means at the same time that the structures of Avatar Chess are no longer comparable with normal chess.

Especially the mechanism of the pawns, which you mentioned, is cancelled. Pawns have a barrier function in normal chess, in Avatar Chess pawns acquire pieces to maintain the playing power.

Perhaps you can say it like that: Normal Chess is a top down game, where the pieces dominate and where the board plays no role.

Avatar Chess is the opposite, namely a bottem up game with rules from the underground (a little theatricality must be). Maybe a little less predictable, but a little more exciting.

From Magnus Carlsen's environment I got the indication that the game could be chaotic. Maybe that's true, maybe not.

But one thing has to be mentioned: In normal chess there is a tendency to protect strong pieces (e.g. queen). This tendency does not exist in Avatar Chess.

An avatar on a queen square that is captured can easily be replaced by another avatar on the same or similar square. The sturcture of Avatar Chess is quite different.

I hope I haven't upset or hurt anyone.

With a game as unusual as this, it's difficult to say without playing it, which I'm not able to do at present. My guess is that it would be difficult to see more than a move or two ahead with the pieces changing types on almost every move. Also, in chess the slow-moving interconnected pawn chains create a kind of terrain the pieces must move around. In this game, as soon as a pawn moves it's no longer a pawn, so the center of the board will be a free-for-all of powerful pieces. Still, it might be fun.

Does no one have an idea? I do not want to disturb, but why does no one comment? Lack of interest or there are neither positive nor negative comments? Am open for any criticism. My last comment on the subject for now.

I now agree with the given set-up.

I had not scrutinized this variant much, because I dislike games were pieces change their move too much. But now that I give it a closer look, I start to wonder whether it is actually winnable. The version where the king moves as a normal avatar seems completely hopeless in this respect; you just keep shuttling your royal avatar between high-mobility squares. How many avatars should the opponent be ahead in order to checkmate a bare royal?

Umm, what does that mean?

If that is supposed to be meaningful to players who play the game, then I m really curious who you expect to play...

I would highly suggest that the names you give pieces should be meaningful to the players who play the game.

This is a matter if etymology. Today, hautbois only means the music instrument. The etymology is "high woodwind" really. The apostrophe is not a letter, it is a sign separating 2 words. The d' is for "de" meaning "of" in front of a vowel. Amour is love, yes. Damour means nothing, it is a word that you invented. You could have Dodoodoo and Hahaha, I m joking.

The oboe is sometimes denoted as 'Haut' in sheet music. I followed this precedent. And I also know that Damour was originally D'amour. However, adding an apostrophe to the piece name does not look neat, so I omitted it. If there is a better name than this, I will change it

But does Hautbois D'amour mean 'high wood love' ?

Of course you can name your pieces as you like . Concerning Haut and Damour, you use words coming from French, my language so i can give you some information. It is Hautbois d'Amour not Damour. In 2 words, not 1. It means of love. So using Damour is like if you say Oflove. Haut means High, simply. (Hautbois is high wood). Naming pieces High and Oflove is kind of strange.

Endmate was originally going to be named Deadendmate. But I shortened it to Endmate because it was too long, but I don't really like this name. So I renamed it to Campmate

Haut and Damour are derived from the instrument's name, 'Hautbois Damour (Oboe Damore)'. Haut and Damour correspond to Shogi's Horse and Dragon respectively, but the problem is that the icon corresponding to Horse is Ram, and the icon corresponding to Dragon is Tiger. The reason why the Horse icon was chosen as Ram was because the other name of Horse was Missonary (Because Jesus is portrayed as a sheep)

If you ask if there is a reason why the pieces are named as instruments, it was because that was the word corresponding to the initials of H and D. No big reason other than that

The reason I use Angel instead of Amazon is because I think Angel is more suitable for religious names like Bishop and Cardinal

In the Fairy chess piece Wiki, the Betza RNF piece is also called Heroine, but also called Ship. I took note of this

In the case of Templar, I changed the name to 'Teut' because I thought it was a reasonable point (Teut = Teutonic Order)

Thanks for kind reply !

I am not an editor anymore. English is not my tongue but it seems to me that this page would deserves a serious revision by an editor. There are typos. Some writing is strange. Not sure that endmate is a correct world and i don t understand this rule well. Some names are bizarre. Why Haut and Damour? Why Angel instead of Amazon much better known? Ship and Templar have been used for other moves. Apart from these critics, thus game looks nice.

Thanks !

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H.G.Muller // Can this be published ? I think I've fixed all the points you pointed out

You should say 'last rank' instead of 'camp', as 'camp' usually means the area where the pieces start. Which is 3 ranks here, and also the promotion zone. So both Kings cound be inside the camp (i.e. have equal distance 0 to it), while one is still closer to last rank than the other.

It is also not clear what happens if the Kings have equal distance to the last rank. Does the game end anyway, as a draw? Or should play continue until one of the Kings gets closer than the other?