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Cannibal Chess and Absorption Chess. Pieces gain the powers of a piece they take. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
chesskicker wrote on Sat, Apr 14, 2007 08:51 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
This is my favorite variant. (as well as Crazyhouse and Chicken) :)

Charles Daniel wrote on Thu, Nov 1, 2007 09:10 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
The concept of this game struck me one day while I was playing chess online before ever setting foot on this site. I thought it was quite an interesting idea too and was quite fascinated with it.
Now, I do see many problems with this game:
It is difficult for one side to recover from a material deficit.
Even capture of a pawn by a piece gives one side a small advantage so it is hard to exchange.


Random Move Number Chess and Power Absorption were the first two variants I ever created.
I found this site later and realized I could submit them.
To my dismay Power Absorption had already been invented so I decided against submitting it.
Incredibly enough, even the name of my game is almost identical to this!

I did, however, go on to create many more variants..)

I certainly proved that all you need is a little bit of idle time and imagination to create variants!

panderson wrote on Sun, Jul 25, 2010 11:34 AM UTC:
The game is funnier than FIDE chess but I suspect it's more drawish too.
Why? Because there is less incentive to trade pieces and pawns.
Why? Because in AS exchange is not favourable when the last defender has
less value or same value but different type than the attacker.

Ex: if a Knight is defended by a pawn and it's attacked by a bishop, in
case of exchange the attacker loses the quality unlike regular chess.

This implies than defence > offence and the game stalls more than in
regular chess.

Correct me if I'm mistaken.

Regards

Paolo Anderson 

[email protected]

George Duke wrote on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 10:33 PM UTC:
The very first comment of the four here under ''all comments'' connects Absorption and Crazyhouse as about chess variants number 1 and number 2 for decades, a matter for poll or opinion. Absorption Chess was put up February 1999. It is in the 'ECV' of 1994. How old are Absorption and Cannibal? Someone beat me to an 'ECV' for an estimate. Designer Cannon refers to ''the idea of pieces merging with other pieces.'' That is used occasionally before 1994 in other 'ECV' examples too. Strict Cannibal here is somewhat different whilst being related in that the movement of capturer changes fully to the captive's. Longtime standby Absorption, however, is in fact additive by merging, the common re-creation within CVPage material of the quite old idea. Besides his own, Cannon is referring to Duniho's Fusion of November 1999, Fusion Chessgi of November 1999, and Assimilation of March 2001 among others that may be pertinent. Betza's different styles of augmented piece-type powers are also worth looking at in Augmented Chess, Inverse Capture etc. We have incorporated CVs that represent a spectacular, creative, or interesting Mutator into the Next Chess project Track One. For examples, Switching Chess and Fantasy Grand (for different armies) and Black Ghost (for a subtle white-black equalizer by weak piece-type). There are a hundred Mutators that would get more recommendation than Absorption, yet the Absorption mutator has been worthwhile in its moderately-numbered implementations. Absorption as an idea for CVs has not been hit hard by over-proliferation. In another instance, Daniels links a CV using merging upon capture also in these same four comments. It, Absorption, too may have been some little inspiration for Nelson's Pocket Mutation. That one, Pocket Mutation, makes the modality for upward mobility of piece-type strength repeat promotions rather than repeat captures.

Thom Diment wrote on Fri, May 11, 2012 12:53 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
I recently played Cannibal chess with a group of friends, although we play the game with normal Kings, which we prefer because increases the chances of checkmates if he is able to take a powerful piece and this also allows a player to deal with an opponent's passed pawns without sacrificing a piece to do so.
In a recent game, a player was able to create a real-game position to win a game (against a normally stronger opponent) with eight queens (one on the eighth rank of each file) by having his peices canibalise the enemy pawns one by one, then promoting them. A strange outcome, but it made for a good photo.

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