Game Reviews (and other rated comments on Game pages)
The premise for tri dimensional chess set's presence on federation star ships was to teach three dimensional combat tactics, which is something the Bartmess and Meder rules patently fail to do, by blocking circumventing moves.
The rules presented here, on chess variants, are not complete and lack rules for castling but also advocate inverted attack boards, which, if nothing else, are highly impractical.
Not only were the World Tri Dimensional Chess Federation rules written by a fighter pilot, to teach three dimensional aerial combat, which is more in keeping with the original theme, they also start the king and queen in the centre files and provide the most reasonable method for castling, as the attached images demonstrate.
King's side castling
Queen's side castling
This is a great idea with those switches. Together with the twisting of the files it makes a very interesting board and game. The switches give instantly the game a dynamic tension which is enjoyable. And a very sophisticated solution that 2 squares together constitute 1 field on which there can only be 1 piece. There is no mentioning of pawn move/capture (maybe it could be helpful), but it must be implied that 'normal' forward movement and diagonal capturing are in place, that will often be first 'battle' around the switches.
What is better than 2 switches? That has to be 4 switches! The inventor, Gerd Degens, has also such a game, Chess69, which can be viewed through the link at the top, or for CVP members through the link in the comments. I will try to make a comment about it later. But I can only recommend to the editors that this game also is published properly. It is even more interesting because here the ranks are also twisted, very delightful for us fans of 'unusually shaped boards'. It already has a old post from 2003 here on CVP with a broken link in the Alphabetical Index and the Topic Index, so that will have to be displaced.
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I like the idea of this, although it seems possibly over-complicated with the momentum rules.
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One remark: can you watch Magician’s moves and make diagonal-based motion. And small Shielder’s regulation of replacing rules, but it’s not required for now.
Yeah, thank you very much!
Points are accumulating. I’ve written this in the page.
Sorry, but yellow X-es are captures!
I have an idea: you can turn Ox’s face to left in Stone Garden, as it was in my drawings, and make it different from Horizons. About Index it’s same. Please.
No, it’s not easy win, black can easily block the path of check by 1.…Be7 or 1.…Qe7 after 1.Qe2
So it’s not required to add interactive diagram for THIS variant. But if it will be in online chess resource, thank you.
Are there no promotions in this version? Where is the prince and adventitious king?
Edited. Can you publish it please?
I like the idea, but perhaps a flaw in the game would be the unprotected pawn on a7. After 1 f4 Black has few defensive options and one would never arrive at "double king-pawn openings" since after 1...f5 2 Bxa7 already would drop and exchange in addition to the pawn. Maybe as in Schoolbook chess the Chancellor and Queen need to be out on the flank and the Archbishop deployed to the center.
I cannot love Courier-Spiel, but I (heart) Shako. Revising my [2006-08-12] comment: Unicorn=10, Queen=10, Chancellor=9, Rook=5.5, Lion=5. Bishop=3.5, Knight=3, Elephant=2.75, Pawn=1 are endgame piece values (for Shako and Unicorn Great Chess) which preserve some formulas I firmly believe in, namely Q+P = R+R and Q = R+B+P and R+P = B+N. The Cannon should be worth 4 Pawns at the start of the game, but decline to half the value of a Rook in the early endgame (2.75 Pawns). I consider short range pieces to have more value than Antoine Fourrière gives them in his Comment. Even the lowly Ferz should be worth 1.5 Pawns on a 10x10 board.
I'm not quite sure whether I want to rate this Good or Excellent so I'll go with the higher rating. This is a great way to enhance weaker pieces without making them too strong. An interesting variation of this idea might be to have all the pieces except the king and queen start without their non-capturing king moves and gain them by promoting on the last two ranks.
Similar to Courier-Spiel, the game adds modern Bishops and improves the Elephants (called Couriers here). Switching the Bishops and Couriers in the initial setup will improve this game. While the b-file and h-file Pawns are now undefended, they are also no longer threatened by hostile Bishops. Jumping the Courier c1-c3 will help to shield the Pawn on (b2).
Some time before 1992, Paul V. Byway included the Ferz in Modern Courier Chess, placing RNCBFQKFBCNR on a 12x8 board. Ken Franklin also placed Alibabas in Leap Chess on 44 squares.
Back in [2018-03-04] Kevin Pacey mentioned "the pleasing possibilities of smothered ... mates". My 12x12 variant Rose Chess XII has 96 empty squares, with ten Pawns each on the 4th and 9th ranks. But Black can deliver a smothering mate with a circular Nightrider on the second move of the game. A position so amusing that it earned a diagram at the top of the rules page.
"This rule gets rid of zugzwang." More than sixty years ago I learned how to use zugzwang to win with King and Rook against the lone King. So how does Tony Berard deal with this problem? "The rooks, bishops, and knights now also move and capture like a king." Sixteen years ago I commented on Ultra Chess (by Ruggero Micheletto). Here is a question for both authors. Is the endgame King and Rook versus King and Knight even more likely to lead to a draw in your chess variants?
Here is a Fairy-Stockfish variant file that I made for the variant. Despite the E and Elephant symbol, these pieces are still princes (princE). It might not be 100% accurate, but this should be incredibly similar to the actual variant, as there are essentially no differences between promoting the princes to kings to win (by getting them directly to the last rank) or merely getting the princes to the end of the board (the last rank) to win. This variant also has defined castling rules.
[chessii:janus] startFen = rnbeqkebnr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBEQKEBNR w KQkq - 0 1 customPiece1 = e:WF pieceToCharTable = PNBRQ............E...Kpnbrq............e...k castlingKingsideFile = i castlingQueensideFile = c whiteFlag = *8 blackFlag = *1 flagPiece = e maxFile = 10 archbishop = - promotionPieceTypes = rnbq
This is meant to be used with https://fairyground.vercel.app/, and should be pasted into a file called variants.ini, before loading the variants.ini file into the website.
Hi, David! Glad to see you back! This is a nice helpmate and looks like an interesting 'little' game to play - all that power in the corners and a weak center, on a small board! The central rook is a rare feature, or was, a decade or two ago. Who's used it besides Ralph, you, and me, any idea? I don't remember it in even any semi-popular game onsite aside from what you and Ralph have done.
I played this on brainking.com many times and it is fun, even if the outcome is more dependent on luck than on skill.
This is a nice game. It seems to have a theme of rook + weaker piece compounds. I wonder why the board isn't 15x10 to make room for another knight, and have a nice 3:2 shape like Courier Chess. An alternative enhancement would be a pair of camels on d1 and k1 and a camel-rook on i1. That would make more sense of the 10 rank board.
Spartan Chess has the Warlord and the General, together worth approximately three Rooks. These are solid performers that have been used in many variants. Worth noting that pieces like the Lieutenant with additional noncapturing moves are rare. My Shatranj Kamil (64) has Elephants with noncapturing Dabbabah leaps and ArchMage Chess by Cyrus Arturas has the Prince, a Commoner with noncapturing R2 moves (no mention of Dabbabah leaps). In the diagram below, a Warlord pins a Rook against the White King - winning the piece and the game.
WHITE TO MOVE AND LOSE
Nice mixture of pieces in this variant!
edit: Also, this CV reminds me a little of Opulent Chess:
https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/opulent-chess
edit2: Two CVs that might have been inspired by TenCubed Chess (but weren't):
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Inspiring game, yet it seems the action may take a while to get going
I don't yet get how to mobilize in the opening smoothly when playing this CV, at least when I tried to do so in my first game (with White, no less). After I moved the pawn in front of my king two squares, for example, I wanted to develop my knights to my fourth rank, towards the centre, in natural fashion. Yet that would allow Black to develop his deves (camels) similarly, and then to take my knight(s) almost at will - perhaps clearly at least a slightly worse exchange for me, since my pawn structure might be compromised without sufficent compensation when I recapture, and by my valuations (though tentative) a Kt is worth more than a camel on 10x10 (maybe even by as much as a pawn).
As my game (with arx) went on, I found my gold and silver had a hard time being deployed usefully for quite some time - an issue since they can get in the way of other pieces. I also had mobilization issues with at least one of two of my bishops, especially concerning if assuming castling is desirable in general. The assassins I had a hard time valuing, but guessed one could be worth as much as a queen. Maybe the inventor intended that mobilization be slow in playing this CV, I don't know.
@arx: I've sent you a personal invite to a Sac Chess rematch, in case you missed it, and wish to play.