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Extinction chess. Win by making your opponents pieces of one type extinct. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Tue, Apr 26, 2011 11:47 AM UTC:
extinction chess is also played on schemingmind.com & even links back to
this very page here on CV .org

Extinction Chess
Rules
Invented by R. Wayne Schmittberger and added here with his permission.

More information on Extinction Chess is available on ChessVariants.org
[ http://www.chessvariants.org/winning.dir/extinction.html ]

Adrian Alvarez de la Campa wrote on Sun, Oct 29, 2006 05:39 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Extinction Chess is a great game of course, but the shorter games it usually provides made me think of combining it with Brotherhood Chess, a slower-than-normal game.

Anyway, here's the Game Courier preset I made for this.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Apr 7, 2005 03:46 PM UTC:
I have just sent you the information you requested by email, so that spam robots won't harvest his address by seeing it here.

Austin Lockwood wrote on Thu, Apr 7, 2005 03:33 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I have just added Extinction Chess as a playable game on the correspondence chess/chess variants server <a href='http://www.schemingmind.com'>SchemingMind.com</a>. I haven't played a full game yet, but am looking forward to doing so!<br><br>I couldn't find an email address for Mr. Schmittberger anywhere, and would like to check with him that he doesn't mind me having Extinction Chess on SchemingMind.com - if anyone here knows how he can be contacted I would be grateful for this information.<br><br>Cheers,<br>Austin

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Tue, Mar 29, 2005 07:50 AM UTC:
Thanks to Mr. Schmittberger for the quick decision.

I agree that such a position is very unlikely -- presumably it's unusual for a game of Extinction Chess even to last so long -- but it's not inconceivable. If the ruling had been for a draw, then one could imagine a game in which Black had no winning chances, but could force a draw by moving the Bishop to c8, forcing the Pawn to promote or die.

On the other hand, since the capture-promotion has been declared a win for White, it seems that the position as I stated it could arise only after an obvious blunder by Black. But of course the Black piece need not be a Bishop. One could imagine White pushing his last Pawn to the 7th rank, forking Black's last Rook and Knight.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Mar 29, 2005 01:21 AM UTC:
<P>R. Wayne Schmittberger, creator of Extinction Chess, has ruled that it would be a win for White if White's last Pawn captured Black's last Bishop on the last rank. This corresponds with how I already programmed the rules for Game Courier. In my email to him, I described the situation given in a previous comment, and I asked, 'In this move, should the capture take priority over the promotion, so that White wins, or do capture and promotion take equal priority, so that the game is drawn?' Here is his response to my email:</P> <BLOCKQUOTE> It's a good question, and I agree that either rule can be supported by logic. Although I'm sure this will never come up in practice, I would favor this scenario being a win for White. One reason is that I like draw margins to be as small as possible; in at least one other game that I invented (Flying Obelisks--see April 2004 Games Magazine), where it was theoretically possible for both sides to achieve victory conditions simultaneously, I chose the rule that whoever brought about that position by making the last move was the winner. Another reason is an intuitive sense that the victory conditions aren't quite fulfilled simultaneously--the bishop comes off the board an infinitesimal amount of time before the pawn (which, after all, moved as a pawn to make the capture) must promote. </BLOCKQUOTE>

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Mar 28, 2005 04:37 PM UTC:
My Game Courier preset for Extinction Chess checks for an extinction among enemy pieces first, and so it would give a win to White. But this is an unclear point in the rules. So I have just sent an email to R. Wayne Schmittberger asking for a ruling on this matter.

Roberto Lavieri wrote on Mon, Mar 28, 2005 03:42 PM UTC:
Capture and Pawn promotion is at the same time, because a Pawn in the last rank is automatically promoted, it is not a composed move two-turns-in-one. The game must be a draw.

Jared McComb wrote on Mon, Mar 28, 2005 12:40 PM UTC:
Interesting point. I would think the game would be a draw in that scenario.

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Mon, Mar 28, 2005 07:40 AM UTC:
Regarding the castling question, I would have thought that the logical generalization of the orthodox chess rules would be to allow castling out of or through check, but also to allow the King to be captured en passant on either its original square or the square it passed through. This would of course result in a loss unless the castling player had a second King on the board.

Also, I've just thought of the following pathological possibility. Suppose that, after 41 moves of a game of Extinction Chess, White's only Pawn is on b7 and Black's only Bishop is on c8. If White then plays 42. bxc8=Q, Black's Bishops are extinct, but so are White's Pawns. So the game is clearly over, but what is the result?


George Duke wrote on Fri, Feb 4, 2005 06:11 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
'DEF,LargeCV': Excellent ideation, average playability. (The
extinction-notion could apply to those CVs >71 (or >79) squares, the
subject matter of this cross-thread.)

Fabrice Liardet wrote on Mon, Jan 10, 2005 10:14 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I am not 100% sure about how castling should be handled. The game carries
very natural notions of check (last piece of a kind under attack) and
checkmate (unavoidable check). So castling under check hurts the eye a
bit, unless one has a second (promoted) king. But if one forbids castling
under or through check, one should also forbid castling when the rook is
attacked when it is the only rook on board. I played correspondence games
in the NOST association and there castling under check was allowed, as
Wayne Schmittberger recommends.
Still, I would rather recommend to disable castling completely. But of
course, the inventor gets precedence over my opinion :-)
One must be conscious that another feature of not wanting to talk about
check and checkmate is that stalemate becomes a win for the stalemating
player, because the opponent is forced to commit suicide. This one
doesn't bother me at all, since I dislike the stalemate rule anyway.

Filip Rachunek wrote on Sun, Dec 19, 2004 09:56 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
This cool game can be also played on <a href=http://BrainKing.com>BrainKing.com</a>. There are almost 2000 finished games of this variant.

📝Antoine Fourrière wrote on Mon, Apr 12, 2004 11:38 AM UTC:
Thanks to R. Wayne Schmittberger for the following answer to the above
question:


I don't remember the castling question being asked before, or being 
settled. But I think that it would be in keeping with the spirit of the 
game to allow castling when in check, as well as to allow castling 
through check. For the same reason, it should be legal to move into 
check, even though your opponent can then win by taking your king.

R. Wayne Schmittberger

📝Antoine Fourrière wrote on Mon, Apr 12, 2004 07:48 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Can one castle under or through check, now there is no check?
(Zillions' own zrf keeps castling as usual, but it's no proof,
since their zrf for Berolina Chess has no en passant.)

Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Dec 4, 2003 04:40 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
The game is an interesting leveller of pieces. The way that Pawns become important in their own right rather than just as promotands is a particularly big change. How would the rule behind this game affect play in games with unequal-army arrays?

Javier wrote on Tue, Dec 17, 2002 03:46 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Extinction chess can also be played at www.itsyourturn.com. And yes, the standard Zillions chess ZRF also has extinction chess. Great game!

Peter Aronson wrote on Sat, Sep 7, 2002 07:33 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Actually, this game can be found in the standard Chess ZRF that comes with Zillions.

Ben Good wrote on Sat, Sep 7, 2002 07:22 AM UTC:
nobody ever made a zrf for this game?

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