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Parahouse. Members-Only Shogi + Strong pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Eight-Stone Chess. Players can move neutral stones as well as pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 12:08 PM UTC:

This game is very interesting and it makes an interesting candidate for the interactive diagram. Probably the stones may be somehow implemented by holes. I'm not sure how neutral would be implemented in XBetza, though!


Cardinal. Moves as Bishop or as Knight.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 12:11 PM UTC:

Does this piece and king mate a lone king? How? Is it similar to KNB vs K? Does it work on any rectangular board?


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 02:14 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 12:11 PM:

Use the "Try it" link in the Notes section, and start playing for black to see how it is done.


Parahouse. Members-Only Shogi + Strong pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Cardinal. Moves as Bishop or as Knight.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 02:25 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 02:14 PM:

Ok, thanks. It seems chessV in Grand chess cannot do it with small variantion. It probably does it with none, though! I tried that!


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 02:36 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 02:25 PM:

For larger board sizes you can try the general Checkmating Applet, upto 16x16. That also makes it more obvious what the general method is, for driving towards the edge, and then towards the corner.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 02:42 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 02:36 PM:

I have noticed the general method. Thanks!


Checkmating Applet (3 vs 1). Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 03:13 PM UTC:

Why trying to define pieces I always get capture only pieces?!


Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 03:19 PM UTC:

It would be a very nice feature to include bent riders. The gryphon mates but I'm curious for pieces like R2 then bishop and B2 then rook. I think they are both major (WD is major to my knowledge so probably R2 is too, B2 then rook could be trickier).


Parahouse. Members-Only Shogi + Strong pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Archchess. Large chess variant from 17th century Italy. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Parker KH wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 05:05 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Fri Nov 27 2020 09:04 PM:Good ★★★★

i think so


Checkmating Applet (3 vs 1). Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 06:08 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:13 PM:

Because you press the Piece1 or Piece2 buttons only once?


Parahouse. Members-Only Shogi + Strong pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Checkmating Applet (3 vs 1). Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 07:08 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 06:08 PM:

Yes! That was it!


Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 07:11 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:19 PM:

Unfortunately it is not very easy to include the bent riders. For one, their retrograde moves are not the same as their normal moves. The current program assumes they are, and uses the same move generator for both. It would also raise the design problem for how to indicate the bent slides.

The current move-definition pane does allow you to define limited-range sliders such as R2, btw. Just define a regular Rook by clicking the W squares twice, and then for each paths click the H square to cut off the slide there. Usually the ability to jump doesn't have much use at this stage of the game; both WD and R2 can force checkmate in the same number of moves. It is just the statistics that changes a bit.

So R2-then-B can certainly force checkmate, as R2 already can. B2Z reaches a subset of the B2-then-R destinations, and it is also able to force checkmate. So I expect the B2-then-R to do it even faster, as the fact that it cannot leap directly to the Z squares should hardly hinder it.


Checkmating Applet (3 vs 1). Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 07:19 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 07:08 PM:

I see another problem. The computer moves twice!


Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 07:21 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:11 PM:

Thanks for the analysis!


Parahouse. Members-Only Shogi + Strong pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Checkmating Applet (3 vs 1). Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 07:38 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 07:19 PM:

Good catch. This problem surfaced everywhere after a change in the general Diagram script. I did fix it in most places, but apparently forgot to fix it here. It should work now.

(The reason was that this applet abuses the routine WeirdPromotion, which would be called for every move, to invoke the routine that fetches the best move from the end-game table and play it. But at some point the Diagram script started to call WeirdPromotion twice, also once to figure out whether it should allow the user to choose a piece. This to also support unexpected promotions that involve a choice. So the WeirdPromotion routine included in this applet should be more careful now, and only invoke the routine for playing a move when it has not already been done.)


Kamikaze Mortal Shogi. Send your Kamikazes on suicide missions in this Shogi variant. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 11:14 PM UTC:

Ever since I played a game with Greg that ended in an impasse, I felt this game may be too drawish, and I've sometimes considered changing the rules to fix this. The rule change I was thinking of was to forbid Kings from crossing to the other side of the board and to give them the ability to check each other from a distance, as in Eurasian Chess. However, it has come up that Shogi has its own rule for handling impasses, and there are alternatives to it.

The rule in Shogi is if each King has moved to the opponent's camp, which is the ranks the opponent's pieces start on, players may agree that an impasse has been reached and count pieces to determine the winner. Kings count for nothing, Rook and Bishops, promoted or not, each count 5, and other pieces each count 1. A player with less than 24 points loses. Because of the piece attrition in Kamikaze Mortal Shogi, it is possible that each side would have less than 24 points. So, instead, it could be played with the rule that whoever has more points wins. But I don't like this counting solution, and others don't too.

An alternative rule proposed for Shogi is called the Try rule. This involves winning by moving one's own King to the space the opponent's King began on. I don't know if this involves moving there only if it is safe or if it becomes a condition only after both Kings have crossed into the enemy camp. I would propose making it a winning condition only if both Kings have crossed into the opponent's camp and it moves there safely.

Similar to this is the Campmate rule, which allows a player to win by reaching the last rank with his King. I would propose the same conditions on it that I am proposing for the Try rule.

Another possibility for dealing with impasse is to reverse the directions that the opponent's pieces may move when the King moves into the opponent's camp. Additionally, pieces could be allowed to treat their own camp as a promotion zone when the opponent's King is there. These changes would discourage players from moving their Kings to the other side of the board without strictly forbidding it.

One more possibility is to allow Kings to check each other from a distance but to not forbid Kings from crossing to the other side. Instead, the ability of Kings to check each other from a distance would usually prevent both Kings from crossing to the other side, and if they happened to do so by having another piece between them on the same rank, this ability would provide an incentive for leaving the King more exposed.


H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, May 23, 2022 06:20 AM UTC:

My guess is that forbidding kings to face each other would not help. Exposed kings get checkmated very quickly in Shogi. So when the manage to cross it is always surrounded by a group of friendly pieces, from which they are chased out, and then again get new pieces dropped around the to survive.

I could imagine that the Kamikazes present the same problem as Pawns, when you are allowed to drop more than one of those in the same file.


Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, May 23, 2022 07:52 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Sun May 22 07:21 PM:

There is one caveat: R2 (and WD) lose their mating potential on 12x12. Adding Camel moves cures this, even up to 16x16 (the largest the Applet can do). So I have little doubt R2-then-B would have mating potential there.

For B2-then-R very large boards actually make it easier. Because from a large distance you could use the R legs as if the piece were a Rook. Even an invulnerable one, because the bare King cannot approach it. And the F step can be used to tighten the noose around the bare King. So it should be a very easy checkmate.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, May 23, 2022 08:22 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:52 AM:

Thanks once again for the insight!


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