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The nightrider in Grand Apothecary Chess Alert, Classic and Modern[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jun 20, 2022 07:45 PM UTC:

In my three games described below I have nightriders and even their compounds the unicorn and the varan.

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/grand-apothecary-chess-alert

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/grand-apothecary-chess-classic

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/grand-apothecary-chess-modern

I have previously observed that games with nightriders are hard to design as their long jumpy forks are very difficult to stop. I remember seeing people over here thinking also along these lines but I can't remember who. I'm sorry.

For this exact reason I though that the nightriders are game breaking in my 3 games mentioned above. I have put them there because I have though them to be natural fairy pieces to be used. When first confronted with the final versions of the games I have feared that the black heavy pieces will be easily forked by white and in doing so creating an unhealthy advantage for black.

But last night I have played a few openings, in each of the games, by myself intentionally testing for this. I seems black can always defend somehow, by blocking or running, and then counter by attacking the advanced nightriders and gaining tempi on them. The games are thick enough so that early on nightriders are not such troublemakers anymore. Careful maneuvering of the nightriders should still be an important late opening- middlegame theme, but it does not seem to be that dangerously unfair then.

What do you guys think about games with nightriders in general?


H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jun 20, 2022 08:49 PM UTC:

In my opinion riders based on a leap other than a king step are very awkward to play with. That holds for NN, but also DD and AA. It is never intuitively clear whether the path between such a rider and a distant target is blocked, especially when the blocker is far from both. For me that makes them annoying pieces.

I guess the problems with tactically non-quiet opening positions can be avoided by putting all pieces more valuable than a Nightrider two ranks behind the Pawns. Then the Pawns will block any Nightrider attacks on them. And of course make sure all Pawns and pieces directly behind them start protected.


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Tue, Jun 21, 2022 12:32 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Mon Jun 20 07:45 PM:

I find nightriders difficult to visualize, even with the three-colored board, but despite that they seem to work well in the grand apothecary games since there are enough pawns and weaker pieces to block them.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Jun 21, 2022 04:50 AM UTC:

Thanks for the comments guys! Hopefully there are more to come.

@HG,

The awkwardness of nightrider I expect it goes away with sufficient play. Anyway computers don't "feel" it. But if the game is badly designed computer play will yield very biased results. At a practical level you need not have all heavier pieces 2 ranks behind a pawn and GAC A,C & M proves that. Just most of them. I guess there is reason for experimenting. Because this way you don't need to go all in with the theoretical approach.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Jun 21, 2022 05:09 AM UTC:

@HG, By the way. The interactive diagram evaluates vultures less than 12 directions leapers such as the champion. Isn't this weird?


H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Jun 21, 2022 08:53 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 05:09 AM:

This is probably because Vultures can easily be blocked. A Falcon, which also has 16 targets, empirically tested as about equal to a Rook. Th Vulture has 4 paths rather than 3, but each path can be blocked in 3 places rather than 2. The 4 non-capturing leaps add comparatively little.

The value estimate of the Diagram takes this into account by measuring the average number of moves in randomly generated positions where 25% of the squares are occupied.


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Wed, Jun 22, 2022 06:01 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Mon Jun 20 07:45 PM:

Hi Aurelian. I belong to those who are not at ease with NN. Same with DD or AA and all their compounds. I had tested once a FDD to finally give it up. But I agree that they can be used if the game is designed for, like yours. It also requires a certain anticipation from the players who are not used to, and this is precisely what I'm missing from my side.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Jun 22, 2022 10:18 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:01 AM:

Thanks for the reply Jean-Louis!


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Jun 22, 2022 10:44 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:01 AM:

@Jean-Louis

I have not designed these games for the nightriders but they seem to work ok probably because of the high board density.


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