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Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Dec 16, 2023 02:18 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 02:08 PM:

Ahh ok, thanks Fergus, interesting to know, much earlier than I thought. Thank heavens Wikipedia wasn't wrong lol.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Dec 16, 2023 02:08 PM UTC in reply to Christine Bagley-Jones from 12:22 PM:

1979 is the date of invention recorded in our database. Betza’s games became better known in the 90’s thanks to the arrival of this website,but he is from an older generation and did not wait for the arrival of the web to start creating chess variants.


Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Dec 16, 2023 12:22 PM UTC:

I have always thought this game was first created in 1996 by Ralph Betza, however, I notice Wikipedia says this ..

Chess with different armies (or Betza's Chess[1] or Equal Armies[2]) is a chess variant invented by Ralph Betza in 1979.

Is that right.


Bob Greenwade wrote on Tue, Jul 11, 2023 03:23 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 11:02 AM:

I was thinking of the Friend as one who could copy the moves of a friendly piece guarding it; conversely, the Orphan copies the moves of an enemy piece attacking it. With modifications, that might be able to do what you're thinking of.

Unless you're thinking of combining move borrowing with relay, or something like that.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Jul 11, 2023 11:02 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from 04:16 AM:

@Bob Greenwade

O don't see the connection between the friend and what I had proposed!


Bob Greenwade wrote on Tue, Jul 11, 2023 04:16 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Fri Jun 30 06:20 AM:

Intriguing idea, Aurelian. Maybe once we can get the Friend coded in?

Meanwhile, I'm contemplating a back row with one each King, Queen, Candlestick, Knife, Lead Pipe, Revolver, Rope, and Wrench. I haven't quite figured out the XBetza for those last six yet; my intent can be found here. (I hope to build a full-fledged mashup some time in the future.) I have a suspicion that my descriptions may unnecessarily overpower the FIDE set. (Maybe a Wazir instead of a Queen?)

PS: I'm quite fond of the Lame Duck and Half-Duck from the Sliders set, and the Dragon Fly from the Dragons.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Jul 5, 2023 04:58 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Fri Jun 30 06:20 AM:

Nobody curious about this?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Jun 30, 2023 06:20 AM UTC:

I'm thinking about adding an imitator in a chess with different armies environment.

But I don't like the idea of having access to the powers of the opposite armies.

So I came up with the idea of the transferer, which it would be a piece transferes the power of the enemy piece just moved to it's counterpart in the player's to move army.

For example in CC vs NN if white CC have just move a waffle (phoenix) the black NN player would have a fibnif power for the transferer. Any thoughts on this?


Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Jan 17, 2023 06:37 PM UTC:

@H.G., I've been trying to use Kingslayer/CwDA for playtesting but I have one issue regarding the notation for promotions. I believe the ' should be used to indicate a piece from the opponent's army, but when Kingslayer plays black, it puts the apostrophe on the notation even when promoting to a piece from its own army. I haven't had an opportunity to look through the source code yet.


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Mon, Jun 28, 2021 02:55 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Mon Jan 5 2015 09:17 PM:

@HG: would you agree that the chiral Aanca of the Bent Bozos could be renamed Left and Right Manticore now?


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 16, 2021 08:05 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from Sat May 15 09:50 PM:

For aesthetic reasons I would  like to avoid divergent and asymmetric pieces. So if there is a 'full-atom' alternative, I would prefer that. And symmetry breaking would be preferable over divergence. (Because it is what the Nutters do. None of Betza's armies had divergence, though.) Tinkering with the super-piece is also less course than with pieces of which you have a pair.

A 58% result against FIDE is not out of line with what the other established armies do. (In fact they all have worse advantage.) One can also argue that in human play it is a good thing to disadvantage FIDE a bit, because of its familiarity. So I think A or D moves on the Squire are a satisfactory solution. And it doesn't alter the Squire's 'footprint'; it would still be a sliding version of a Squirrel.

It is just a matter of choosing between A and D, which appear to give an equal boost. The army already has D moves through the Diamond. So perhaps I should go for the A moves on the Squire; it seems to me the ability of pieces to attack each other without being automatically attacked back contributes a lot to making play interesting.


Greg Strong wrote on Sat, May 15, 2021 09:50 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:06 PM:

Or maybe replace the Diamonds with DAmK?


H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, May 15, 2021 07:06 PM UTC:

I finally finished playetesting the Silly-Sliders army with Fairy-Max, against the Fabulous Fides. Unfortunately the army is a bit too weak. As a whole it loses by about 58%. This is unacceptable, since all other established armies are sinificantly stronger than the Fides. The Onyxes are a bit stronger than their orthodox counterparts, the Bishops (even against the B-pair). The Lame Ducks and Rooks are equally strong. But the Squire is about half a Pawn weaker than a Queen, and the Diamond is also weaker than the Knight, probably because of its color binding. Although replacing it by a Frog (WH) only made it worse.

So I have been looking for ways to enhance the Squire. Making the diagonal moves reular ski-slides rather than lame ones made it too strong. On such a mobile piece it turns out to be of great value to be able to attack other pieces from behind a cover, so they canot attack you back. Only making the sideway orthogonal slides ski-slides made the armies about equal; it is difficult to attack from the side. But I don't like to break the 8-fold symmetry that all other pieces of the army have.

What is a good option is to add A or D moves to the Squire. The SiIlly Sliders then  beat the Fides by about 58%. I have not decided yet whether to use the A or D moves.


Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Thu, May 6, 2021 02:46 PM UTC:

I do not know if there is a game with Dabbabarider Fers piece, possible but yeah, I'm not sure. I can't recall seeing one myself.

I never meant for you to change name, I was just giving info. I understand though you might want to change, and Lame Duck is interesting name!!

If I do see a game with the piece I'll let you know.


Jörg Knappen wrote on Thu, May 6, 2021 01:05 PM UTC:

The Silly Sliders are one of the weirdest Chess experiences I have had. They are so strange: One attacks by retreating and unlocking the far range moves and one escapes from attack by approaching the figures. I'd suspect that the army is a bit weaker than the FIDEs because the ranging pieces can be stuffed. A blocking piece on the ski square doesn't even need protection. The rotated short range moves of the Onyx and the Duck have unusual interactions with the pawn formations.

All in all: A great design worth trying.


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, May 6, 2021 11:55 AM UTC:

Thank you. I admit that of the armies I designed I like the Silly Sliders best, aesthetically. Unfortunately I couldn't do much testing, as my main PC broke down. I would really like to do some testing on the Onyx; in fact that piece is what gave me the idea for this army. I was looking for a non-colorbound version of the Bishop, for measuring whether the B-pair bonus would really disappear in that case. Because there is an alternative explanation for this bonus, namely that two diagonal slides on opposit square shades cooperate exceptionally well. Playing Bishops against Onyxes in pairs or singletons could decide this matter.

A second point of interest would be whether the penalty for a leap being lame depends on whether the square where the leap can be blocked is attacked by the piece itself, or not. In a sense all distant slider moves are lame leaps, but they cannot be blocked without exposing the blocker to one of those. Playing Onyx + Duck vs Bishop + Rook would be a 'low-noise' experiment for investigating this. Between them they have exactly the same moves, which can be blocked the same way, but the Onyx and Duck do not attack the adjacent blocking squares, while the Bishop and Rook do.

Interesting that the name Duck was used for FDD by Jelliss. This has a very similar footprint. Is it known which variant employed this piece? If i is imporant to keep the distinction between these pieces, I could  change mine to 'Lame Duck'.


Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Thu, May 6, 2021 11:03 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Mon May 3 08:04 AM:

Great work on 'Silly Sliders', new pieces are interesting. Onyx, Duck and Squire are all original are they not.

They are nice. I would say I'd rather have a Squire than a normal Queen, with the Knight jump. The name 'Duck' is used by George Jelliss with his 'All the King's Men' listings though, but this is ok. Duck .... Fers + Dabbabarider.

Have you played it with someone or a computer, I'd say it must play pretty well. Great work!!


H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, May 3, 2021 08:04 AM UTC:

The Silly Sliders

I have an idea for an army themed on a class of pieces not often encountered in variants: lame ski-sliders. The Picket of Tamerlane Chess is such a piece: it moves as a Bishop, but must minimally move two steps. So it lacks the Ferz moves, but the more distant moves can still be blocked on the F squares. (Unlike a true Ski-Bishop, which would jump over these squares, ignoring completely what might be there.)

The idea is to turn all sliding moves of the orthodox Chess pieces into such a lame ski-slide, and compensate them for the lost moves by giving them equally many leaps in other directions. So the Bishop loses its F moves, but gets the W moves instead. This makes it a sliding version of the Phoenix (WA), like the Bishop is a sliding version of the Ferfil/Modern Elephant (FA). I will call it an Onyx. The Rook likewise loses its W moves, and gets F moves instead. It is the sliding version of the Half-Duck/Lion, and I call it a Lame Duck.

The compound of an Onyx and Duck would be a normal Queen, and is not suitable. To stay within the theme it has to lose all K moves, and should be compensated with 8 other moves. The N moves are the obvious choice for this. That makes the Queen replacement a sliding version of the Squirrel (NAD), and I call it a Squire.

The Knight isn't a slider, and its move is already in the game through the Squire. That leaves a lot of freedom in choosing a move for the Knight replacement. A totally symmetric 8-target leaper that (AFAIK) is not used in any of the other established armies is the Kirin (FD). This is a color-bound piece, but the Onyx isn't, so this doesn't seem to be a major drawback. A Kirin easily develops from b1/g1 through its D move, (and the Onyx from c1/f1 through its distant B moves), so that castling is no problem. I am just not very happy with the name 'Kirin', as it has no western meaning, and starts with K, which collides with King. In modern Japanese 'kirin' means giraffe, but that name is already associated with the (1,4) leaper. Perhaps I should call it an Egg, as its moves are a sub-set of those of the Half-Duck, and make a somewhat round pattern. This piece is called 'Diamond' in Jörg Knappen's 'very experimenal' army the Sai Squad, and since this goes very well with the name Onyx (and perfecly describes the move pattern) I will adopt that name here too.

Note that the total set of moves of the army is nearly identical to that of orthodox Chess. The same moves are just redistributed differently over the pieces. The only difference is that there is a D move on the Egg; if that would have been a W move (i.e. if we would have used a Commoner instead), the correspondence would have been perfect. (But there would not have been a color-bound piece then, and perhaps that is worth somethin too.) So I expect the army to be very close in strength to FIDE.

satellite=silly graphicsDir=/membergraphics/MSelven-chess/ squareSize=35 graphicsType=png whitePrefix=w blackPrefix=b promoChoice=RBN lightShade=#BBBBBB startShade=#5555AA useMarkers=1 enableAI=2 pawn::::a2-h2,,a7-h7 diamond::FD:marshall:b1,g1,,b8,g8 onyx::WyafF:crownedbishop:c1,f1,,c8,f8 lame duck::FyafW:duck:a1,h1,,a8,h8 squire::NyafK:princess:d1,,d8 king::::e1,,e8

H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 28, 2020 09:45 PM UTC:

I did some more work on the CwDA version of KingSlayer, and finally put the source code on line. The latest version now also supports the Daring Dragons army. This was not a trivial addition; this army needed several unusual features that were not implemented yet. For one, the Dragoons (KimN) need a divergent virgin move, and neither divergence nor virgin moves were implemented (other than in the hard-coded Pawn). The Wyvern has a ski-sliding move, which thoroughly affects the way we have to test for check, and what evasions to generate. It introduces a new mode of checking (which I call 'tandem check'), which is a double check where both checks come from the same direction. These can not be cured by capture of the checker, but unlike normal double check, it can be cured by interposition.

The Dragonfly is a tricky piece, with binding to odd or even files. It requires special evaluation to handle it well in the end-game. One of the unusual properties is that it is a 'semi-major': it can force checkmate on a bare King, but the KFK end-game also has fortress draws. Which of the two it is, is about an even call, like a promotion race in KPK: If the bare King can reach the b-file before the Dragonfly gets there, he can take safe shelter on the a-file, and it is draw. Otherwise it is a win. From the material composition alone, you cannot make a good guess. So I put in a routine that makes a reasonable guess based on the actual locations. (Not perfect yet, as it doesn't take account of the bare King hindering the Dragonfly in its attempt to reach the b-file, or vice versa, but that only happens in a minority of the positions.)

When the weak side still has Pawns (e.g. KFKP), I classify the end-game as drawish. (But not as bad as for KBKP, where you have no chance at all.) This assumes that the Pawn can act as a sufficient distraction for the strong side that the weak side has a very good chance of reaching safety with his King in the mean time. In fact a fair amount of positions in this end-game are won for the Pawn! If the Dragonfly cannot visit the file the Pawn is on, you only have the King to stop it, and the Pawn can easily be outside its reach as well. So Dragonfly endings, like Pawn endings, should really test for 'unstoppable passers' in their evaluation. (At the moment, KingSlayer doesn't do that for either, with as a consequence that is sometimes trades the last (non-Dragonfly) piece in a near-equal position, and on the next move (where it can search much deeper) sees the score dropping to -8.xx because the opponent's promotion can no longer be prevented.

The version I uploaded has the announcement of equal-army sub-variants commented out. With all combinations of the 5 supported armies, the list of variants in the CECP variants feature had become so long that it crashed XBoard!

I also started implementing limited configurability: it supports a variant 'custom', for which the user can specify (in a file gamedef.ini) the armies as an arbitrary selection of all the supported CwDA pieces. In addition there are two user-configurable pieces that can be selected too. These pieces can be built as an arbitrary combination of the move sets used to construct the standard CwDA pieces, plus one user-specified set of leaper moves. I am still thinking about a way to also allow specification of divergent or lame moves on these pieces. It might also be useful to allow redefinition of the set of leaps that is only used for the Charging Knight, in cases where the latter doesn't participate. And perhaps to redefine one or two slider moves, e.g. by making the range of R4 configurable, or perhaps replaceable by B3 or B4, or fB.

[Edit] I now uploaded a Windows binary of the latest version to http://hgm.nubati.net/CwDA.zip .


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Jun 4, 2019 02:42 PM UTC:

While watching a cpu vs cpu game of eurasian I had noticed that vaos do not seem to care either about color binding as in the early game color binding is compensated by the other pieces and in the late game lack of platforms probably damages them more.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sat, Jun 1, 2019 04:30 AM UTC:

Cool analisys HG!...


H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, May 31, 2019 09:07 PM UTC:

Well, it is difficult to asses whether this capability for a pair to statically create an impenetrable barrier for a King is really important. Actually I think that Wizards can just do it (on 8x8), when standing next to each other in the center. But very often pieces can inflict a 'dynamic confinement' on a King. As long as you have to spend fewer moves to maintain it than the King needs to escape, you have moves to spare for other pieces to approach. Besides, FAD complement each other in a different way: standing next to each other the completely cover a 5x6 area, As a result they can drive a King to the edge with checks, and checkmate it there, without any help. This makes them very, very dangerous.

Even a King + Bishop can dynamically confine a King on boards of any size. The King has to cover the hole through which the opponent threatens to escape, and has to follow the bare King as long as it keeps running in the same direction to renew the escape threat. But when it reverses direction, to try an escape on the other side (which he eventually must, as he bumps into the edge) you have one free move. Therefore a Bishop can checkmate together with an arbitrarily weak piece (as long as that can go everywhere) on boards of any size.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, May 30, 2019 11:42 AM UTC:

@HG,

Also there is another effect that amplifies pairing bonus or color bonding penalty. The effect of the pair being able to block the king from part of the board. That the same way rooks do on their own. Bishops do that. Two dababahriders to that, and they only cover half the board among themselves anyway. Wizards or fads do not.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, May 29, 2019 07:04 AM UTC:

Also the case of bede and WAD on different shades who work a bit akwardly but do work together fine. Probably stronger than a charging rook+fibnif or waffle+short rook. Many pawns would help a lot the CC pair. But ChessV for example know such tricks. I did whached some games.


H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, May 29, 2019 06:39 AM UTC:

Well, this is the whole point of making KingSlayer play CwDA: its playing algorithm can take the effects of color binding into account. But it still requires some thought on what exactly it should pay attention to. The only things I discovered about color binding so far were obtained with Fairy-Max, which doesn't take any color binding into account. It thus might under-estimate the effects. E.g. it approximates the effect of the Bishop pair bonus by making all Bishops worth more than Knights. This biases it against trading B for N in general. Which helps to preserve the B pair, (as it should), but makes it unnecessarily shy in lone B vs N situations (which should be a self-inflicted disadvantage of having a Bishop), and it doesn't prevent it from breaking up the pair by Bishop trading in a BB vs BN situation.

But it still finds an effect of about half a Pawn. I.e. B tests about equal to N, also in 'anti-pairs' (on the same shade), but a true B-pair tests as 0.5 Pawn stronger than B+N or 2N. I also did tests with more than 2 Bishops, and concluded that with 3 Bishops (divided 2:1 over the shades) you get 1 pair bonus, and with 4 Bishops (2:2) you get 2, compared to the simple addition of lone-Bishop values. While one could argue that the number of pairs is 2 and 4, respectively, in those cases.

There is a completely different interpretation of this data, not in terms of a pair bonus, but of a binding penalty. With Kaufman values B=N=325, and the pair bonus=50, so 2B(2:0)=650, 2B(1:1)=700, 3B(2:1)=1025 and 4B(2:2)=1400. These same numbers would be obtained by setting B=350, and giving a penalty of 25 when they are not equally distributed over the shades. The remarkable thing is that the penalty doesn't seem any higher for a shade imbalance of 2 than for an imbalance of 1. So it doesn't seem to matter how much power you have on your strong shade (with non-color-bound pieces you could aim them all at the same shade anyway), but it hurts when you lack power on a shade. This would mean the magnitude of the bonus is not really dependent on the value of the color-bound piece, as it is mainly expressing the disadvantage of absence of a piece. Indeed a preliminary test with Pair-o-Max (a Fairy-Max derivative that takes pair effects into account in a primitive way) suggested that the bonus for Bede was also just 50. (Pitting 2 BD on like or unlike shade versus 2 BmW + Pawn.)

The situation in the Clobberers army should be pretty much like the 4B(2:2) case; after trading one BD or FAD you incur the penalty, which you lose again after you then trade BD or FAD on the opposite shade (making that effectively worth 50 less than the first), but which you would keep after trading the second of the same shade (effectively giving that the 'average' value). This is how KingSlayer treats it now.

But pair bonuses / binding penalties are relevant in the middle-game; in the late end-game you could be in a much graver danger than the penalty suggests, vulnerable to tactics that would destroy your mating potential. Like sacrifycing a Rook for the piece on the 'minority shade' in a 2:1 situation. (Similar to what makes KBNN-KR a draw in FIDE, while KBBN-KR is a general win.) But this weakness would only be fullly exploited if the defending engine would know about it; otherwise it would just randomly trade the Rook for a member of the pair that threatens checkmate, with a 50% probability that it leaves a 1:1 distribution, and will be checkmated later anyway. (Like that it should know in KBNN-KR that it should leave NN, and not BN.) Failing to fully exploit an advantage might lead to underestimation of the value of that advantage.


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