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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]I believe Falcon Chess is a wonderful addition to chess world. It provides change that is well needed in the chess world. Great job George W. Duke.
For the game. Falcon Chess is quite playable and the Falcon piece has a charming move that makes for interesting tactics.
For:
1. The inventor's mistaken belief that this is the best chess variant ever invented.
2. Patenting a game whose distinguishing difference from Chess is a lame Bison with an improved movement--an innovation, to be sure, but a small one.
3. His desire to prevent anyone else from using the Falcon in any game (no matter how unlike Falcon Chess).
Described in third from last paragraph above, 'Generic-Advanced-Pawns' 10x10, with G = Generic piece: rank c xxxppppxxx, rank b pppGGGGppp, rank a RNBFQKFBNR. A second recommended array 'Falcon-Back': rank c pppppppppp, rank b RNBGKQGBNR, rank a xxFxxxxFxx, centering Falcon behind Bishop. I declare both are substantially like claims of USP#5690334 by the legal doctrine of equivalents. I recently requested Quintanilla to make pre-sets for some Falcon games for anyone to play, but with the string of 'F's for it since year 2000, I don't know what the issue is or that I seek attention for FC. Who saw this week's PBS Jack Johnson story? Methods Patents are not some latter-day Mann Act. Play Falcon Chess on your Gothic Chess board all you want, in order to condemn it.
Tony Quintanilla had another child and is no longer as active as an editor here.
i can concur with Michael Nelson's second message (dated 12/04/04). in particular i am in agreement with his third point. i believe it is immoral to choke the natural evolution of chess (and variants thereof) by monopolising new aspects of it. i myself have ideas for chess variants and chess rule modifications but would prefer it if other people were allowed to modify and improve my ideas.
the falcon may indeed be original and the basis of the patent, but is it morally fair that nobody else is allowed to attempt to improve falcon chess or other chess variants by employing the falcon piece?
i would like to know how profitable falcon chess is as an enterprise. i would also like to know why the designer bought the patent. is it so that nobody else may attempt to improve falcon chess (or other chess variants by employing the falcon piece)? is the name 'falcon' protected? for example, may i invent another different piece and call it a falcon? or, am i allowed to alter the name and/or appearance of the current falcon piece found in falcon chess? are any monopolies moral?
if falcon chess is a profitable enterprise then it might be worth considering how it could be made more popular if other people were allowed to promote it. if it were made more popular, would it not then increase the value of the falcon chess enterprise? having a monopoly on the falcon piece and falcon chess in general does introduce a choking aspect with regards to the popularity and future of the game. it is this then that leads me to believe that chess (variant) patents are bought for personal financial reasons only. and it is this that most people consider to be immoral and/or abhorent.
Why it takes so long to describe all this? Too much redundancy in this page, sorry.
This game is nothing but original. The so-called Falcon is just Camel+Zebra from fairy chess. I used a similar Buffalo (Camel+Zebra+Knight) in my CVs and many inventors did in these pages on this website.
Also good to know is that a certain Karl Schulz from Austria invented a Falcon-Hunter Chess in 1943 where the Falcon is moving fw like a Bishop and bw like a Rook. This variant is reported in many CV books like Parton's, Boyer's or closer to us, DB Pritchard's. Basically, I think that patenting a CV is a very bad idea because you just encourage players to go away. What is the goal of the inventor, what does he want to protect really ? And if the patent is unavoidable it should be preceded by a serious anteriority research. This patent has no serious claim, it's flawed.
Cazaux's Comment is inept because even the Falcon article referenced dates from year 2000. It is a simple article tailored for beginners, non-players, and designer-dilettantes. The other more-detailed article on this game, 'Falcon Chess patent text' was written in 1995 and 1996 well before the single use that comment mentions, Cazaux's own (Buffalo=C+Z+N) in 2001 Gigachess. In any event, I submit that a non-jumping Falcon is the correct(mathematical) complement to Rook, Knight and Bishop, and far from obvious at first; whereas any (Camel + Zebra) is extremely over-powerful and moreover totally frivolous addition to Chess never used in any game until Charles Gilman's Great Herd in 2004. Falcon patent is not intended as a CV, but as a replacement for FIDE-type chess, just as FRC and Carrera-Capablanca forms are so held up. FRC is not promulgated as a CV by its adherents but a solution to contemporary problem of computers and memorized opening theory. Hostility to FC is not new, as the number of 'Poor's attest. After all, Chess Variant Page, readers, and members alike have own agenda not overly concerned with state of FIDE Chess. Yet it is peculiar that three of the last four or so games (over almost two years now) by one CVP Editor have featured a Falcon as the main attraction; Falcon thus appears to hold some undisclosed merit. The reference is to Aronson's and my Complete Permutation Chess, Aronson's Horus with the patented Falcon on quite interesting small board, and Prisoner's Escape with Falcon-Hunter. The name Falcon is somewhat inconsequential. I considered 'Phoenix', Horus and a few other terms; and the US Trademark previously approved by USPTO for 'Falcon Chess' is deliberately in abeyance by ourselves at the present time. As to 'anteriority', there is lot more researched material on file at USPTO from disclosure process than happens to appear in the two CVP articles. Most likely I have been aware of Karl Schulz's Falcon-Hunter Chess longer than any other commenter here(now without Betza). That Falcon and Hunter are nothing like the basic chess piece, Falcon. Commensurate in importance with Knight, Rook, and Bishop(actually preeminent to those three, because they would derive from F, not vice versa) is heretofore-undiscovered Falcon, as patented now until November 2017, after which date copyrights and trademarks will effect comparable coverage for many, many years.
Just wishing to amend my oversight by appropriately placing a 'poor' rating here as well. Please check-out related comments of interest: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?itemid=FalconChess100
Be honest, this game is at least good (in my opinion, it is very good). I don´t rate it 'excellent' because there is a little detail that is not so easy to solve, and it is a relative weakness in the setup in the c-Pawn and in the h-Pawn. It is also a bit incomodious the first moves of the Bishops, because the player must take some care on the own Rooks and a possible attack by the opposite Bishops. The possible solution I thought, augmenting the power of Bishops allowing the one-step orthogonal movement for Bishops, may alter the good balance and harmony you can see in the game play, powered Bishops are much more valious than a Knight, and the game play itself may change significatively, although I don´t know, I have not tested it. On other hand, Falcon movement is nice and it seems well adapted to this game. My impression is that this is not a 'random' game, but a well thought and tested game, and possible improvements are not obvious.
Immersed in CVs as a player, personally I like to play other games more than Falcon Chess 8x10. Examples are Rococo, Switching Chess, Altair, and 3D Positional Chess. However, Falcon Chess is the 'correct' expansion of FIDE-type Chess, more so than Fischer Random and Carrera-Capablanca, in their same spirit of an evolving ideal form of chess. Most CV designers have a different philosophy about creating games preferring a multiplicity of versions. Yet imagine going into say a high school chess club and propounding dozens or hundreds of sets of rules one as recommended as another. The hostile environment of CVP to the other method, evidenced in FC, FRC, Capablanca-Gothic, is why Falcon Chess is never to be developed within Zillions of Games. I have told them to remove the Complete Permutation file later this year.
As far as Roberto's analysis, he is going to lose his first Falcon Chess in Game Courier because he cannot castle. The first ten moves in that game have been the ugliest ever(out of hundreds of games since 1992)when he unexpectedly advanced four central Pawns(for which I do need to think of a better defense in future). It has been a formless opening with no piece development. What Black is doing is good enough to win because some nasty forks are brewing. So 'weakness' of Bishops' long diagonal comes about because of the bizarre, imprecise opening moves that should backfire. Sorry this comment belongs in Kibbitz.
George, you may be right in that my impressions about some possible weaknesses are due, fundamentally, to some things I have seen in the ongoing game in base to the opening moves, and it is also very possible it is a bizarre opening in the Falcon Chess parameters, but, remember, this is my first contact with the game, and I´m playing by instinct and not by any previous knowledge of the game. To be sincere, I believe I have not played so bad the unconventional opening. If I´m going to lose to win is not very important for me, I think this is the spirit of every normal player in every place of the world, I enjoy the game play I see in a game, independently of the results, and a victory can add a bit more happiness sometimes and depending on the circumstances, but not much more, never much more than losing an interesting good game, and you know this is the truth. I´m enjoying this game and much more because this is my first time I play it, and I must admit I have had great curiosity by this game in the past. Is my 'opening' so bad?. I´m not sure, I feel that your position is more incomodious than mine for the moment, although my King is much more vulnerable. In every case, let me be happy playing this, my first Falcon game, as it is for now, perhaps I could make more dynamic initial moves, but you are going to see strong action very soon. In other opportunity I´ll try to make more conventional first moves to see what happens.
<P>George Duke wrote:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
However, Falcon Chess is the 'correct' expansion of FIDE-type Chess, more so than Fischer Random and Carrera-Capablanca, in their same spirit of an evolving ideal form of chess.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>The two games you mention were created by grandmasters who had extensive knowledge of opening theory, and I think one of the main reasons behind the creation of both games was the need for new frontiers to conquer after they had conquered Chess, and not so much the desire to replace Chess with the next step in its evolution, which seems to be your agenda. So I don't think the creation of your game is in the same spirit as the creation of these two games.</P>
<P>As for whether your game is truly the 'correct' expansion of FIDE-type Chess, I have serious doubts about that. Even assuming that one expansion of FIDE-type Chess would be more valid than any other, I doubt that Falcon Chess truly is more valid than any other. Although I don't propound it as such, I think my own Eurasian Chess may fit the bill better, because if Chess is lacking anything, it may well be hoppers, and Eurasian Chess adds two hoppers that parallel the Rook and Bishop, namely the Cannon and Arrow.</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Most CV designers have a different philosophy about creating games preferring a multiplicity of versions. Yet imagine going into say a high school chess club and propounding dozens or hundreds of sets of rules one as recommended as another.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>This argument attacks a straw man. In other words, it misrepresents the opposing side in a way that appears laughable. But it is just a mischaracterization. I am of the opposing side, and if I went to a high school chess club to promote variants, I would limit the variants I introduce to a select few, and I would do little more than mention where they can learn of other variants they might be interested in. Moreover, I am not of the opinion that any variant is as good as another, and I would not propound dozens, much less hundreds, of rules as being just as recommended as the next.</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The hostile environment of CVP to the other method, evidenced in FC, FRC, Capablanca-Gothic, is why Falcon Chess is never to be developed within Zillions of Games.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>You are aware, aren't you, that the CVP and Zillions of Games are two separate entities. So what does 'the hostile environment of CVP to the other method' have to do with Zillions of Games? Wouldn't it be a better reason against developing Falcon Chess on Game Courier? After all, Game Courier is hosted on the CVP, and it's the creation of one of its editors, namely myself. But Zillions of Games is a commercial program by people who are not even members of this website.</P>
<P>As for my own attitude toward your method, it is not so much hostility as it is the belief that your method is quixotic. I think the bulk of the hostility you get is from people who take a strong moral stance against patenting Chess variants, and, without naming names, I think some of this arises from what they take to be the misuse of patents by others. Some people get very angry about this, and they find you a convenient target.</P>
I have not yet played Falcon Chess, although I would like to. The idea of the Falcon, by itself, is good. It's a piece with interesting capabilities. The setup seems reasonable and, I am sure, has been well thought through and play tested. I can't agree with the 'poor' ratings, regardless of one's opinion of the pros- or cons- of patenting a chess: that's a different matter altogether, one which, unfortunately, has dominated these comment pages a bit too much -- in my opinion. In any case, its a good game and that is why I offered George the Game Courier preset -- to encourage play of this interesting chess.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2005 01:51 AM UTC:Good ★★★★I have not played Falcon Chess yet, but the Falcon is a very clever piece, and I look forward to seeing how it plays. Unfortunately, with GC Tournament #2 starting soon, I need to focus on those games for now, but I will definitely try FC sometime reasonably soon. I am glad it has a GC preset! I am (personally) ambivalent about ZoG support, but I'm not sure I see what can be gained by not providing a ZRF.
i am one who is particularly offended by chess variant patents. i will tell you why. but firstly, the patent for falcon chess does not worry me as much as other patents because i cannot see that the falcon piece is really any good. to me it looks like somebody wanted to own a patent and then set about achieving it, rather than somebody invented a great game and recognized that it needed legal protection. i may be wrong, but i cannot see how there could be a sufficient demand for this game to warrant any legal protection, and so any patent for falcon chess looks to me like a 'bad business investment'.
i myself have many ideas for chess variants. sometimes my designs will be too flawed to pursue, but sometimes i will think of something good. i currently have one variant which i am very excited about and i would like to tell the world and get it play-tested. but unfortunately, recent months have taught me that there are business-minded vultures in the chess community who seek to exploit chess for anything they can get. this is why i will keep my best variant a secret. i want it to be public domain, because i am not an american capitalist. i just want people to play my game and for a few people to remember i introduced it. but i fear that i now need to cover every base. for example, to stop somebody tweaking my game in a minor way, i need to somehow account for all possible combinations of starting set-ups and rules. this represents millions of possible permutations. the credibility of my game is virtually destroyed by such an action. but the worst thing is that i will need to ensure my game is given wholly into the public domain. i wish this was easy and that i could talk about it openly. if somebody suggests an improvement to my game, i would not mind at all. but if somebody found an improvement and claimed sole inventorship over my game, i would obviously feel somewhat aggrieved. like Carrera would feel if he knew about gothic chess.
why are chess patents allowed? unfortunately they do exist and unfortunatley they weren't bought in order to help promote those respective variants, or chess itself, but to line the pockets of american capitalists. these individuals are choking the future of chess evolution in my opinion. i think the most insulting thing about people who own chess patents is that they all claim to have made something better than chess, and do not recognize previous similar variants. gothic chess for example was undoubtedly influenced by the Carrera family of variants, but nowhere in the patent document could i find the relevant acknowledgements. i thought that the 'background of the invention' would have mentioned something significant, but it doesn't. why is that? i fear it is because the 'inventor' did not wish to tell the patent reviewers how unoriginal his game is. and instead, heavily implied that he invented the archbishop and chancellor pieces.
i know this message won't get posted, but i thought i would try anyway. i have had good correspondence with Fergus in the past and i trust his ability to decide what should be published on his website or not. if Fergus would like me to write a better essay about chess patent immorality, then i would be willing to do so. i understand that this site was not made to discuss patent morality issues, but it is one of the most popular discussions for some variants and i feel it's a subject which needs to be addressed. i may write my own chess variants site one day, and if i do i would not include any patented chess variants, no matter how good they are. i would not wish to promote any variants which were invented for the purposes of raising money for greedy entrepreneurs. people who probably have little genuine interest in any other chess variants.
Very full of himself, the author is. And by patenting the game (unjustified greed? - sorry but I can only speculate, and the 'until 2017'-comment below seemed to justify this), he made sure it will not be played very much. Too bad, since the falcon as such is an interesting and relatively original piece - not less, but also not much more.
Great game!The FALCON is POOOWERfUL but the use of fide armies balances its power.This gameRRRRRRRRRRRRRRReally deseves its patent.(and the falcon deserves a patent too!
an interesting thought, I wonder how the game would play out allowing some mutators? like Suicide, Atomic, Extinction, Alice, Magnetic .. etc .. I issued an invitation for Suicide Falcon Chess .. just to try it out. I really wonder if there are any lost openings to begin with.
I am interested in posting a variant using your Falcon piece and, knowing your feelings on some of your reactions to other uses of it, have decided to seek your approval. The variant will be the first in a series of 3d variants themed on battles between various ancient mythologies. The piece would appear in one army as part of a group of animals with whose heads Egyptian deities are depicted, also including my Ibis and Jackal. All armies throughout the series will have the standard King, Rooks, Knights, and Pawns. I look forward to reading your comments either way. I will check the page for this variant before posting, but if you have any comments to make on another variant of mine in the interim please feel free to give or deny permission there.
Charles, let's see, you're not playing in Game Courier, so not having my ema, and vice versa. I have described '91.5 Trillion FC Variants' here August 2006, each one extensively different in tactics from all the other 91,499,999,999,999. Another one is 8x8 Bifocal Chess by Antoine F. I made Comments 2003 now expunged (je ne sais quoi)from Chess Variant Page on free use of Falcon in 8x8, having deliberately excluded, in the very beginning, small boards or standard one from USPatent 5690334 documented 1992 on, precisely for today's eventuality of whimsical(or diabolical) experimentation by computer facility. Appreciating your interest, if you would please discuss it more perhaps by getting my ema from friend Jeremy Good or other. Then it could be decided whether courtesy-citations suffice or collaboration necessary for approval. charlesfort/gwd
Any chance of re-rating AOF 1 now that I have removed what you ere complaining about? The description of the Falcon's move there now reads: 'The FALCON (F) moves to the same destinations as the Bison, but cannot leap. It makes three steps in a mixture of one orthogonal and one diagonal direction, making either one or two 45° turns but no turns of any other angle. It has three alternative routes to each destination, but is blocked from reaching that destination if there is an intervening piece on every route, of any army or mixture thereof. It was invented in two dimensions by G. W. Duke for Falcon Chess. It has more directions to move in on this board, though not as many as it would on a board with more levels.'
Editor Charles, Why don't you re-Rate Falcon Chess from 'None', its having half a dozen Poors and nothing else from your most active readership, surely really a compliment. Or why do you bother to solicit a favourable rating from me more or less outsider with one Poor-Average game under byline? Is it a taunt on your part? (Technically I realize you cannot rerate because of not using your CVP-identification, the same as Ralph Betza used to do with 'gnohmon')I can tell you that you have a Poor game to play in Armies of Faith, and I will give you the courtesy of analyzing why in a long paragraph later, the way I Commented systematically on 400 Large Chesses in 2004 and 2005, whereupon my privilege for unscreened Comments was revoked by your people.
I've been looking at the starting setup of Falcon Chess, and I haven't managed to get a satisfactory setup on the 10x8 board where all pawns are protected. And where Bishops don't face Rooks. This is the major annoyance to me in most 10x8 boards, because it prevents a fianchetto.
The only setup I found, which satisfied this condition, FRNBQKBNRF, Cheops Falcon Chess, I think, has a major problem. The Falcon pawns are only protected by Knights (which are bound to move,) and they're originally attacked by Bishops, which can easily lose a Pawn and force the Rook to move (prevent castling) from the get-going. So I thought of considering other boards than the 10x8.
[[ Edit: After some examining, my favorite setup on the normal 10x8 board is RFNBQKBNFR . Even though the Falcon Pawns are unprotected, they are not vulnerable to quick attacks, and easily protectable after natural Knight moves. However, a player should be careful while advancing them because they expose the Rooks.
What Mr George Duke calls Tamplars' Falcon Chess, RBFNKQNFBR, is also good. However, since Bishops and Knights are not on adjacent squares you can easily forget about Standard Chess opening theory, no Ruy Lopez, for example. Also, Bishops face each other in this setup, so it's difficult to avoid early exchanges which might lead to some kind of awkward openings. But I believe it's perfectly playable.]]
One idea is the 8x8 board, in the setup I used for Energizer Chess.
r f b q k b f r
p p p n n p p p
- - * p p * - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - * P P * - -
P P P N N P P P
R F B Q K B F R
Castling is as in normal chess. The squares marked by * may or may not contain pawns.
Or the same setup on a 8x10 board. Just add two ranks in the middle. Pawns move as in Wildebeest chess.
--
Another idea is the board used by Templar Chess.
f - - f
r n b q k b n r
p p p p p p p p
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
P P P P P P P P
R N B Q K B N R
F - - F
A crazy piece to add here would be R. Wayne Schimttberger's (excuse my spelling,) Airplane.
The board and setup I propose are, A is for Airplane:
a f f a
r n b q k b n r
p p p p p p p p
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
P P P P P P P P
R N B Q K B N R
A F F A
I am not sure this will be a workable setup, though. It's also possible to add here Capablanca's two pieces. A is for Archbishop, M is for Marshal.
m k q a
r f n b b n f r
p p p p p p p p
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
P P P P P P P P
R F N B B N F R
A Q K M
No castling on these boards is allowed. A promotion square is where the pawns can't move. OR you can use a similar promotion rule to the one in Falcon Chess 100.
--
Or the nice old 10x10 board.
r n b f q k f b n r
p p p p p p p p p p
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
P P P P P P P P P P
R N B F Q K F B N R
Pawns move as in Wildebeest Chess. Here, it would take the Knight for ever to go checkmate the King, making the journey worthless. I am sure, though, Mr Duke has the 10x10 board in his notes. I wonder why he didn't use it.
--
Btw, to Jeremy Good.
The Coloring of the Falcon Chess 100 preset is, in a word, awful. I have created another preset. If you like it, I hope you post it instead of the current preset:
/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DFalcon+Chess+100%26settings%3DdefaultFair enough, you get the rating. Your piece is a good one. Being symmetric gives it a versatility that the alternative claimant to the name Falcon (which in deference to your patent I have not used under that name) lacks. Without your Falcon I'd have had to resort to a piece that would take a lot more explaining on the board on which I finally settled. As it happens I have no further plans to use your Falcon but I can see how you, or someone else with your permission, could use it in all sorts of geometries.
[Edit Bracketed within 2 days]Who would want to 'use it in all sorts of geometries'? What an ethos! It is like sifting all the Sahara Desert sand in order to find a handful of lions. Firstly, there are already 91.5 Trillion Falcon Chess variates: see article of that name. There could be a trillion Rococos and a trillion Quintessentials, Maximas, or Eight Stones. Where is the discrimination? Still, allowing room for experimenting, we deliberately excluded 8x8 and under from the Falcon invention; so develop 8x8 Bifocal(2004) and 7x7 Horus(2004). Would it be worthwhile presently for variety, to work up some of Gilman '155 games', and others also, into either Problem Themes, or Mates in Two or Three or Four, or Opening Theory, or Game Scores(even annotated), or Poetry, or developing further the Fiction in some of already-established Themes? Is there one particular, out of Gilman 'inventions' (which is to say, initial positions), or others' worth presenting to contemporary Chess masters or perhaps local clubs for scrutiny? Or, are they all 'art work'(Lavieri's term) not even to be played? It appears what several 'prolific' designers are mostly doing over and over is setting up one piece-mix array after another, and always it was hard to be original there. That is why David Pritchard himself says in Introduction to 1994 ECV about CVs that 'most of them should be consigned to oblivion'--stated before proliferation. So, Gilman's 1(AltOrth) for 155 is only a few times below average, persistence pays. [Meaning still lots of 'Excellents' in CVPage, say, 1 in 30 of 3000 games throughout equals 100 Rococo-level 'Excellents'] Try one of our recent immobilized Problem Themes for a change, then there is excuse at any rate not to play.
What is the value of the Falcon, relative to other pieces in Falcon Chess?
Falcon 6.5, Rook 5.0, Bishop 3.1, Knight 3.0, Queen 8.6, Pawn 1.1 until there are fewer than 75% pieces & Pawns on board, when Falcon fluctuates, as it says in this article under 'Strategy'. 1996 estimate here was 9.0, 7.0, and Pawn 1.2. 'RFNB...' should have same piece values.
Fergus Duniho comments below that 'grandmasters who had extensive knowledge of opening theory' were interested in adding marshall and cardinal to 8 x 10. Fergus is right that they were likely trying to escape their narrow professional circuit into new frontiers, but the marshall and cardinal had been around for hundreds of years and different size boards, such as Turkish / Indian Great Chess were created to explore these possibilities. We are still exploring them today.
On an 8 x 10 capablanca random board, a number of new asymmetries emerge, distancing it from FIDE Chess. The bishop becomes more powerful and the power of the marshall over the archbishop is great.
What is the Falcon piece? Simply put: One of the greatest innovations to come along in hundreds of years for a board with a length of 8 squares in particular. The Falcon family of pieces perfectly complements the linear sliders as you can tell from this wonderful diagram George Duke created to illustrate their range:
Q D D D D Q D D D D Q
D Q S S S Q S S S Q D
D S Q F F Q F F Q S D
D S F Q N Q N Q F S D
D S F N Q Q Q N F S D
Q Q Q Q Q X Q Q Q Q Q
D S F N Q Q Q N F S D
D S F Q N Q N Q F S D
D S Q F F Q F F Q S D
D Q S S S Q S S S Q D
Q D D D D Q D D D D Q
One of the great charms of FIDE Chess is the competition between the bishop and the knight, which are roughly of equal value on that board. Or maybe precisely. In fact, IM Larry Kaufman assigns them the exact same value (3 1/4 compared to 5 for rook, 9 3/4 for queen) and argues this: 'In other words, an unpaired bishop and knight are of equal value (within 1/50 of a pawn, statistically meaningless), so positional considerations (such as open or closed position, good or bad bishop, etc.) will decide which piece is better.'
This is charming because the bishop and the knight are two such disparate pieces and that there should be an underlying symmetry behind this polarity is surprising. There may not exist a single piece in Falcon Chess with equivalent value to the falcon, but when playing with the Falcon piece, one feels a similar pleasing feeling of polarity, of playing with a unique piece that can be competitive among disparate pieces. So it amounts to a great contribution.
The Falcon multi-path piece is one elegant solution to a problem implicit in one of Betza's observations: 'The second rule is that a forward leap which is half or more the height of the board is too dangerous. For example, a piece combining the (0,3) and (0,4) leaps would win heavy material in just a few moves from the opening position.'
Fergus Duniho does not note this but I think George Duke has a leg up on the great Jose Raul Capablanca and eccentric Henry Edward Bird when it comes to designing chess variants. The latter two gentlemen are rightly credited as great classical chess players, but unlike George Duke, they were not chess variant experts and they contributed very little original to the development of chess variants, except mainly to lend their prestige to a lazily constructed 8 x 10 variant that was hundreds of years old. [Added note: This may have been unfair. H. E. Bird probably was something of a chess variant expert. He was certainly a historian of chess development. ]
Usually, unprotected pawns are seen as a liability. In Falcon Chess, they serve to permit the dynamic Falcon piece to play a more interesting part in the opening.
I rate this game excellent and applaud George Duke's initiative in bringing the Falcon piece forward. It has enriched our chess variants world considerably. It is one of the few variants I consider enjoyable enough to be well worthy of serious study. It marks George Duke as one of the greatest contemporary chess variant inventors.
I agree that Falcon Chess is an excellent variant. The move of the Falcon is very interesting and provides for both strategic and tactical ideas. I have been playing a game with George and quite enjoy it (although I have not attended to my game recently!). I just wish that the Falcon piece could be used more frequently by other chess variant inventors (Switching Falcon Chess or Takeover Falcon Chess -- a 'takeover' Falcon, wow! -- anyone?).
Thanks a lot, Jeremy, for analysis of highlights of the Falcon model of coherent piece development. Remarkable the co-equality of Knight and Bishop on 8x8! Yet it breaks down by 9x8 or 8x9 where B>N, and smaller would be N>B. So, probably it is coincidental (like Sun-Earth-Moon 400 factor?). Competing philosophy is expressed by Larry Smith 22.March.04 under 'Game Design' thread: 'If a game was populated with pieces of near equal value, the advantage of exchange might not be significant. But if the pieces were of various degrees of value, enough to clearly differentiate them, exchanges would hold the potential of an advantage. Then a player can make sacrifices to obtain positional advantage.' There we developed formula M = 3.5Zt/(P(1-G)), where P = Power Density(Betza), G = Smith's Exchange Gradient[quantified by myself], t = piece-type density, and Z = Board Size in number of squares, used to calculate M, game length(number of moves expected average). [Mike Nelson named what Betza defined 'Power Density']
As a US citizen, I find US patents extremely offensive- beyond whatever merits a game may possess in of itself.
Falcon Chess patent process started in 1992 before Chess Variant Page existed. So, it is more logical for us to disparage CVPage's coming into existence and accompanying proliferation of mediocre games' (mixed in with some excellent ones to be sure) slightly watering down significance of time-tested games patents worldwide, going back to Scrabble, Monopoly and many others. However, courtesy of all Editors Howe, Aronson, Quintanilla, Good, Fourriere the last year and a half especially has enabled us to find niches where I contribute within their 'multiform ethos' as much or more than anyone else, whilst simultaneously preserving Patent USP5690334(and other foreign) in sure status of full extended rights.
I was about to say the same thing in substance, Reinhard Scharnagl, when Derek Nalls only 8 days ago insulted Falcon Chess (USP5690334), by starting with 'As a USA citizen...' in Comment this thread. Well, great, I said here inside what Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls 'the Empire', that leaves me off the hook, since nobody cares what someone thinks whose foremost identity is 'American citizen' in times of loss of civil liberties in North America. However, pertinently also, there may be an association between lack of freedom and development of Chess and other intellectual pursuits, as Soviet Union Chess peaks most difficult political years there up to its end late 1980's. [Hey, see also the muted radicalism, in next to last poem, 27 December 2006, 'Chess Morality XIX: Shadow-Chess' -- substantially after Goethe -- and Venus' lines 35-36: 'Let's pray that ethos dies 'In Gold They Trust'/ And scatter to high heaven their Fool's dust'.]
Have you thought about this preset: frnbqkbnrfpppppppppp60PPPPPPPPPPFRNBQKBNRF Notice that all the pawns are protected. The 10X10 also is a lot more roomier for the extra pair of pieces.
Thanks to Charles Daniel's recent input and rethinking our bias against cornered Falcon, because of dislike of Omega Chess, we now consider FRNBQKBNRF the second choice. The top three are close and should submit sometime to a vote if say there become ten or more participants weighing in, however informally, who will have studied the different arrays, instead of mainly our usual couple of confidantes. Omega's introduced pieces are on the edges and we never liked that game ever since the 1997-1999 period. But re-appraisal shows certain advantages to Falcon being there by contrast. So, after RNFBQKBFNR we have the Cheops' Falcon Chess FRNBQKBNRF presently. Thanks for recent inquiries. Hoping by these updates to avoid the boringly-extended debates on Carrera-Capablanca initial positions, none of which in the end are worth much, in view of factors under ongoing thread 'FatallyFlawedM/C' that Marshall and Cardinal are inherently inappropriate under close scrutiny.
I am adding words in [boldface] to correct some statements made on this page:
It is not possible [in general] to achieve checkmate with king and one falcon against the enemy king. The situation is [not] akin to the inability of king to [force] mate with only two knights or only one bishop against king. However, the rook and king together of course can checkmate opponent's king. Therefore, the rook becomes generally more valuable than the falcon in the end game. It is important to approach the end game bearing in mind this relative weakness of the falcon. For example, one must have at least king, falcon, and some one other piece to have [more than] a [slim] chance for checkmate against lone king.
Five months ago this comment was posted: 1. c2-c4 1... n b8-c6 2. c4-c5 2... n c6-e5 3. c5-c6 3... n e5-g6 4. c6-b7 // PxP 4... n i8-h6 5. b7-a8; Q-a8 I just ran this sample game to verify that Pawns promote to Queens (and presumably other pieces) in this rules enforcing preset. Clicking on the [Rules] button takes me to the 'Falcon Chess' page, where a 'Find promo' command results in several comments of a general nature and one example of a Pawn promoting to a Falcon. I am confused - in a game of 'Falcon Chess 100' between the same two players, George Duke writes: // Right, in our 80-square FC, promotion only to RNBF, // because R or F is interesting equal choice, depending on // position. Here FC100 Queen promotion too if reaching that // farther zone(Rules).
Right, that paragraph could be improved, let's see. That was written in late 1996, when copyright mailed in USA, and not revised for the CVP 2000 article. If one King and Falcon stand on own back rank, and other King at its bank rank, with no other pieces on board, no checkmate is possible with good play. So, the situation is like K + 2N. You must be talking about a set-up position after a capture, that I will check later whether it works, and so sometimes(rarely) K+F beats lone K. (Therefore, your 'NOT') If *NOT* belongs because of that, the sentence would be best omitted so not to stretch a comparison. Let us check, thanks, David. All the [additions] after that one are more precise, except maybe *slim*: the other piece could be Rook one supposes. /// Second topic: At the first of two games played with Antoine Fourriere around April 2006, when I was not Commenting here, the official Rule, being in transition, in fact, became promotion to RNBF only. Earlier games with RLavieri et al. we had Queen promotion. Now it stays as no Queen Promotion on 8x10(and 10x10). So, hopefully rule-enforcement can be changed. Likewise, individuals can agree to allow it in a case, and we do not mind. As officially as it can yet be, free castling requires King 2+ and promotion to RNBF and array RNFBQKBFNR. That's it for any ambiguity. The last of the three is the one most likely still to change, if there were a consensus for some alternative, but hopefully we are near the (more or less) final Set of Rules. (If by mutual agreement other array is used now in GCTournament, that's fine, as I read such options being taken for other selections played)
That's right. For example, if King must capture at a8(a Queen or Rook) and King is at c7 and Falcon can move to d6, Checkmate. We did not think of that properly yet. Thanks. So, since there are no such cases in OrthoChess with two Knights, the original sentence is wrong. And David Paulowich's revision is correct with *not*-- becoming different sentence that still can remain to distinguish Falcon's keeping slight value edge over those others(B or 2N) in (remotely-)possible end game. Thanks for pointing out couple of necessary revisions.
Talking about chess variants is more complicated than playing them! Back on [2006-04-03] Joost Brugh commented on this page that there is no forced mate, in general, with Wildebeest + King against lone King. But I suspect that such endgames usually lead to a stalemate victory in Wildebeest Chess.
Falcon Chess has the opposite problem: I have not seen anyone state that King and Falcon can force a lone King into a corner. But consider the following endgame position, which could arise after Black has promoted a Pawn to a Rook, or perhaps captured with his Rook:
White K(b2) and Black K(a4), R(a1), F(h7). After 1.Kxa1 Kb3 2.Kb1, the Falcon moves h7-e6-g3-d4-c1-f2-c4 checkmate.
Touche. So, it is more complicated, as there are thus more cases where K+F can force mate. Also it has not been determined whether even two Falcons can always can force mate, but I think it is so many moves they are not a resign position. These have not been studied in detail yet.
Thanks again, Jeremy, on long Comment 17.July.2007 (six months ago exactly Robert Fischer's death now). It may have been changed in one phrase. Namely, ''one of the greatest innovations to come along in hundreds of years'' originally was roughly ''the greatest Chess innovation in 400 years.'' Latter version would key off Carrera's two irregular pieces RN and BN around 1617. Minor matter of rewording for more political correctness. The reason for going to this article now is recent misguided Comment on piece values, implying that Knights automatically do not hold up well against stronger pieces. Piece values are never the whole story. A Chess Rules-set done right is like trying to solve series of simultaneous equations. Variables include number of piece-types, power density, initial set-ups (See today's FRC ideas below), complementarity. By valuations alone, Falcon Chess estimates have Knight weakest: Pawn 1.1, Knight 3.0, Bishop 3.1, Rook 5.0, Falcon 6.0, Queen 8.5. Yet three moves Knight i1-h3, h3-i5, i5-h7 is Fool's Mate in Falcon OrthoChess array RNBF... Because of technically-weakest Knights' effectiveness here, other starting arrays are under consideration as standard: RNFB..., FRNB...
Pardon the plug Mr. Duke, but I want to say your Falcon is welcome in IAGO Chess, if you want to play around with it there.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 10:19 AM UTC:Poor ★I think this page does a very poor job in describing Falcon Chess compared to the compact description other CVs get on these pages. And this for addition of only a single new piece, for which the move rules could have been described (within the context of what can be supposed common background knowledge for visitors of these pages) with the in a single sentence: 'The Falcon is a lame (1,3)+(2,3) compound leaper, which follows any of the three shortest paths to its desination consisting of orthogonal and diagonal steps, which can be blocked on any square it has to pass over to reach its destination.' That, plus possibly a diagram of the Falcon moves and a diagram of the array should have been sufficient. As it is now, I could not even find the rules for promotion amongst the landslide of superfluous description. Note that my rating only applies to the page, not to the game. I haven't formed an opinion on that yet, it could be the greatest game in the World for all I know. I have a question, though: What exactly does the patent cover? As a layman in the field of law, I associate patents with material object which I cannot manufacture and sell without a license. Rules for a Chess variant are not objects, though. So which of the following actions would be considered infringements on the Falcon patent, if performed without licensing: 1) I play a game of Falcon Chess at home 2) I publish on the internet the PGN of a Falcon Chess game I played at home 3) I write a computer program that plays Falcon Chess, and let it play in my home 4) I publish on the internet the games this program played 5) I conduct a Falcon Chess tournament with this engine in various incarnations as participant, and make it available for life viewing on the internet 6) I post my Falcon-Chess capable engine for free download on my website 7) I post the source code of that engine for free download on my website 8) I sell the engine as an executable file 9) I sell a staunton-style piece set with 10 Pawns, orthodox Chess men, and two additional, bird-like pieces 10) I sell a set of small wooden statues, looking like owls, falcons, elephants and lions, plus some staunton-style pawns, plus a 10x8 board. ????????? And more specifically: would it require a license to equip my engine Joker80 to play Falcon Chess (next to Janus, Capablanca and CRC) and post it on the internet for free download? If so, could such a license be granted, and what would be the conditions?
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 01:27 PM UTC:On a more chessic note: Why are you saying the Falcon does not have mating potential? I ran a tablebase for the Bison (a non-lame (1,3)+(2,3) compound leaper), and the KBiK ending on 8x8 is generally won (100.00% with wtm, 80% with btm including King captures, longest mate 27 moves). I think it should make no difference that the Falcon, unlike the Bison, is lame: to block any Falcon move, at least 2 obstacles are needed, and this is very unlikely to ever occur with only two other pieces (the Kings) on the board. In the mating sequence I looked at, the Bison is mainly shutting in the bare King from open space, the attacking King closing off another direction. I also cannot imagine that expanding the board size from 8x8 to 10x8 would make any difference. Usually it is the narrowest dimension that counts. So I really think King+Falcon vs King is a totally won end-game on 10x8, although I could not exactly say in how many moves.
This article is written for several perusals and assumes increasing degrees of familiarity for the importance of the topic, the total reformulation of Chess to its full, correct embodiment. We doubt Muller can even state, or visualize -- at present early stage for him, evidently, from his limited expressed understanding -- that there are 12 movement patterns or that there are always three-fold ways. Another 'Poor' will not knock us down a peg for our other contributions, since we reject the general values here. This first Comment may be followed up by another even weeks later on topic already covered by doing full research of available information. Patenting requires extensive specifics, hence the broad wording in article, carried over from Patent write-ups. No doubt we are partly at fault for not yet giving Jeremy Good request for elementary Rules-set. Evidently, most do not even understand the move with this style, judging by GC games played, and my often having to correct play (except for example Fourriere and Carlos who caught on). Falcon Chess has far and away the most 'Poor's of any CV, bar none. It continues from Editor Cazaux (any Editor may not have rated Poor anywhere else), to 'Fischer', to Nalls, to Gifford, now to Muller, and several others. How can there be any respect on our part when it is obvious Falcon is ''the missing piece,'' every other piece is not such, and the Ratings are the worst of any other. Constructively, the 'Poor's help us winnow out those we will not cooperate with in future reductions to practice. For example, we shall never sanction any Zillions application or association, no exceptions. When Zillions came on board about 2000, CVPage values plummetted. This particular article is almost exact copy of the first Copyright mailed to USA office, happening to be 1996, the same year Patent Application also was sent in. Sorry, it does not meet the formulaic worn descriptions we get the last ten years under CVPage auspices that we refuse to participate in. Editor Aronson calls Falcon ''the complement'' of Bishop, Knight, Rook. Simple as that. Editor Good calls Falcon ''the greatest innovation in Chess to come along in four hundred years....'' (Comment 17.7.2007 later revised to ''one of the gr...'') We may, or may not, get to patenting questions in follow-up that common courtesy would ordinarily require to answer. Since there is taboo to say anything good about my invention, more likely I shall continue role as analyst predominantly, contemptuous of the prevailing ethos. We are more interested, as usual, in wide evaluation and critique of others' work, in order to be fully competent later to thwart, or prosecute, any copycats of Falcon use. There are other Patents in works than USP5690334 and copyrights as intellectual property covering it. Any infringement or plagiarism will be held to account, whereever it occurs. Until there is some acceptance of evolutionary specifics in Chess, and desire to see it take place, the Falcon team response is duly limited like this.
Suppose Damiel's '***' is an expletive, which is not surprising given CVPage standards vis-a-vis Falcon for one. Daniel's Titan Chess is so embarrassingly terrible, I stopped perusing its Rules and let time run out at recent GC game. I actually joined their potluck tournament, and was subjected to Titan (follow-up critique there later) because my name alone was mentioned for invitee and politely accepted. How to continue constructive discussion of what GM and World Champion Emanuel Lasker calls ''Reform in Chess'' in article 90 years ago? Sometimes one piece makes all the difference. In fact, usually so, Chess being so nuanced. When they add Modern Queen (RB) around 1500, somehow Centaur(BN) or Champion(RN) just would not have done. Those two were named by Carrera 100 years later, but surely mediaeval ingenuity could conceive them and rejected them, in favour of our Queen. Now Pritchard says in 'ECV' Intro that OrthoChess with (RN) might have worked just as well. Most would disagree, so indeed there are schools of thought, and the Queen won out, becoming essential. Likewise, used in one or two Problems in obscure publication in 1970's, Bison (leaper 1,3 plus 2,3) is so inherently flawed, ruining Knights and Pawns, as never to have been put into a CV. Then Falcon Chess, seeing some potential, in December 1992 reduces the same-destination theoretical construct to practice in perfected form, no longer the ridiculous problem-theme leaper. Please remember the Patent started with Inventor's notebook, each page cosigned from 1992. Are we to continue to be lampooned for taking steps nearly 20 years ago? It just shows the widespread ignorance of those belligerent opponents of intellectual property protection. Actually, the first precedent for Falcon, co-equal with Bishop, Knight, and Rook, exists long ago in mediaeval German Gala -- for another Comment. // Now most Patents are not complex Rube Goldberg contrivances (see cartoons), but slight key alterations of prior art with inventiveness. An important field will have Patents themselves not that different from one another. The only difference might be in molarity or degree of heating or cooling or one or two genes varying in biochemistry.
Editor Quintanilla tags an 'Excellent' on Falcon in 2007, after Jeremy Good asked, because of both having played it. Thanks, Tony. Suppose even Editor Aronson refused to Rate Falcon on Jeremy Good's request, after Aronson calls Falcon *COMPLEMENT* of Rook, Knight, and Bishop in Complete Permutation Chess. That's okay, because Peter Aronson himself has not received due for CPC yet either. Incredible that there could be a mathematical complement, carrying characteristics of all of them! (We have to be cheerleaders without Good anymore) The problem comes from improper insruction of OrthoChess. Kids are not taught that Rook, Knight, and Bishop mutually complement each other. What does such mathematical concept mean here? Briefly, mutually exclusive squares, mutually interacting different moves, and completion of the field. Yet revolt against existence of that attribute is understandable when people and players have stake in hiding the underlying coherence. The reason arises from Chess' not being pure Science but also Art, Sport, and Life pastime, including all the material aspect. When I personally handed Yasser Seirawan Falcon material October 1998 at Denver national championship, I saw looks after some GMs looked it over of bemusement and scepticism, but none of the selfish scorn to be read intuitively across these impersonal electronics. I wonder what Seraiwan thinks today about Chess reform: don't put much stock in Seraiwan Chess itself, about which they are not really serious.
Most Falcon Chess arrays protect all Pawns. We thought back in 2000 or 2001 that surely by 2008, we would have constructive feedback whether to diverge from natural-seeming RNBFQKFBNR, unusual for unprotected Pawns. With departure of Abdul-Rahman Sibahi and Jeremy Good, those ruminations are at standstill. Anyone seeing the need for essentially one Chess, not a wide variety, and the natural evolution of Falcon from RNB basis, is welcome to get emails through Game Courier to inquire. Just post a Falcon Preset sometime and we will watch to accept it. So-called royalties would be out of the question until there is fee membership or other material for sale. My partners told me to add the last part, more or less.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 09:08 PM UTC:Incredible! After four posts of extremely verbose and incoherent ranting you managed to address exactly zero of my questions / issues. So let me repeat the most important ones: 1) Am I allowed to include Falcon Chess as a variant that Joker80 can play, and offer it for free download? 2) To which pieces can a Pawn promote in this game? 3) Does, according to you, a single Falcon have mating potential against a bare King on a 10x8 board? And on 8x8? Note that the fact that this page is a copy of a patent application, which by necessity has to be elaborate, is in no way an excuse. No one forces you to publish the full patent application here. In fact patent applications are utterly unsuitable as contents on chessvariants.com. They are meant for lawyers.
Nah. I am not answering these fully in atmospheres of hostility. Of course there are grey areas. Please do not use Falcon at Joker or anywhere else without talking to us. All you have to do is enter Game Courier, get emails and start conversation. There are individuals, friends and associates there I email five years running, such as Lavieri. (In those days there were no Ratings. Ratings have become another farce, because one person might play in 30 seconds, whilst Fourriere says sometimes he takes 30 minutes a move.) Falcon's ''91.5 Trillion...'' has on the order of 10^50 different Rules sets, all inclusively patented. Most emphasize no Queen promotion: Daniel and Carlos are playing now with Queen promotion. Incidentally, the possibility of promotion to Falcon always differentiates from OrthoChess, regardless whether Falcons get captured early. Daniel has been playing well and removed Falcons in Carlos game, reverting to OrthoChess strategy. The library of OrthoChess goes to tens of thousands of volumes. My brief comments cover 0.00001% at most of the broad topic of fully-realized Chess with all four potential compounds, Falcon included. Hey, thanks for interest, Muller. And still very seriously, drop posturing and please discuss specifics of endgames etc. of less general interest elsewhere sometime as suggested. // Charles, I got cut off from Computer to correct details of last Comment including 'I's and do so now. The 'We' refers to Falcon partners in Colorado USA when that applies. Keep on laughing within your laughable games whilst the faces on the horizon are not even smiling.
Hopefully, Falcon topic will be talked out for rest of summer soon. I told Jeremy Good 1 1/2 years ago Falcon in CVPage is ''a lost cause,'' because of differing values, or CVPage refusal to evaluate at all objectively. It is interesting Charles Daniel dislikes Falcon. Fine. It grows on you. Gradually you realize Falcon is correct, and your piece is incorrect. It takes a while. Stephen Stockman, as excellent a player as Daniel, dislikes Falcon too. They do not ruffle any feathers, and you will see no effect on our(my) ongoing topics. Compare qualities of Comments and Rating evaluations sometime, or get an impartial outsider to do so. I think we do a good job. Stockman calls, in keeping with CVPage-inspired etiquette, vehemently Falcon ''a stupid piece,'' when I beat him. That is his thank you for the game played. Hey, it was already becoming competitive ambiance. See completed log of Duke-Stockman. Now ask Fourrier or Carlos or Good about Falcon play. Their expected public silence is understandable, in face of perennial Internet problem of lowering standards and belligerence when a Comment system is open to all, but WE happen to know what THEY think.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 27, 2008 10:57 PM UTC:You talk a lot, but you say very little. I have no idea what Game Courier is, and I see no reason why anything that should be said between us cannot be said here. If you see this CV-page as advertizement for your patented game, you would do well to declare your licensing policy here. That would be much more useful than describing the excruciating detail, and boasting how many variants the patent covers. The latter just scares people away from the variant. But you made it clear you don't want me to make an engine to play your game. Well, so be it. There are plenty of other variants that are not patented. Even the patented UNSPEAKABLE variant does allow me to implement the game in an engine. But if you want to use your patent to prevent anyone can play the game, it is up to you... I am not sure what better place there could be to discuss the KFaK end-game than here, or why the mating potential of a piece that (due to the patent) can only occur in this variant would be 'of lesser interest'. What do you think the CV pages are for, really? To talk about Chess, or to talk about patents????
Thanks again for interest. We'll find a way to contact privately. I recommend to get on Game Courier, Muller, the Play system here. Nothing to it. You may be just the candidate to develop this worldwide. Let's discuss it privately anytime after you study it some weeks, and get your understanding up. You would not expect to learn a programming language in one sit-down. Take your time for something more important than Fortran or C++. (Only half-kidding, but I cannot spell out policy in rough atmosphere.) And at Game Courier, Muller, you can get the upper hand among prospective programmers. Thanks again. -- Barring that, Muller, let me look at Joker or whatever engine and respond later.
I also need to talk to Muller privately. - Sam
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jun 30, 2008 06:12 PM UTC:| Just as Greg Strong was about to finish Falcon Chess for ChessV, | it is fine to put Falcon in engine free of charge throughout years | 2008, 2009 and 2010 to play, so long as strictly not commercial | (unlike standards-degrading Zillions). Please inform what is going on, | and put the patent #5690334 two or more times about the Rules or | Board, since ultimately we would like to market Falcon material too. OK, I will see what I can do. I will let you know as soon as I made something, and send it to you privately, so that you can judge if it meats your standards.
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jul 2, 2008 03:39 PM UTC:Why do you call this piece a Falcon, btw? A falcon is a flying creature, which makes it a very illogical name for a piece that can be blocked from reaching its destination by ground-based troops! Octopus would have been a more apt name, as the piece seems to have distinct tentacles that can slither through openings in the crowd, to attack what is at the other side. With a bit of imagination (considering neighboring (3,1) and (3,2) as one waving tentacle tip) there are even eight!
Suppose Rook is just unlimited-range orthogonal piece that can be blocked. What is most important is that there is one complement to RNB, dictating them, from which Rook, Knight, and Bishop derive, not vice versa. Coincidentally, ''Octopus'' is already-used and mentioned acceptable alternate name for the three-way three-path piece and is still okay too. Also Phoenix, Horus, Scorpion or other names. Muller's name for Centaur(BN) of Dancer would also aptly fit Falcon. The game is not so much ''Falcon Chess'' as ''Chess.'' Falcon and Octopus both look like Figure 19. Poetic reasons, Falcon now prevails, because of Sun(F) Falcon, Moon(P) Sheep, Mars (N) Horse, Mercury(B) Elephant, Jupiter(K) Lion, Venus (Queen) Hawk, Saturn(R) Serpent. See the tables at ChessboardMath that extend in from 2x7 or 3x7 to as many as 7x7 natural and cultural associations, the star cluster Pleiades seven, days of Week, Birds, Animals, Metals -- all lists of seven items matched with the seven natural Chess pieces. Mythological associations often resonate dually, so imagination connects easily Falcon and Octopus, as in Figure 19, movement patterns showing either tentacles or wings spread. [My 19.February,2008 Comment at Chessboard Math has many natural sevens(7's) including ''Falcon.'' ]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 3, 2008 10:25 AM UTC:George Duke: | Right, that paragraph could be improved, let's see. That was written | in late 1996, when copyright mailed in USA, and not revised for the | CVP 2000 article. If one King and Falcon stand on own back rank, | and other King at its bank rank, with no other pieces on board, no | checkmate is possible with good play. I did some more tests using a converted Joker80 engine, and it seems that on a 10x8 board this statement is plain wrong. Joker has no difficulty at all in checkmating a bare King with King + Falcon, even if they all start from their own backrank (or even if the bare King can start in the center). Even if I let the defending side search 100x longer, making it search ~10 ply deeper, so that it sees the mate coming long before the winning side does, and would avoid it if possible. David Paulowich: | Falcon Chess has the opposite problem: I have not seen anyone state | that King and Falcon can force a lone King into a corner. OK, so I am the first then. ;-) Even an engine with a comparatively shallow search has no problems driving a bare King into a corner with King + Falcon, as long as it knows that it is bad for a bare King to be closer to a corner. Even if the defending side enormously outsearches it. This applies to 8x8 boards (where there is ironclad proof through an end-game tablebase) as well as 10x8 (where it is based on time-odds play testing). This page really need thorough revision. Apart from poor presentation, some of the statements in it are just plain false, or very unlikely to be true at least...
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 3, 2008 10:44 AM UTC:Oh, and since there is no e-mail address in my profile on this discussion board, for people that want to contact me privately: I can be reached with user name h.g.muller, with provider hccnet. nl
The third section of article will not be used at all as is, of course, having served as attention-getter. Muller is first to find force of Falcon to corner to win, that Paulowitz and I questioned. Glad you find the Paulowitz example and my response. That's good, that Falcon wins, like Rook. No one programmed play of Falcon yet, so great, that we keep Falcon on par with Rook to the end, about which I was uncertain. //The first over-the-board play of Falcon was between Vera Cole and myself December 1992, and the same month another lady and gentleman became players. By 1994 still only two dozen had tried the Falcon move on 8x10, each signing non-disclosure agreement. I doubt whether more than 200 games were played in 1990's, but I experimented with board positions for the Mates in Two here. About 2000-2003 we played a lot in coffee shops, still no computer play. Games were usually decisive well before endgames. Once the board was deliberately angrily forcily overturned and all the pieces struck and strewn around a Denver, Colorado, cafe by Mladen, born at Yugoslavia, I believe Slovenia, when I checkmated with Falcon. The only ''computer play'' is human-human at Game Courier 2003-2008.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Jul 5, 2008 11:21 PM UTC:This Falcon is a very nasy piece to program. The multi-path character of its moves subverts all properties of pinned pieces on which my engine Joker relies for efficient legal-move generation. There is no longer a well-defined pin line: pieces pinned by a Falcon can often move in multiple directions without exposing the King. Also it is no longer sure that a pinned slider cannot move along its pin line to block a check by another piece (if this other piece is a Falcon). A check by a Falcon can have the character of a contact check (for interposing is not an option if the King is checked through multiple paths) despite being inflicted from a distance. I guess I will simply generate moves as if the enemy Falcons have no moves, (so generating pseudo-legal moves with pieces pinned by a Falcon, and with other pieces when in check by a Falcon), and then test for their legality afterwards (by testinng if an enemy Falcon happened to be aligned with our King, and then testing all the generated moves for leading to a position where this Falcon is sufficiently blocked). Cumbersome, but I don't see an efficient alternative.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Jul 6, 2008 11:37 PM UTC:After converting my tablebase generator to bigger boards, I can now confirm that the Bison (and thus Falcon) + King can always mate a bare King even on 14x14 (takes 82 moves, worst case). But not on 16x16. I can only do even boards, so 15x15 remains uncertain.
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jul 9, 2008 08:08 PM UTC:Because I am still struggling to implement the Falcon in Joker80, where efficiency is a hallmark, I decided to add a few lines of code to Fairy-Max to implement support for multi-path moves. Fairy-Max is inefficient anyway, and does not know about pins and check tests; it simply plays on until the King is captured. So it is possible now to define pieces like Falcon in Fairy-Max (in this as yet unreleased version), so that I could already start running some games for asymmetric play testing. The initial results suggest that a Falcon is not worth nearly as much as mensioned somewhere below. As the Falcon seems a piece similar to the Rook, initially hard to use on a crowded board, but reaching its full potential as the board gets empty, I decided to test it against Rooks. So I took a Capablanca setup, and replaced both Rooks of one side by Falcons. If the Falcon would be really worth 6.5, against a Rook 5, this would mean the Falcon player is leading by 3 Pawns from the outset. Such 'piece odds' games normally produce 80-90% scores. (Simple Pawn odds results in 62% for Capablanca Chess with Fairy-Max.) The setup seem to be completely balanced, however. Currently it is at 39.5-37.5 for the Falcons, far below the level of significance for determining which piece is better (Rook or Falcon), but almost ruling out completely that the Falcons convey a +3 advantage. I would currently be inclined to value the Falcon a quarter Pawn above the Rook.
Communicating e-mails to Greg Strong fall 2006, I had Falcon declining in value already then, based on how many pieces on board to 5.0, equality with Rook, only by 15 pieces/Pawns remaining(the programming criterion I suggested), more or less evenly between both sides. So Mueller and I would be in some agreement from our heuristics. I'll get the exact table soon that I sent to Strong, no longer considered trade secret, since Muller or others no doubt will eventually refine them further, the slight gradual decline in value of Falcon from all 40 pieces on board. Thanks for presentations on Falcon-Bison. Rightly M/ points out Falcon-Bison equivalence once 3, or usually 4 and 5 in most positions, units remain. Think of irony that ancient games like Timur's, Courier, Gala, will have their endgames solved by 2020, 500 or 700 years later, while new ones Centennial, Jacks & Witches, Falcon, and a hundred others, we can have full set of end-game tables way before any understanding of openings. The exact reverse of cases.
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.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 10, 2008 04:08 PM UTC:I prepared a 500KB ZIP file with WinBoard_F and Fairy-Max, rigged for playing Falcon Chess. Perhaps George wants to have a look at it. And if he allows it, I can also sent it to others for testing. Contact me at h.g.muller MAGIC_CHAR hccnet PERIOD nl, and I can mail the file to you.
In the standard model, the symmetry of the six quarks was established at CERN, Geneva, with finding of the top quark in 1998. Table of Quarks(Joyce, Finnegan's Wake 1929). The glue that holds Bishop, Knight, and Rook together, beyond mnemonics the reason why section two is so long, most skimming it still do not move Falcon correctly in application. The article itself thoroughly panned by the now-conventional free-expression artistic community here, but in the long run thoroughly necessary rudiments, even upon taking any act overseas. SYMBOL NAME CHARGE FALCON MOVE O = Orthogonal U Up 2/3 Orth-Orth-Diagonal D Down -1/3 Diag-Diag-Orthogonal C Charm 2/3 Diag-Orth-Orthogonal S Strange -1/3 Orth-Diag-Diagonal T Top 2/3 Orth-Diag-Orthogonal B Bottom -1/3 Diag-Orth-Diagonal Top and bottom, the more charming ones called split block and split diagonal. The point would be that these are the movements, period, not ''Camel away'' or ''Zebra away.'' Pawn 1 e4 d5 2 e4xd5 is common enough opening (imagine FRC), but we do not say Pawn moves to Camel square in two moves, or Pawn Camel away. Knight reaches Camel square in two, or Zebra square in three, but talking that way is secondary. (to be continued) [For WB_F and F-M, my usual provider has chosen this week for major upgrade, so will contact easily next week conveniently the implementations. However, please have Scharnagl or other circles try it before I do right away, no problem.]
In response to recent inquiries> Falcon is interpolated from Rook Knight, and Bishop, not extrapolated. Falcon (including special case Bison--Bison being first implemented in patented Falcon 8x10,9x10,10x10) is of the implicate order, out of which RNB emerge, their template, vernacular cookie-cutter if one will. From another standpoint, RNB and F can be said to intersect at common origin, having further mutually-exclusive cells for destination. Knight can be awkward when children first learn Chess lessons at age 6. Knight is potentially confusing until broadening horizon and starting to see entire board(s). Bishop is awkward without using checkered bi-colour board begun in 12th Century. Actually, undoubtedly the King came first. Knight, King and Rook are of course unchanged since 6th-Century Indian Chaturanga. But everyone knows (think Jungian archetypes) the first tiled patterns took tentative one-steps King-like through either triangles or squares. The plain checkered board came from fishing nets tens of thousands of years ago. Non-technological civilisations, more sustainable than ours, and their tiles and nets and fields and stone patterns of geometrical shapes. Adjacent triangles have diagonals, like squares do, sides and vertices, so the Knight was not far behind, going through line and corner one each.
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jul 21, 2008 08:55 AM UTC:I put up the zip-file with Fairy-Max, a confiuration file including Falcon Chess, and the WinBoard_F GUI, all packed together as a ready-to play combination on my website. For those who want to try it out, the download link is: http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/WinBoard_F.zip (Beside Falcon Chess it also contains definitions for normal Chess, Capablanca Chess, the unspeakable variant, Knightmate, Shatranj, Courier Chess, Cylinder Chess.)
True, this is not a Rules-set, instead as it says an essay. It adds to official 1990's copyrights variance-material to suit CVPage in 2000. Right away under the first picture, it refers to having five Pawns as alternative, as Chinese Chess. (Later Overby in Beautiful Sun adopts similar starting array.) Of course, five Pawns would be just ridiculous artwork of no playability. Still in Chapter I, under ''other embodiments'' I mention replacing Queen on 8x8 with Falcon -- something close to what 2008 Seirawan-Chess derivatives might envision in back-rank piece substitutions. Also speculated are 9x9 set-ups. We like to think that preliminarily we are anticipating in 1996-1999 the 10^50 or so CVs (one for each atom between Sun and Mars) using Falcon developed later in 2005 ''91.5 Trillion...'' article including under Comments. What's one hard and fast Rules-set in early going of inevitable widespread experimentation? Figure 23 establishes Free Castling, invented in 1992-1993 along with Falcon, now becoming more prevalent on large boards, whether King goes 1 or 2 over, and always going more at option. Chapter IV ''Symmetrical Expansion'' lays the groundwork for Scorpion, actually described here and publicized fully-definitionally in 2003 ''Passed Pawns, Scorpions and Dragons.'' Elsewhere copyrights show Scorpion, Dragon really invented 1996. Only one of several rationales within Chapter Five ''More Variants'' is illegal infringement of USP5690334 and accompanying copyrights. For example, Rook is still Rook if going 1-, 2-, and 3 steps only, but we would probably not object if someone implements new Falcon along with all fully-short-range movers like Squirrel, Dabbabah, Ferz. That raises the 20 claims of this patent that have never actually appeared in any website, other than USPTO itself online.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Aug 7, 2008 06:11 PM UTC:George: I am close to releasing a new version of the WinBoard Chess GUI, which I expect to become widely distributed amongst Windows and Linux users. Most of the people no doubt will only be interested in playing 'normal' Chess, but I planned to include Fairy-Max with the distribution, as it can both play normal and many variants. The distribution package would look a lot like the experimental version that can be downloaded from the link I gave in the post below. In this new WinBoard I included some support for Falcon Chess in the menus: people can click 'Falcon' as one of the options in the variant menu, and will then be able to use WinBoard as Graphical User Interface for an engine that could actually play it, provided they use one of the wildcard pieces supplied by WinBoard to represent the Falcons. I suppose you have no objection against this, and as WinBoard itself does not play the game, but only acts as a display, it probably does not fall under the patent anyway. As it would only be useful to use WinBoard this way if you did have a Falcon-Chess-playing engine, and the user can communicate with such an engine only through WinBoard, I make WinBoard pop up a licensing message, mentioning your name and the patent number. (Similar to what I make WinBoard do in Gothic Chess.) Fairy-Max, in the download below, does include Falcon Chess as a pre-defined variant, in its fmax.ini file, and when programmed by this preset, actually does play the game (as you could watch in the broadcast). Can I leave this in, or would you prefer me to take out the Falcon-Chess game definition? Please let me know ASAP, I hope to be able to releas this weekend.
Anticipating, ''91.5 Trillion...'', and copyright by formal number in year 1996 and unrevised, this article is early super-multi-variant form -- comprising millions CVs -- well before proliferation. There is no one Rules-set described, anyone reading it sees immediately. Under Figure 1 in the beginning ten sentences, what does it say? ''It is also possible to position the Pawns initially in the third rank rather than the second. It is possible to play with fewer Pawns, even just the five of the Chinese game. If a game board of size 10x10 is used, one variation positions the Pawns in the third rank initially, allowing for from 2 to 5 additional game pieces to be positioned within the second rank. These additional pieces may be weak pawn-like ones, that is one- and two-step movers. Alternately, the additional pieces may include a novel major fairy piece or two, such as the Giraffe of Timur's Chess.'' Use Michael Howe's Optima or Novo and Betza's Chess Augmented Knights, plug in pieces and there are billions of CVs in combination; or just put in second rank any piece-type in CVPage. Sub-section ''Other Embodiments'' has play with no Queen and switched arrays. Last section ''More Variants'' incorporates Xiangqi and Shogi pawn-like pieces. Also there are Mutators for Falcon Chess with Progressive and Fischer Random. Sub-section ''Changing Games'': ''It is possible to position only some of the Pawns in the third rank in the 10x10 board size.'' More millions. Any variant thought of specifically has framework here, except 8x8 (like Joyce's Royal Falcon). Preferred 8x10 with no Queen promotion and Castling 2 or more over exists in comments and the first few mutators of ''91.5 Trillion,'' not here.
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Oct 6, 2008 09:44 PM UTC:You keep stressing how many variants are covered by your patent. More relevant would be: how many of those are actually played? How many of these variants have regional or national championships for them? On how many internet servers can people play these variants? How many people World-wide have equipment to play any of thee variants? It seems to me that all this is a lot more important than wether you cover a billion or a trillion variants...
Think of Falcon as having all the Pawn's moves, 1 or 2 straight, 1 or 2 diagonal, the very last of those concatenated over two moves, for example, two Pawn captures in back-to-back moves, as e3xd4 then d4xc5 by the same Pawn capturing twice. That could happen also in dual-move CVs in only one turn. Falcon was ''two-way'' multi-path from January 1988 until December 1992. Then Vera Cole and I were talking about what expansion to 8x10 would mean, and all of the sudden it was realized there was middle path, S-D-S and D-S-D, to the same never-used squares of very old Camel and more-recent 19th-Century Zebra. So, the standards became D-D-S, D-S-S, S-S-D, and S-D-D with then the newest ones called split block and split diagonal, the above DSD and SDS, making all attainable squares three-way, the three-fold way established. Now actual claims USP5690334 numbering 20 retain, by the way they are worded, the (incomplete) two-way Falcon along with three-way Falcon. Lengthy claims have never appeared in CVPage, and are immediately accessible through USPTO site. The discovered first of the 4 fundamental Chess pieces, the mathematical template from which Bishop, Knight and Rook derive, has characteristics of each of those three she makes possible, and moreover traits of Western Pawn embedded in Falcon's very logic and unfolding. Incidentally, it takes all three pathways for accurate mathematical complementarity, but that would be for longer demonstration than room here allows. In this way over-all, Falcon interfaces and links Pawn and Piece, tying all the normal units together.
USP5690334 covers all 453,600 initial arrays. This repetition is to clear up mis-statements last fall over a month ago, not current comments I have not read. I had all arrays in mind during 1994-1996 and used the wording and technique, of many prior patents going back to 1970s to extend the coverage correctly that way, in legal consultation. There is no going one by one by one, but all of them together in the Claims wording ''all at predetermined locations.'' Also covered is Bison and any other piece going to squares (2,4) plus (3,4), such as exclusively orthogonally multi-path, or two-path, instead of three-path, Falcon. Also, whimsically are the 91.5 Trillion ''supersets'' now extended, in mirroring CVPage purely artistic over-proliferation, turning it to humour, to some 10^50 CVs. ''Superset'' is not legal term, but makes it understandable to math-types. Anticipating proliferation, I did not at all patent the piece, as I could have. So, for example, anyone can slot Falcon into 8x8 (as Antoine Fourriere does with Bifocal Chess). Also, if there are some important pieces you want to combine with Bison-Falcon on 8x10 and larger, inform me and we can set up co-authorship. That works with Complete Permutation Chess of Aronson. Sorry, to Peter Aronson, Tony Quintanilla, Jeremy Good, who have understood realm of intellectual property involved all along, for repetition to parties that shall not be named not getting it the first time, and to newcomers. What field of endeavor has no patenting for several hundred years? Virtually none. Patenting, and formal copyrighting are far and away the norm (put your money where your mouth is); and CVPage, to the extent increasingly ignoring prior invention/discovery, becomes the aberration to dispassionate informed viewers. For eventual contact with the outside world, how many CVs will be welcome, or tolerated, by the world's billion chess players? Who wants to see a thousand rejects or how the process was arrived at? The scrap paper and uncompiling programs? That is the purpose of NextChess threads, to get the right 100 or so CVs -- an interesting project, if it can be completed, and counterpoint trumping proliferation.
Let's say you are patenting a Micrometer. It has some unique, novel, inventive inner mechanism. Within the calipers, or connected to them, are some special gear(s), or spring, or device, it does not matter what, that the group thinks will benefit precision measurement conditionally and sufficiently to bother patenting; and researches show it to be untried or thought of before. You know some spacing, or gap, or aperture within, has to be over 3 centimetres for it to work. The specifics are not important. It would be poor to state some exact spacing, like ''4 centimetres.'' Then someone else could make one 4 1/2 centimetres that works just as well and basically the same. So, this patent would be worded minimally concretely as ''at least 3 centimetres'' at that juncture for its particular inventive mechanism to function -- presumably the inventive step. It means there could be untold thousands, millions of very specific embodiments, if anyone gets ''technical,'' i.e. 3.1, 3.2, 3.8, 3.85... Similar reasoning is why, for example, the moves of Rook, Knight, or Bishop are not specified, and instead called or indicated as ''rook-like.'' Cannon for Rook would still be USP5690334 if 8x10 and up, because Cannon then becomes the added element, departing from the norm and making a superset. Elements ABC and D just have become elements ABCD and E: also patented by age-old practice. And so on. It is not a very interesting subject. CV strategy and tactics would be more interesting, but TCVP has never even advanced to that stage, instead being never-ending compilers of so-called ''new'' rules-sets. Hey, with an Author for each and every one, fully to his or her credit. That is except perhaps for Sam Trenholme (in Schoolbook having built some depth), who started it all around 1995, posting assorted CVs from the historical record. See few comments back Trenholme's article ''List of CVs'' from the 1990s at his membership for some great CVs culturally-accepted.
I am further inspired to write in defence of the Falcon piece, at least, by comments on some variants of mine that do not use it. Yes, the Falcon is weaker than the Bison, but too much of a strong piece is not always a good thing. Comments on variants using compounds of two oblique leapers have made me reluctant to use them further unless a theme calls for them. They can just about get by on a board of squares, or more sparingly on a hex-prism board, but on a cubic board they can be overpowering. A Gnu, Gazelle, or Bison in the centre of an 8x8x8 board can reach 48 cells, and a Buffalo 72. The same could of course be said of the Churchwarden, Samurai, Overon, and Canoe but at least that lot are confined to the second preimeter. ` Being blockable a Falcon does not dominate even the cubic board to the same extent, and suggests a logical set of fellow pieces. Where, by mixing Wazir and Ferz steps, it complements the Knight corresponding 3rd-perimeter steppers can be devised mixing Wazir and Viceroy steps to complement the Sexton - call it the Vulture - and mixing Ferz and Viceroy steps to complement the Ninja - call it the Kite. Even their own compounds are not unthinkable with sufficient blocking pieces - say Merlin for Falcon+Vulture, Kestrel for Falcon+Kite, Osprey for Vulture+Kite, and Eagle for the triple compound. In fact I might try out a cubic variant with the compound pieces, if George Duke does not object.
In famous comment this thread here 17.July.2007, Editor Good, if I may call him editor, calls Falcon ''the greatest chess innovation to come along in 500 years (scroll back).'' He is right because Falcon-Bison complement Rook, Knight, Bishop mathematically, as nothing else conceivably could, not in 100 years ahead. Guaranteed. Specific Falcon in question is just more precise Bison to achieve that full sought-for-a-millennium complementarity. The theorem does not address actual Falcon games per se; for all I know they may be mediocre by consensus, just the piece. Gilman should not waste time with 3-D. By and large that has been one very limited success in CVPage -- having few successes in 15 years. Namely, to reject 3-D forms is credit to CVPage. Give them up is the message out of CVPage. No one plays them at Game Courier and whenever new ''3-D'' pops up it is not complimented much here. 3-Ds are just 2 or more layers of 2-Ds, unnecessary contrivance, when you could just lay the whole smear end to end in nice flat canvas. John Smith has 100 CVs in couple of months, and none of them are 3-D, so that proves it. So, given 3-D as probable lost cause, and nothwithstanding there are 91.5 Trillion Falcon CVs at article ''91.5 Trillion...,'' Gilman may well have some good idea for 2-D not yet presented. I suggest Gilman collaborate, if wanting to make FCV #91,500,000,000,020. The ''twenty'' (20) is because there are Bifocal Chess and couple of others. Charles, please find some best use on 8x10, 10x10, 8x12, flat and 2-D, and I'll add equal material to round it out, by Charles G. and George D. Precedents in collaboration include everybody else: Duniho & Lavieri, Duke & Aronson, Brown & Havel... Gilman has 200 Lone Ranger CVs only. Out of right field don't play left out: too sinistre.
> 3-Ds are just 2 or more layers of 2-Ds, unnecessary contrivance, when you could just lay the whole smear end to end in nice flat canvas. Strictly speaking, of course, 2-dimensional games can also be represented as 1-dimensional games. A 1-dimensional layout is simpler mathematically (and game-playing software often stores a game's positions in a 1-dimensional array), but the human visual system generally does better with 2 dimensions than with either 3 or 1. Exactly what this says about the relationship between mathematical tidiness and playability, I'm not sure.
Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Feb 4, 2009 12:31 AM UTC:There are elements of interest found in higher-dimensional chess that are not found in 2D variants. But many think the 2D surface is the best to play upon. Even if the game is 3 or 4 dimensions, playing on a 2D surface is generally easier. For an interesting take on this topic, let me recommend Mapped Chess, by S. Burkhart, found here: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSmappedchess
[Incomplete description corrected. The reason I had 8x7x5 around was to see if certain natural pathways of 8x7x7 and 8x7x5 balanced out. It's better to get them all 8x7x6 as below.] The following is abstract summary about Chieftain, not Falcon. I filed the 2x2x2 comparison at Gilman's M&B04. The 48/336 is going to come up again within M&Bxx. Of course 336/48=7. The full Rule to get 8x7x6=336 requires logical Chieftain of Jetan restriction between loose and strict, and these three subrules are convenient to gamesters. Chess in motion is not only math. 8 steps to choose, then 7 to choose, the first two are obvious, then 6 the third step we have to be careful, all three one-steps for the full three-steps, numbering the 336 pathways. (1) In the three-step there is no return to same square already passed over. (2) 0-degree, 45-degree, and 90-degree changes of direction are all permitted. (3) If there are two 135 changes to choose to get the total 6 choices for the final one-step, use clockwise preference. The full rule makes always 8x7x6=336 three-steps (without subrule 3 there are cases of 8->7->7); and Falcon uses 48 movements from among them. Falcon's movement rule is far simpler, and the foregoing is for Chieftain of Jetan, out of which Falcon is carved. Falcon can be stated as simply as: ''three-steps outward both of at least one straight and one diagonal.''
I like falcon. It's interesting stronger version of Korean elephant. By the way, have anybody thought about using moo in Korean chess instead normal horse (mao) and falcon with only zebra's moves (without all camel moves) instead normal elephant? But, i think that section 'Other variants' should be removed from this page, and each variant, described here (shogi generals instead pawns, for example), should have separate page, they are not logical continuation of falcon, they may be used for FIDE chess to (as Betza says, 'for progressive earthquake trapdoor alice shogi'), this page takes many space without it, but these variants are interesting to.
That last section the commenter (Frolov) is right referring to, ''More Variants,'' as really for another article. It was to be lead to further expansion on Falcon combined with Shogi and also Xiangqi never completed. Immediately, proliferation in CVs occurred, and the last section on other variants is overtaken and substituted instead by the general reference article 6 years later in 2006 ''91.5 Trillion Falcon Chess Variants.'' Korean Chess Elephant is non-leaping Zebra. In CVs there are also a few non-leaping Camels used. Two of those are Cardinal Super-Chess, and Camblam. There may be no other non-jumping Camels, except as incorporated in partial destinations of all-range hook movers like the magisterial 13th-century Gryphon and recently of course such as Winther's bifurcators having multiple target squares, not just (1,3) or (2,3). However, a type that leaps like Knight and then slides to Camel gets used historically, but that would not be non-jumping. The same for piece-type of Knight leap, then slide to Zebra. Both those are in 1994 Pritchard occasionally, and for some reason not in CVPage CVs, although CVPage has by now two or three times more the attributed CVs than 'ECV'.
Humphrey Bogart was Chess player with games recorded now at ChessGames, http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=65398. The Maltese Falcon of 1941 movie has just sold November 2013: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/maltese-falcon-figurine-fetches-4-million-article-1.1529179, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/11/maltese-falcon-bird-statuette-up-for-auction.html. Bill Wall's Chess and Movies http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/movies.htm has Bogart playing Chess in all of 'Casablanca'(1942), 'Knock on Any Door'(1949), and 'Left Hand of God'(1955) films. For Chess Variant, see 217 The Blood of Heroes. http://www.chessdryad.com/articles/wall/art_01.htm -- his Bogart and Chess has shot of Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart at Chess in 'Casablanca'.
The falcon is an interesting piece! Arriving at the same square in different ways is a clever concept. I would be curious to know how a top computer would rank them compared to a knight.
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Sep 27, 2016 02:13 PM UTC:Well, computer programs usually do not rank pieces, the programmers usually do that for them. The quality of play also turns out to have surprisingly little effect on piece values.
Fairy-Max self-play showed the Falcon value to be slightly above that of a Rook, perhaps equal. (Pieces close in value tend to pull their values towards each other, complicating the measurement.)
Values -- there H. G. Muller had the values Rook and Falcon worked out 9 years ago. Not much progress has been made, but ultimately I bet texts will show Falcon 5.5 or even 5.75 to Rook 5.0, because of forks Falcon makes with longer term planning the only few programs yet are not told about. But Muller right away was closer than the 5.0 R and 7.0 F I used in the nineties. Now I consider myself player and have lost about 2 to 14 wins at Game Courier.
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Sep 27, 2016 09:42 PM UTC:Well, Falcons make forks, but Rooks make those to a lesser extent too (e.g. when they enter the 7th rank and attack Pawns on both wings). And in addition they can make skewers. All of which also benefits from long-range planning (to open files, make batteries...). To a human the bent motion of Falcons (and even Knights) might seem less obvious than the straight path of Rooks, but to a computer they are just sequences of moves,and it calculates them with precision no matter how far it has to think ahead. So I don't expect specific knowledge on the pieces to make much difference. Also note that even when the Falcon is only marginally more valuable than a Rook, there would be awfully little to fork that would make a juicy bite when protected.
Hello,
H.G.,
Could you explain the betza notation for falcon for us the more lazy ones.
I was thinking of something more like lame Z or C (L in older version) rather than what you posted which is something I don't understand, and why your choice for the used version , as I'm sure more people could think at more solution to writting the falcon move.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Oct 2, 2016 09:23 AM UTC:The problem is that 'lame' is an ill-defined concept for 'oblique' moves (i.e. not strictly orthogonal or diagonal). E.g. look at the Xiangqi Horse (Mao). It is a lame Knight. But that in itself doesn't tell you that it can be blocked on the W; squares, rather than the F squares, like the 'Moa'. Or whether it is multi-path, and can only blocked by occupying both squares. So one has to specify the path, square by square.
This can be done by describing the move as a sequence of steps. The Mao takes one orthogonal step, followed by an outward diagonal one. This can be described by afsW: 'a' (= 'again') for indicating there are two steps, and 'fs' behind it to indicate how it bends. So the Mao is described as a two-step Wazir that bends 45 degrees after the first step. The default modality for the first step is 'm', (because another step follows), so it does not have to be written. The Moa would be afsF, and the Moo would be afsK, so it can start in any of the 8 directions.
The notation for the Falcon used here is an extension of that to 3 steps (so there are two 'a', each followe by two descriptions of how the trajectory bends). There are 3 path types: bend early, bend late and bend twice. E.g. bend early can be written as afsafK: the second step forward-sideway compared to the first, and the third 'forward' compared to the second. Unfortunately the twice-bent path has to be written as one left+right and one right+left path, as there is no way to indicate in the third step "now bend in the opposite direction". This is how I finally arrive at afsafKafafsKaflafrKafraflK.
The additional 'm' written in the diagram are really redundant, and act as a reminder only. For non-final leg 'm' is the default, like for a final (or only) leg 'mc' is the default modality. That makes the XBetza system tuned to representing lame leapers. Pieces that capture or hop on their way do need extra modifiers to indicate that.
So, if I want to use the falcon in a commercial game, can I do it or should I pay money for it.
Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 1, 2022 03:53 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 07:26 AM:So, if I want to use the falcon in a commercial game, can I do it or should I pay money for it.
It's ok, the patent has expired: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5690334A/en?oq=5690334
Thanks Greg!
The Falcon is a generalization of the Korean Elephant.
A 3d version of the Falcon that would make sense, would also incorporate root-3 diagonal “Unicorn” moves. A combination of Duke’s Falcon with Gilman’s Vulture, Kite, and a piece Gilman surprisingly didn’t name (I think it would be a “Multipath Stepping Fortnight”, if my Gilmanese is correct). Gilman calls the leaping version of this piece a “Trison”.
Bn Em wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 11:07 PM UTC in reply to dead dead from 09:56 PM:Which of the two possible stepping Fortnights do you mean?
- The one taking one each of wazir, ferz, and viceroy steps? Given that Gilman starts from the various bent/crooked pieces which only have two kinds of step, this is probably a bit out of scope (corkscrew pieces with one kind of step aside).
- The one taking three Ferz steps, two in one direction and one at 60° (dual to the hex Shearwater)? That'd match the two‐of‐one‐and‐one‐of‐the‐other pattern of the Falcon, and arguably as a Shearwater extrapolation could be nameworthy (I'd've suggested Fulmar, a family of birds related to shearwaters beginning with the F of fortnight as shearwater begins with the S of sennight, but it's already taken (albeit with unclear etymology) for Zephyr+Lama; perhaps Petrel, the group including the fulmars and still beginning with a labial consonant, would suit it?), but presumably he either didn't consider two diagonal directions different enough without the AltOrth‐ness, or it just didn't occur to him. And there are also Nonstandard Diagonals at small enough angles (35°) for more Falcon‐like pieces there too
For a stepping‐Trison component I'd probably choose the former, but individually both are interesting enough imo. There's still a few bird‐of‐prey names unused I think so if one were keen to name them in Gilmanesque fashion all that'd remain would be finding a game to use them in…
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