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Bifocal Chess. A game without capture : win by checkmate with a neutral piece! (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Wed, Apr 1, 2009 11:22 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
Bishop is already promoted to get the colouration. Kannon/Kanon as ''jumping Rook'' or ''jumping Bishop'' does not mean like Ramayana powerful Buddha or Raksasha. These are neat pieces of Fourriere, the prototype Cannon/Canon of Jacks & Witches, because player has to plan which direction he wants. Neutral pieces (they all are here) are owned by both sides like Blue Queen and cannot be moved again immediately. Actually fulfilling Lavieri's no capture and no promotion, Bifocal takes some getting used to. It can open with a check, but that does not mean King has to move. When you start thinking of no-capture games, as with asymmetrical boards, 3000 thought-up CVs can mutate fast to 3000^10 and on up in variations. Any CV can be ''bifocalled'' by saying ''no capture'' and so many pieces are neutral, and they only ''capture'' upon checkmate fulfilled. So Bifocal is really another generalizable Mutator, to use Neto's term, as are switching, free castling, two-move, Betza-augmented knights, warp points, cylindrical, Altair-rank jumping and several hundred others we have, Mutators one and all. Positions e4 and e6 would highlight that Falcon is first among equals. Bishop is not strictly Bishop, and that bears on that first use of near-equivalent Bishop, Falcon, Rook and Knight, the four forces, occurred 70 years ago in Novo Chess. There the offbeat is that Knight appears later, and that Motor Unit Falcon lacks the middle movements, and that there are no long-range ''Bishops.''

Yu Ren Dong wrote on Mon, Mar 30, 2009 01:07 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
So crazyly creative a varint. It will be better if change Falcon to e6 and e4.

George Duke wrote on Tue, Jan 18, 2005 09:46 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Bifocal and my Dice-Mate Chess were both invented under the constraint that Roberto Lavieri laid down last summer for no captures. This Bifocal implementation utilizes my two favourite chess pieces, Falcon and Cannon/Canon. I wonder whether Falcon could also be worked as a variation into Fourriere's two games I played in Game Courier, Jacks and Witches highly-recommended and Pocket-Polypiece43, the latter on a larger-than-43-square board that Fourriere once speculated about.

Roberto Lavieri wrote on Mon, Aug 9, 2004 02:30 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
This game is very interesting and certainly playable. It is not easy construct a game without captures, without promotions or demotions wich can be a good game, and this is!. Enjoyable inspiration of Antoine!. Zillions is not a strong player, if you are tempted to try the ZRF implementation.

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