Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Sam, I copied your comment, 31 pieces, to the wiki. Gave it a page under
TSRP. You've been a member for 17 hours now, so jump in whenever. Joe

Can you please send the link (here) to where you copied Sam's page?

Hey, Jeremy, here is the URL:
http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/31-basic-pieces

It's one of 2 subtopics of this page:
http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/the-shortrange-project

The other subtopic is for all the games that were/are/will be part of the
project:
http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/games

Your 'Complementarity' article would make a great 3rd subtopic. It
clearly has application in figuring pieces for a game. Joe

Or where else is Sam's page indexed?

Also, the ASCII diagrams on Sam's page you posted are not translating very well, but I'll bet Sam will fix that.

Jeremy, I've added a section called Child Pages to the side-bar. Hopefully this will help a little with the navigation.

Graeme, thanks! Very much appreciated.

Yes, Graeme, thanks, that's very useful, and appreciated.

As an aside, the most successful are ones where we don't even known who invented the variant. FIDE chess was invented somewhere in Italy or Spain between 1400 and 1500; we can't place it more closely than that. We don't know who invented modern Shogi nor Chinese chess. And, Bughouse chess, which is the only chess variant I have actually seen other people play over the board [1], is also a variant where we do not know who invented it or where.

Interesting thought: The most successful chess variants were invented by people who did not care if they would become rich or famous with their variant; they just wanted to have some fun with the chess pieces. Something to think about.

- Sam

[1] I myself have occasionally played a variant with a FIDE board, such as Berolina pawn chess or 'Knights move as Squirrels' chess.

'...:The most successful chess variants were invented by people who did not care if they would become rich or famous with their variant;...'

Sam, much as I would like this CV-Catch-22 to be true, I'm afraid we have no proof that it is. The fact of our present ignorance is no guide to the motives of the inventors of the past. We cannot even be sure that they were not rich and well-known in their day since wealth and fame are at best fickle and fleeting friends.

Cheeers
Graeme

The legend says that the inventor, way back when in India, wanted to become
rich, but instead became famous and several inches shorter... ;-)

Jeremy, in ref to your recent kibbitz in our game, your stuff would get
its own page; at the very least to start with. It certainly deserves
separate development. That sort of thing only is obvious in hindsight. For
example, I didn't realize just how the hero and shaman fit together until
I looked at David's diagram of their movement. And I hadn't bothered to
do the outer edge of the 7x7 diagram, where the zebra fits in, until I did
the one in the comment. Putting it all together like that, or as Sam has
done in his 31 shortrange pieces comment/page, is a valuable aid to
designers. Further, your diagrams are a valuable aid to players, showing
both piece moves and interrelationships. Sam has systematized the
'atoms' of the pieces, the physics of the system, and you are exploring
the associations and relationships among the pieces, the chemistry. [The
individual games, of course, are the biology, and we're trying to get an
idea of the ecology with this stuff.] I'll be happy to set the page up to
start... ;-) Enjoy

Joe, thanks, yes, if you have the time, please do submit it there, and if
not, I'll get to it sooner or later myself. lol.  I appreciate your
contributions and interest in developing this matter further.

Bughouse, the only variant to achieve any significant popularity, is a more recent invention (The Wikipedia entry suggests it was invented in the early 1960s), yet we don't know who invented it.

Did any of the inventors of the other popular variants seek fame? I doubt it, because, if they did, someone would have made a note of it. They, after all, were able to note the inventor of several Chess Variants that no one plays today and that only exist in dusty old books.

The same is true of other games: We don't know who invented Texas Hold-em poker, much less Poker. We don't know who invented Bridge. Strangely enough, we think we know who invented Gin Rummy (Elwood T. Baker), although Gin Rummy is very close to an 1899 game that we don't know the origins of. We also know who invented Monopoly (Elizabeth Magie, and then modified by Charles Darrow), mainly because there were some heavy lawsuits about this game's invention.

So, yes, we know the exact history for many Chess Variants that have not caught on. We don't know the history of the ones that did catch on. The most logical reason for this is because the inventors did not care about making a name for themselves, but only about having some fun.

- Sam

Except Contract Bridge has an inventor, Harold S. Vanderbilt in 1925,
railroad heir while on a cruise. That would be the same time within couple of years most of the talking about Capablanca Chess took place. Then they silenced any dissent in Chess, and broader games like the new Contract, then Duplicate Bridge may have been factors as distraction for intelligentsia, but especially establishment of FIDE itself during the same 1920's entrenched the orthodoxy and scotched Capa's ideas.

Perhaps the best games aren't invented; maybe they just evolve.

We can't know how chess is going to evolve, but we can do a little
thinking on where it could go. Capablanca and Fisher seem to have set the
stage for the current debate. On 8x8 boards, FRC and similar variants seem
to have it all tied up. Really, with the same pieces, there is a limit to
what you could do. I suppose there is a slight possibility the pawn could
be tinkered with, but, on an 8x8, could the pieces really change? I
suspect it's unlikely.
On the larger boards, the new pieces of choice have all pretty much been
the standard trio, namely the long-range sliders with the knight move
added. This has the virtue of being instantly recognizable to the typical
chess player, and gives that player some more power pieces to play around
with. But I lean toward George's point of view [unsurprisingly, given my
design history] that the game then suffers from too much power, especially
as the power pieces can now leap as well as slide indefinitely. The idea of
eliminating the leap by using moa and mao [non-leaping knights] as the
additives does reduce that power a bit. But I'd like to examine some
other possibilities. One possibility that might be interesting [though
just as an experiment, it's unlikely mesing with the knight will catch
on] is to replace the knights in Falcon Chess with the bent Hero, which
does include all the knight's moves as a subset of its move.

Joe, you write, in part: '... on an 8x8, could the pieces really change?'
Then go on to say, 'I suspect it's unlikely.'  

But I see no justification for that concept.  We have many CV 8x8 boards
that have changed pieces.  I see it as only 'unlikely' if designers
throw out the possibility.  I don't think they should.  Take care.

My ideas for 8x8 boards mostly use Shatranj pawn movement rules, see Midgard Chess for an example. For a change, I made the total piece strength closer to FIDE Chess than Shatranj.

Gentlemen, my comments in this particular subject were/are directed at a
hypothetical replacement for FIDE, one that could conceivably actually
occur. Now, I think Lemurian Shatranj, for example, is a fine game, and
played on an 8x8; but I think that when most people find the king is the
only piece they recognize or have a clue how to use, and that I slowed
down the pawns too, it's unlikely they'll make LemS the next FIDE. 

David and Gary, both of you are fine chess players, and you participate in
chess tournaments [and do pretty well, I might add]. My question is what
conceivable chess piece the millions of serious FIDE players would accept
as a replacement on an 8x8 board for which current piece, R, N, B, or Q? 

I suspect that current trends in society and technology are just beginning
to make their impact on chess, and that things will change remarkably over
the next several decades in FIDE. [My personal suspicion is that the FIDE
organization will attempt to basically freeze changes, and will be
overtaken by large groups of people on the internet who will do things
their own ways, leaving FIDE less relevant.]

'what conceivable chess piece the millions of serious FIDE players would
accept as a replacement'

If you're seriously asking this, I'd suggest you drop by your local
chess club and find out. Conduct an informal survey. But I predict you'll
be disappointed if you expect more than 10% of them to consent to any
change to FIDE whatsoever, even to play as an amusing variant, and even
those wouldn't want to hear talk about a 'replacement' for FIDE.

I think the next evolution of chess, if it's to have one, will have to
attract players mostly from people who aren't serious FIDE players.

Interesting comments from Mark and Joe and David.  This morning, after reading Joe's 'FIDE piece' comment I submitted a candidate for a future Fide Chess replacement.  It uses an 8x8 board.  And, the Rooks and Bishops have been replaced  with two non-Fide pieces [Dragon Horse and Dragon King (2promoted Shogi pieces)] such that the Rooks can now move one space
diagonally (or their normal move) and the Bishops can do an orthogonal
move or their normal move.  At my chess club (which terminated in 2005)
many players were quick to accept Shogi in full form... so we know Fide
players can easily handle the two non-Fide pieces from Shogi.  Will this
new game catch on?  I doubt it.  The reason is that Fide Chess is pretty
much excellent as it is.  Also, the serious players have spent a lot of
time on book openings, studying with computers, etc.  I only created this
new game to show we can have a very very chess-like game on an 8x8 board
and replace a few Fide pieces.  Of course, it wipes out existing Chess
Openings.  Fischer Random Chess does that too.  And so will any variants
we come up with...  I don't think we are going to come up with the next
Fide chess.  I could be wrong...  but, that is just my opinion.  Still,
long ago there were some Shatranj players who thought their game would
never be replaced.  Best regards to all.

See Legler's Chess or Neo-Chess for a game which enjoyed a modest popularity in the 1920s. But I fear that success for chess variant inventors today will be measured in thousands, not millions, of players.

See Chess on a 12 by 12 board for a different kind of game. Now that the internet gives us free access to custom virtual boards, more people should be willing to try out chess variants that use the familiar 32 pieces. As computer monitors increase in size, I can even imagine something like the 6x6x6 variant I outlined in this 3D Chess thread catching on. Especially if each army is limited to 32 pieces that (mostly) come from two standard chess sets.

Hey, Mark, this is my local chess club. I, um, don't, ah, actually play
that, uh, game. FIDE, that is. I stopped playing FIDE around 35 years ago,
and didn't play any sort of chess at all until I got online and found this
site about 3 years ago. I played for about 10 years, basically in the
1960's, between ages 10 and 20, and then switched to wargames. This
undoubtedly helps explain some of my more, mmm, unusual designs. 

I do agree with what you said, except that I think 10% interest among
'Chess' players is probably too high, unless it's Bughouse or 5-minute
chess, which the people who teach chess seem to find useful in sharpening
their student's skills. But only as practice, warm-up excercises. I do
think people on the internet will find a range of games to play, and that
at some point in the future [far future, most likely - not less than 50
years, anyway], FIDE will be only one of the games played in world chess
championship tournaments. 

Now, if that is the case, what other games will they be playing? [Sure, it
*could* be anything, but some games are more likely than others...]

Wow, in the time it took me to actually answer Mark, Gary and David have
gone past my comments. One of the thrills of being more or less a Mr. Mom
is the incessant distractions. Let's see if I can get this one done
before 6 more people supersede me.

Gary, I think you picked pieces that people like because they add a very
simple move to a power piece to make it even more powerful. Apparently
chessplayers, like soldiers, always want a little more firepower. These
pieces are easy to understand and very natural for chessplayers to use.
I've been thinking along your lines for a couple weeks, and I am
interested in looking at similar changes, but with a shortrange twist [of
course]. I've been considering replacing the rook and the bishop, but
with shorter ranged pieces that gain a leaping ability. I'd cut the range
of the R and B down to 4 squares. Then I'd add the alfil move, the 2
square diagonal jump, to the rook's move, and the dabbaba move, the 2
square orthogonal jump, to the bishop's move. All else as it is in FIDE
[now and forever, amen???], but the rook is an AR4 [sounds like a weapon]
in Betza notation, and the bishop is a B4D. These pieces are not quite as
intuitive as yours, and the queen piece is more problematical. On a larger
board, I'd probably make the Q the combo new piece, a Q4AD. On an 8x8,
I'm less inclined to let the queen jump. And this is running long - more
later