Comments by catugo

Hello Kevin! Is the a reason for using fast castle here? I mean both the new pieces can leap easily not being an impediment to using regular castle. Also there isn't a development on the same square problem like in waffle chess!

Agreed! But I am all for publishing piece values obtained through applying your experimental method. That and other tactical or strategic tips the author has found. For example I have observed that it is wrong to move a joker, in all my apothecary games, if there are pawns still ahead because they can move forward attacking the joker while the poor sucker cannot run, as it imitates a pawn. Conversely if there are no pawns ahead moving the joker to the center can be very fruitful as it can imitate anything making it temporarily the most powerful piece on the board.

I though at warlock for ZW because it is related to the wizard CF.

@Christine,

Thanks For including me in this discussion!

This Thread is about games that contain the joker(imitator, jester, fool) piece. The joker piece is here a piece that does not have a move of it's own but borrows the last move of the opponent. It has no other abilities (unlike the one in omega chess), not even double pawn move, en passant or promotion, ability to castle etc. .

The main problem I am facing is that with increased number of piece types (which comes naturally on larger boards) it becomes increasingly powerful. I fear it becomes game breaking. I'm stuck in designing my new games as this piece is also difficult to program (more on this later). Each of the games I am designing has a heavy cavalry piece pair and a light cavalry piece (leapers- their exact abilities are not important now), a bishop pair, a rook pair, a war wagon (as I have renamed the well known falcon), a bent rider, a leaper+slider compound, a queen and of course the royal king. What I have observed by playing against the interactive diagram is that after some pawns and minors are exchanged the joker finds rather easily a central or near central position where it seems almighty. True that the opponent has a joker, too, but it is quite often when one joker paralyzes more pieces than the other. So to me it seems that the joker inserts in the game more a random thing than a good strategy reward. I have to mention that in orthodox chess I have a 1500 rating after the recent increase. Probably stronger players will feel differently. I though of having instead of one all imitating joker to have one that has it's power updated when the enemy moves a light piece and one that has it's power updated when the opponent moves a heavy piece. But this makes a game that already has a steep learning curve into something with an even greater learning curve. I'm writing this in hope for new opinions about including joker in increasingly large games.

On the programming side of things, games that have jokers are more difficult to program. And not because it's move power is difficult to program. I was able to go myself as far, but not further. It is a piece extremely difficult to evaluate. It has been proposed here to aproximate the piece value with the average strength of the enemy pieces. But this does not do it justice. The number of enemy piece types should play a role especially in games where there are many types of piece types like in those I'm designing as mentioned above (riders, leapers, pathers, leapers+riders, bent riders etc.). Moreover chessV does not accept a joker imitating a war wagon (falcon). Some I'm stock only with the interactive diagram which is a poorer AI. I know HG works on something cooler in C++ if I'm not mistaking but this could take many months maybe years.

More I'm thinking of a 10x10 CWDA with jokers. But imitating an opponent's move does not seem like CWDA to me. So I'd go for a transferrer that trasfers the move of a fibnif to a waffle for example. All of these are reasons for why I'm contemplating to take out the joker and replace it with a more normal piece.

But I have reserves to doing that also. First as I have said above I am a merely 1500 chess player. What if introducing the joker is brilliant but I just can't see it. What I find random it is actually strategic for a better player. A NNUE program for example. Also the joker is fun and it offers many tactical possibilities.

For now the best course of action seems to me to make simulations with ChessV without a joker, say jokerless varaints of the variant. That to find out the real piece values when the joker is not involved. An then when HG's more sofisticated program becomes available, try to look at games with joker (never jokers, as many jokers also make each joker more powerful) and see if having a joker makes the games more strategic and tactical, or it makes the game feel more random.

I'll do it today!

It seems people are not that interested in this topic. I'm thinking that this is because there is not a lot of experience in games with jokers.

Anyway after a intensive series of games played against the ID these days, I have concluded that on a 10x10 board at least things are ok. What bad thing that can happed is to lose connected pawns, because then the joker is not easily trapped by just moving a pawn. So one has to protect connected pawns, especially near the king, even from sacrifices. That is actually a strategic choice on part of the attacker. I think this is actually a good thing.

So my own verdict is that on a 10x10 board the joker works.

Ok, I thought it is like in tenjiku shogi!