Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

All the Excellent '9x9's fall 2007 were apparently never grouped as one, so as convenience we put them here for follow-up use with Cetina's indulgence. Coherent, Omega, Sissa, Weave & Dungeon, Hanga Roa, Melee, Three Fat Brothers, Modern, Altair, Kristensen's all 9x9. Coherent is as good as any for the pinnacle because of actual lengthy, interesting game scores with annotations and novel multi-path piece Sissa. What factors cause disproportionate excellence among the chosen 81-square size?

OK, George. Very frequently I tend to be alarmist. Do you know Christian Freeling's website 'www.mindsports.nl'?

Gary: I wait for your commentaries after reading the sample game.

Right, closer reading shows Coherent to be as good as Sissa itself, because of Coherent's interestingly-appropriate Pawns. One way of course to learn not to see Pawns as Pawns is playing Rococo Cannon Pawns, also omnidirectional including one-step Kinglike as Coherent's except for capturing; Rococo Cannon Pawns have the additional two-step leap both modes. There are some other Pawn's going one step only omnidirectionally. ''Knight'' here is the later-named Sissa, that is multi-path, either two-path or four-path according to the arrival square. For the running cross-thread of ''9x9-Excellent CVs,'' so far including Weave & Dungeon, Hanga Roa, Three Fat Brothers, Gabriel Maura's Omega, and Sissa (all of them to be collated as we go from time to time), this surely adds the Sissa-inspiration Coherent. Carlos, I am glad Gabriel Maura is apparently well, having thought I read otherwise somewhere.

This appears to be a very good variant. At a glance I was wondering about a Bishop pinning a Rook to a King on move 1... then I noticed that the Pawns are not actually Pawns, but move like Kings that are immune from check and lack promotion ability. These specialized pawns rendering the pin as not very effective.

Because the Pawns are very different from Fide-pawns, I think the pre-set would be better if Pawn graphics were replaced with one of the many King-like graphics. If I played this game I would constantly be battling my mind's desire to see the Pawns as Pawns.

On a similar note, the Knight piece is not a Knight, so a different graphic to remind us of this would be good.

9x9 being unusual size, Mexican Carlos Cetina in this 1997 invention Coherent Chess probably emulated Puerto Rican(USA) Gabriel Maura's Modern Chess. Posted in CVPage in 1996, 9x9 Modern Chess was played internationally to some extent around the Caribbean in 1970's. There were only hundreds of CVPage posts then, and Cetina must have noticed Maura's. In turn, Maura himself likely was aware of North American Ben Foster's Chancellor Chess 9x9 also, as the main difference is switching from Marshall(RN) to Cardinal(BN) and going to same-coloured Bishop pair from Foster's off-center array. They are 'normalized' in Coherent Chess array with Bishops standing back to back centrally. The real novelty is first use of Sissa, later featured in Sissa Chess. Interesting Sissa is multi-path, two-path to Nightrider squares, and four-path to Rook squares. None of the pathways follow the typical Nightrider or Rook pathways. 'The [Sissas] gain more power when the board gets empty'. That remark precedes full game score taking up most of the essay. In 1990's and 2000, even when an article was not completely polished (including RBetza's usual one a week), there were always a newly-invented piece or clearly unique mechanism. None of today's perpetual 'new combination of elements' only and then the more vociferous the more attention.

Carlos Cetina's ideas are always interesting. I am not sure if his triangular setup works or not, but it is a contribution to chess variant theory. There is a minor problem with any variant having Bishops on a 9x9 board. One Bishop travels on 41 squares and the other Bishop travels on 40 squares. These two pieces are not quite equal in value. Later that year he posted Symmetric Sissa, a 9x9 variants with no colorbound pieces.

Having rated Carlos Cetina's Coherent Chess 'Excellent' before, I like the annotated sample game from 1998 that actually takes up most of the text. Sissa squares overlap Rook squares, some Crooked Bishop squares, and Nightrider squares. Sometimes Sissa is two-way, sometimes four-way.