Ratings & Comments

I think it'd be worth adding some of that information into the page, the intro and/or notes sections. (E.g., "pieces move as in other standard [is 'standard' OK here?] hexagonal variants" and maybe "the board shape and setup are designed to be better balanced" in the intro, and the comparisons to other variants in the notes.)

The pawns' initial two-step could use a clarification on whether pawns that make an initial one-step but land still in the two-step "zone" are still admitted a subsequent two-step (it seems like yes?).

Did you guys know about this :

https://github.com/suragnair/alpha-zero-general ?

Yes, it is from the GAME code. But is seems the GAME code is right about this: Daniel says below that the initial position is all wrong, and indeed contains no royal.

This is a shuffle game, so it calls the general shuffle code in the Pre-Game section. This performs the shuffling, and stores the result in a constant. So that later invocations of the preset will use that same shuffle. A new shuffle is only made when the constant is not defined. This works fine in Play mode.

Can it be that the constant for remembering the initial position gets corrupted when an invitation is accepted?

For reference, below is the basic principle of the shuffling, by the routine ShuffleSetup called from the Pre-Game code:

sub ShuffleSetup:
  // performs the shuffles described in the above arrays
  if isconst startshuffle:        // shuffle has already been determined
    setsystem space startshuffle; // retrieve it
  else:                           // new game; must shuffle
    ... // shuffle the initial setup in $space
    setconst startshuffle $space;        // save the shuffle for persistent use
  endif;
endsub;

From the description (both here and of the Sliding General), shouldn't it be a three‐path lame dabbabah?

Well, the description was KtfsF, so I assumed a W as second step was out.

Another enhancement I had considered was to just add the Wazir move to the existing Griffon pattern.

That was the first thing that came to my mind as well, but I was afraid this would make it too strong. IIRC the value for the Griffon I measured was 8.2, and 4 extra moves easily up the value by 2 Pawns, even for a Rook. Just bending a trajectory in another shape is more like adding extra squares at the end of the trajectory: all the normal Griffon move now become more easily blocked. This should partly compensate the effect.

@Ben Reiniger, thank you for the explanation! Yes, this is one of those variants, and definitely not a 'quirky' one, because I didn't want to create a completely new game, but rather to rebuild in a new way the material that existed before me.

I think it would be great to add Shafran's variant to the primary hexagonal groop too, as well as variants by De Vasa and Brusky.

I think that I must explain, why I consider that my game is 'better' than other major hexagonal variants. Some of the reasons may sound a little bit subjective, although I believe that they will help to finally clarify my ideas about this particular game.

I came with an initial setup, which incorporates an equal number of knights and bishops (as well as pawns and major pieces - ten against ten). Since the knight and the bishop are relatively close in their values, I believe that this ratio is important for the balance of the game, especially after exchanges.

The initial setup of my variant seems to be a little bit more 'safer' than in other variants (Especially by Shafran, and Brusky (among horizontal ones)). This safety increases the diversity of possible openings and makes this variant relatively similar to orthodox chess, while it does not imitate the original game and its setup, but provides its own harmonic array. (An interesting fact is that the number of all first possible moves is similar to orthodox chess - 20 against 20). The number of black, grey and white-colored cells is equal to each other on my board. (Shafran - 23 white and black cells, 24 grey cells. Glinski/McCooey - 30 white and black cells, 31 grey cells. Koval - 24 white, grey and black cells). Of course, it is not important when it comes to the playing properties, but it may have some impact on the actual value of the grey-colored bishop, and, at least it just was an aesthetical flaw. I believe, that any unprotected pieces (not necessarily the pawns), especially at hexagonal boards, where the major pieces are way stronger than in orthodox chess, tend to be easily attacked, and in some cases, this leads to forced defensive progressions (Like in my previous example, related to the unprotected rooks in Shafran's variant). Such games cannot be acceptable for high-level or rating play, although it still works for 'home usage' or just as an intriguing novelty. The goal of the author was not just to create something different - I wanted to create a hexagonal variant that could compete with orthodox chess.

The inequality here doesn't seem to be worse than that between Betza's classical CwDA armies, which can run up to 1.5 Pawn. An Archbishop is only about 0.75 Pawn weaker than a Queen. The KNAD is worth about 1.5 Pawn more than a Queen, but the distant moves here are all lame, which might weaken it more than that. The Griffon is the weakest of the bunch. A possible enhancement of it could be a W-then-R that turns a 90-degree corner, which has a similar move pattern, but also attacks the W squares.

Even if the strengths vary a lot, there is of course no need to play the strongest against the weakest. Or only reserve that for games between players of unequal strength, as a sort of handicap.

Note that the Betza notation used in the article (e.g. FtR) is non-standard, neither original Betza (t[F,R]) nor XBetza (FyafsF). As a consequence it is not entirely clear to me how the Lion moves. I suspect it is the compount of a King, a Xiangqi Elephant, a Xiangqi Horse and a two-path lame Dabbabah (XBetza KaFafsW).

Some additional info: the preset is automated through code generated by the Play-Test Applet, but in 'Play' mode this code appears to work fine. In particular there is no spurious declaration of game end by the Post-Game code sections. I don't know whether it is possible that the provided GAME-code would use a variable name that is also in use by Game Courier for other purposes, and confuses the system.

This post is ready for publication.

Good luck with the reading, Fergus. The trouble is that when I invite someone on any Grand Apothecary chess games, and that person accepts, the person in question receives a message that I won. So we can't play. Here are the presets in question:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+3&settings=Applet

Is this meant to be unequal armies, the usual FIDE except swapping pieces for the queen? But some of the candidates are known to be significantly weaker than the queen...how balanced can these be?

Fergus, Are you here?

Yes, I've been slacking. I'm also trying to catch up on my reading, as I am still ten books away from my reading goal of 52 books for the year, and I have less than six weeks to complete it.

Well, because of the acclamation then:

As I can understand, you assume that my game seems to be too close to other existing variants, and maybe, it cannot be counted as a fully independent variant...

Ah, sorry, no, that was not my intended message. The board shape is enough IMO to warrant publication, since it limits the sort of "flanking" that rooks and queens gain in the hexagonally-shaped board of Glinsky/McCooey.

Let me try to clarify my intent. Hexagonal cells take some extrapolation from orthochess; the majority of variants (but not all!) agree on the basics (rooks and bishops, knights), and some (Glinsky!) differ on pawns, or sometimes kings. The next major splitting point is orientation (is forward an orthogonal direction or not), but again most variants agree on that. Within the large chunk of forward-oriented diagonal-attacking-pawns variants then, the only real differences are board size/shape, setup, pawn details (initial moves and promotion zone), and castling. So, I think it's nice to clarify quickly where a variant lives: this is one of those variants, not a "quirky" one with horizontally-oriented, or "weird" or "new" piece interpretations.

I'd like to point out that he was not first in creating the game that uses these rules, and I don't fully understand why his variant is mentioned instead of Shafran's version, which stands a little bit closer to my game

That's mostly a historical bias of this site I think: Glinsky's is probably the best-known, and McCooey's was introduced here, and so now the two Recognized/Primary links for the Hexagonal category are those. Perhaps we should add Shafran's game as a Recognized/Primary variant here in the hexagonal category?

I'll also mention that I'm not so familiar with hexagonal chess hierarchies and history, so I'm happy to be corrected on anything. Just to include them here, see also CECV chapter 22 and wikipedia.

Finally, I think the various claims like "the main difference is that my variant is actually playable" need some clarification. What is it about the different shape and setup that make this playable while all other hexagonal variants are not? At some point in your last comment you mention mismatched number of pawns and pieces, but that's hardly a disqualifier for me at least. Protected pawns, good and interesting openings, etc. would be more convincing to me. And yes, all that's subjective, but I think some discussion on the page (Notes section?) would be beneficial.

OK, I added those to the list.

Some time ago I slimmed down the Quiescence Search of the diagram's AI, because in large variants with many powerful pieces it was still prone to search explosion. (It now unconditionally searches only Low x High captures that capture the last-moved piece, or punish moving away a (soft-)pinned piece; other captures need to consume part of any remaining depth budget.) Because of this diagrams that used impractically long thinking time might now perform acceptably. For instance, after this change I had no problems having the Diagram play Macadamia Shogi against Ai Ai. (But I still don't want to add Macadamia Shogi to the list, because it is not possible to enter the triple capture of the Lion Dog. Even though in practice there probably will never be an opportunity to make such a capture.)

Fergus, Are you here?

Hectochess now has a diagram with playable AI. I also made a new variant, Banner Xiangqi, which has its own playable diagram as well.

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