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Falcon Chess. Game on an 8x10 board with a new piece: The Falcon. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 10, 2008 08:34 AM UTC:
The first 100 games (at 40/1 min Time Control), with Falcons replacing the Rooks on a1/a8 and j1/j8 in the Capablanca setup (RNABQKBCNR) of one player, ended in a 56.5% victory for the Falcons. This is about half as much advantage as a full Pawn would give (so 1/4 Pawn per Falcon).

Overnight I ran another match at 40/2 min TC, starting from the array RNBFQKFBNR, deleting Falcons of one side and Rooks for the other. So no A or C on the board here, just two empty squares on the back rank. (The setup with RNFB seemed unplayable, due to the undefended b- and i-Pawns, which where too easy targets for the side with the Falcons.) This ended in 54.5% (102 games) for the Falcons.

From watching some of the games I got the impression that d1/g1 are much better starting positions for the Falcons than a1/j1; the Falcons were involved in play quite early, and very active. Starting on a1/j1 they were often not touched until the late middle-game. There was no castling with Falcons, and they usually came into play only after evacuating the back rank, and playing Fa1-d2 or Fj1-g2.

From seeing the Falcon in action I have to retract my earlier coined names for it: the way it moves creates the overwhelming impression of a snake! It slithers in between the other pieces to its destination, where it bites with deadly precision. Best name for it would be something like Cobra or Viper.

As the WinBoard_F GUI currently does not support the Falcon piece, and has no bird-like piece symbols, I use its feature of the 'wildcard piece' (which is allowed to make any move) for representing the Falcon. The standard bitmap symbol for this in WinBoard is the Lance (but of course WinBoard offers the possibility for the user to define its own piece symbols through font-based rendering). On second thought I was not too unhappy with this symbolism either; it also recalls the image of a weapon that is difficult to use in dense crowds, but which can be dangerous at a substantial range if you manage to poke it through holes in the crowd.

I also ran some tests where I played K+F vs K+R, each behind a closed rank of 10 Pawns. I played those at somewhat longer time control, so I don't have enough games to get reliable statistics. But from watching these end-games, I got the impression that the Falcon and Rook are also well matched here. It seemed to me the Rook was more dangerous for developed Pawn structures, especially with Pawns on both wings, by attacking them from the 7th rank, while the Falcon was more dangerous to undeveloped Pawn chains (as I started out with). So often the Falcon managed to win one or two Pawns before a secure Pawn chain could be constructed, and before the Rook could launch a counter attack through the resulting openings, but then the latter often had no difficulty to recoup the damage.