Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Many chess variants can be found at www.gamerz.net, a web site run by
Richard Rognlie of Washington DC.

Would you mind putting each one of them to fill out the 'tbd'?  Of
course, not all of them worth putting in.  The one I propose to be
included first is doublechess which invites a real aggressive play, more
tactical than strategic like 'modern chess.'

I'll be taking over the running of the Recognized Chess Variants, and I
will soon begin a poll, which will run until the end of September, for
October's Recognized Variant of the Month. Here are the games listed in
the last poll:

Crazyhouse
Hostage Chess
Cavalier Chess
Rococo
ximeracak

Besides these, I'll add any games from the previous multivariant
tournament that are not already recognized. This amounts to one addition:

Chess on a Longer Board with a few Pieces Added

I'll add the games from the ongoing tournament after it has finished.
This will help put all the games in that tournament on a more equal
footing with each when they get added to the list. All are worthy of
consideration for the Recognized Variant of the Month given the selection
processes used to pick the games for the tournament. But I won't add any
of them until the tournament is over. Although Cavalier Chess is among the
games in the current tournament, it already made the list for Recognized
Variant candidates and was played in the previous multivariant
tournament.

Before I begin the new poll, I'll provide some time for nominations. Any
new nominations should follow the rules already given on this page. Please
make your nominations in the comments section of this page.

Thanks for clearing that up, Fergus.

I would also like to point out that Fergus did previously state that new
CVs would be added to the RCV list, but on a 'less frequent' than
monthly basis.  We're not just throwing everything we like on this list.

Your lucid explanation of responsible intents and purposes has allayed
most
of my concerns.  Thank you.

Well, I certainly agree that a select-few, new chess variants should be
able to earn inclusion upon the list of recognized chess variants.  I
should have more accurately explained that my root concern is for the
total number and their quality to be strictly protected.  I recommend
that
the select list at the CV Pages should 'fill-up' at appr. 20-40 games
maximum (in my opinion).  Thereafter, any new, worthy inclusions would
carry the prerequisite that, upon careful consideration, one of the old
games on the select list (notably, no longer quite as good comparatively)
must be dropped.  In this manner, the select list could gradually,
conscientiously evolve in a positive manner in response to modern
improvements within our gameworld.

Although I disagree with his solution, I share some of the same concern
that Derek Nalls has over the recommended variants list. In its present
form, continued expansion of the list would eventually dilute its value.
Instead of proposing to cap the list, I propose to break it down into four
tiers of recognition. These would be Classic, Vintage, Popular, and
Acclaimed. Classic would be the most exclusive tier, reserved for games
that are old, time-tested, and massively popular. In our lifetime at
least, it would be limited to Chess, Xiang Qi, and Shogi. Vintage would be
reserved for games that have remained popular well past the deaths of
their creators. Some examples of Vintage recognized variants would be
Alice Chess and Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Popular would be for
relatively recent games that have attained a high degree of popularity.
Signs of this would include being sold as a commercial variant, being
played in tournaments held by CV organizations, such as AISE or NOST, or
being played by many people on PBM sites, such as Brainking. Some examples
of Popular recognized variants would be Gothic Chess, Ultima, and Smess.
Finally, Acclaimed would be used for relatively recent games that have not
attained such a high degree of popularity but which have at least won some
critical acclaim and general approval among members of this site. Some
examples of Acclaimed recognized variants would be Crazy 38's and
Wildebeest Chess.

By dividing the recognized variants into graduated tiers, we would
preserve the distinction of being a recognized variant while allowing
uncapped growth of the list. The more exclusive tiers would be harder for
games to reach, and new games wouldn't even qualify for the first two
tiers. Thus, the greatest growth of the list would be in the less
pretigious tiers, and this would preserve the integrity and usefulness of
the list. Beyond this, the four-tier system would make the list more
useful by giving more guidance to people who are new to Chess variants.

After I came up with the names for the four tiers, I noticed a nice bit of
serendipity. The initials of the four tiers, listed in order of prestige,
are CVPA, which can be used as an acronym for Chess Variant Pages Awards.
Thus, with the addition of the four-tier division of the recognized
variants, it might be fitting to rename this endeavor the Chess Variant
Pages Awards.

For now, I will ask for discussion of the merits of this plan and for
opinions on how the current recognized variants should be classified.

In going through the list of recognized variants, I noticed that some games
made the list for reasons of historical interest rather than because they
were popular or well-regarded. For example, the text for Tridimensional
Chess (Star Trek) says, 'The variant of three dimensional chess as it
appears in Star Trek may not deserve a recognition for its playability.
However, it is probably the most widely known variant three dimensional
variant of chess, due to its exposure in several episodes of the popular
Star Trek science fiction television series.' If the purpose of the
recognized variants list is help newcomers find games they will probably
like, it doesn't seem so useful to include mediocre games that are mainly
of historical interest. Short of editing the list myself, two solutions
come to mind. One is to create a fifth tier, which would be for games that
are mainly of historical interest. This tier might be called Noteworthy.
It might be suitable for Shatranj, Chaturanga, and Tamerlane Chess. The
other solution is to establish a procedure for weeding the list through
group consensus. It might be worthwhile to implement both solutions.

Here is a procedure I propose for weeding the list. When the members of a
tier exceed ten, hold a ranked ballot poll to completely rank the games in
the tier. One purpose for this would be to create a top ten list for the
tier, which would be displayed on this page. The other would be to
identify which game in the tier is held in lowest regard. This would be
the game that ranks at the bottom of the ranking established by the poll.
A second poll would then be held on whether to keep this game in the list.
This would be a simple 'Aye' or 'Nay' poll. If 75% or more of the
voters favored dropping the game from the list, then it would be dropped.
If there were still more than ten games in the tier, then a new poll would
be held for keeping or dropping the new lowest ranked game in the tier.
This process would repeat until the lowest ranked game had enough support
to stay or until there were only ten games left in the tier. Also, if a
game had survived this procedure the last time, or at least survived it
within the last year, and it found itself at the bottom again, it would
receive a temporary reprieve from being weeded out. The procedure would
not be used for weeding the list unless the bottom-most ranked game had
not been through this procedure the last time and had not been through it
within the past year. This is similar to Derek Nall's suggestion of
capping the list, but it allows the list to grow as long as all games in
the list are sufficiently well-regarded.

Again, comments are welcome. These are offered as suggestions, and I am
not yet saying that these are how things will be.

I think the fifth category for historically significant variants is a good
idea. Los Alamos Chess definitely belongs here because of its seminal
importance in the history of computer chess. Star Trek 3D does't belong.

The 'excellent' is for Fergus and his fine ideas for improving the
Recognized Variants list.

I think four categories are enough, and that it is unnecessary to devolve a
category to only Chess, Xiangqi and Shogi. I would suggest:
Classic: a Recognized Variant which is played by thousands of players from
several countries, either through the Internet or face-to-face, and which
has or deserves an International Federation, such as Chess, Xiangqi,
Changqi, Shogi, Glinski, Ultima, Grand Chess, probably Bughouse and
Fischer Random Chess.
Vintage: a Recognized Variant that doesn't feel like it shouldn't have
been Recognized, such as Alice Chess, Extinction Chess, Marseillais Chess,
Omega Chess, Pocket Knight Chess, CWDA and a few others.
Popular: a Variant which is played routinely on this server and is doing
well on polls, but which doesn't qualify yet for a higher rating and
whose exact rules may still be discussed, such as Anti-King Chess,
Switching Chess, Pocket Mutation Chess or Rococo and twenty or thirty
other games when there are dozens of new games on Game Courier each day.
Ancient: To save Chaturanga, Tamerlane Chess, Los Alamos Chess... and the
CVPA acronym.

I don't think the categories should be watered down as Antoine has
suggested. Let me attend to the meanings of the words I chose for the
categories. A classic is something whose popularity has survived a
considerable passage of time. It is part of the definition of classic that
its value has been time-tested. Thus, a classic variant must be old enough
to be time-tested. This would immediately rule out such recent games as
Ultima and Fischer Random Chess, whose inventors are both alive. In
general usage, vintage is roughly a synonym of classic. As with classic,
time-testedness is an essential measure of what has vintage value. I chose
to use both Classic and Vintage, because there is a huge gulf between the
popularity of the top three and the popularity of other CV's of
time-tested, enduring value. The classics are the CV's that are so
massively popular and well-regarded that they serve as the standards by
which we judge other CV's. As for the Vintage games, I consider remaining
popular past the death of the inventor an important benchmark, because
sometimes a game will be popular largely through the activity of the
inventor. When this can be ruled out, and it can be seen that a game
remains popular on its own merits, then it has passed an important test of
time-tested value. The definitions that Antoine proposes for Classic and
Vintage make no reference to the significance that age and time-testedness
have in the meanings of these words.

His proposed definition of Popular is more watered down than what I
intended. I kept it stricter than this, because I would not presume to say
that my own games are popular just because several people are playing them
on Game Courier. Also, Antoine has left out Acclaimed, yet he hasn't
watered down his definition of Popular enough to cover such already
recognized variants as Crazy 38's and Flip Chess and Flip Shogi, which
aren't being played on Game Courier at all. One of the reasons I came up
with the tiers I did was to exhaustively categorize all the games that had
already been recognized. For this purpose, it is important to distinguish
between Popular and Acclaimed.

Ancient is one of the terms I considered for the tier I suggested calling
Noteworthy. What I have against the term Ancient is that it is purely
descriptive rather than normative. The terms I have suggested are all
normative, which means that they refer to the worth or significance of the
game. The term Ancient just refers to the age. I suggested the term
Noteworthy, because it can simply mean that a game is worth taking note of
for some reason. This would typically be for a game's historical
importance, but it would leave open the option of being noteworthy for
some other reason. Noteworthy games whose significance is not strictly
historic might include games from science fiction novels, such as Jetan,
or games that break world records, such as Charles Fort's Super Chess,
which may be the largest CV anyone has ever attempted to play.

The links to 'Gothic Chess' and 'Shatranj' are dead.
All the rest work fine.

I have some more suggestions for other things CVPAF could be an acronym
for:

Chess Variant Pages Apocolypse of Fun

Chess Variant Pages Approbation File

Chess Variant Pages Appreciation Furore

With all due respect ...

I cannot yet find a *.zrf which plays 'Capablanca Random Chess' or
'FullChess' available upon major chess variant outlets such as Zillions
Of Games or The Chess Variant Pages.  [Incidentally, a *.zrf which plays
'Fischer Random Chess' is available to use as a pattern.]

Short of owning a physical board game enabling its play (which in fact
can
be purchased as a 'Gothic Chess' set), gameplayers who own the Zillions
program must have a means of conveniently experiencing this 'game which
includes many permutations'.

I would strongly recommend, however, that EVERY single,
comparatively-symmetrical permutation be thoroughly tested and analyzed
to
eliminate ALL flawed formations (including irrefutable, quick checkmates,
unstable defenses or  decisive advantages to the player with the first
move of the game [white]) as well as eliminate ALL undesirable formations
(complicated, game-specific preferences agreed to by a consensus of
knowledgeable players).

Only after all of this intensive groundwork is accomplished should the
game be released since it would be terribly inconsiderate to subject many
players to ANY worthless and undesirable permutations (which I suspect
comprise the vast majority of those theoretically available).

I wish you all of the best in your worthwhile yet formidable endeavor.

I disagree with Robert Fischer.  It is not possible to test EVERY possible
permutation, since there are tens of thousands of them.  And I think it is
totally unnecessary.  Fischer Random Chess has 960 different set-ups, and
probably, by now, all have been played at least once, but *NO* organized
effort has been made to test each and every one by high-level Chess
players for playability.  In fact, FRC doesn't even try to avoid
unprotected pawns.  Considering the number of FRC enthusiasts, I doubt
it's necessary.  Besides, as Fergus recently pointed out in a different
thread, the most common opening move in Chess is pawn to king-4, which
creates an unprotected pawn!  As long as white and black have identical
setups (mirror-symmetry, not rotational-symmertry) the game appears to be
fair.  I see no reason why Capablanca Random Chess would not be fair,
especially since Dr. Scharnagl has excluded all setups with unprotected
pawns.

Regarding Capablanca Random Chess:
Good work, Reinhard!  You have taken the concept of crossing Capablanca
Chess with Fischer randomizations and done a fantastic job of identifying
the issues that need to be addressed, such as castling and proper
notation.  I look forward to adding proper support for this game to
ChessV.

You asked how a game becomes 'recognized'.  I suspect you didn't mean
to use that word.  There are only about 30 variants that are listed as
Recognized Variants on this site, and it takes a while to become a
Recognized Variant.  What I suspect you want is to have a web page created
on this site for the game.  There are well over a thousand such games, and
it is not hard for yours to be added.  Technically, all that is required
is that you submit an e-mail to the editors.  They are very busy, though,
and they can get it up much faster if you have it already formatted into
their HTML template.  If you would like, I would be happy to take the
description you submitted, and format it properly, and submit it for you. 
I can also create a Game Courier preset for you if you like.

P.S.  Is your book on Fischer Random Chess available in English?

Sincerely,
Greg Strong

Greg, let me add some statements to the discussion here: it is essential,
like in FRC/Chess960, that the drawing of the to be played starting array
is done immediately before the game will begin. Thus possible weaknesses,
also because equally distributed on both sides, could not be used to
prepare a strategy based on unbalances. Avoiding uncovered pawns only will
exclude obviously weak points and have the players focus on a good
positional and creative play.

The FEN notation is subject to be improved. There seem to be some
incompatibilities using '0' for ten empty squares compared to a FFEN
approach. Thus I am thinking to not encode any empty squares finishing a
line (for 10x8 boards only). It seems as if that would cause less
problems.

There is already a homepage of CRC / FRC and more, see
http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachcrc_e.html and a lot pages around.

My book on Fischer Random Chess is available in German language only. And
because it is not a bestseller (9 copies have been sold in quarter 3 2004)
I doubt whether a translation into English would pay.

Reinhard Scharnagl

'It is not possible to test EVERY possible permutation since there are
tens of thousands of them.'

I have not made even a wide estimate of the number of select permutations
(with undesirable starting arrays excluded via game-specific criteria)
which would require some study to expediently determine whether or not
they are probably of decent quality.  Perhaps, Dr. Scharnagl has
calculated a firm estimate.  Even if it is not easily possible for one
person to playtest and analyze, for wild example, 10,000 select
permutations in less than 2.7 years (arbitrarily calculated at a rate of
10 per day), this is totally beside the point.

The point is that the quality of EVERY chess variant given to the public
which can legally be played must be protected.  'Bad game pollution' is
already a serious problem in the chess variant world.  If you wish to, in
effect, give the public 10,000 unique games to play, then it is your
responsibility to adequately playtest and analyze every damned one of
them.  Otherwise, please do NOT do it!  To be sure, noone has the right to
carelessly or lazily give the public a package of, in effect, 10,000 unique
games ... knowing that the vast majority of them are defective.  Hence, a
program designed to play 'Capablanca Random Chess' must NOT be capable
of loading ANY flawed starting arrays for people to waste time and
frustrate themselves playing.

I realize this entails a vast amount of work but if someone wishes to be
rightfully known as the inventor of, in effect, a couple-few thousand
unique, 'high-quality' (rather than 'low-quality') games, then this is
what they must do to earn it.

'And I think it is totally unnecessary.  Fischer Random Chess has 960
different set-ups, and probably, by now, all have been played at least
once, but *NO* organized effort has been made to test each and every one
by high-level Chess players for playability.  In fact, FRC doesn't even
try to avoid unprotected pawns.  Considering the number of FRC
enthusiasts, I doubt it's necessary.'

Popularity is no guarantee or proof of quality.  Do you also doubt that
quality is necessary?

Notwithstanding, what 'Bobby Fischer' and others have been disgracefully
derelict in doing should not be imitated.

'As long as white and black have identical setups (mirror-symmetry, not
rotational-symmertry) the game appears to be fair.  I see no reason why
Capablanca Random Chess would not be fair, especially since Dr. Scharnagl
has excluded all setups with unprotected pawns.'

Unavoidably, fairness must be proven individually for every unique game
studied as a permutation of the set.

I am very pleased to find that Dr. Scharnagl has already established rules
for determining a select list of permutations.  Perhaps, he is already far
more aware than I of what he needs to do in the future to achieve success
for his project.

George, you have completely mischaracterized the analogy I made, and your
belief that a 'devil-may-care' and 'no holds barred' attitude rules
here is completely mistaken.

The James Bond analogy has nothing to do with a loose attitude toward
quality. This analogy was given in the context of two other analogies, a
Romeo analogy and a Don Juan analogy. Each man was characterized by a
different attitude toward women, which translated into a different
attitude toward Chess variants. A Romeo sticks to one variant; a Don Juan
seeks after the perfect variant; and a Bond enjoys different variants
without trying to seek after the perfect variant. But this does not
translate into unconcern over quality. James Bond may sleep with many
women, but they are always beautiful women. I enjoy many variants, but I
prefer good variants to bad. The main thing that characterized the James
Bond attitude is the ability to appreciate quality in a diversity of
forms.

Also, when I create my own variants, I pay lots of attention to quality,
and I encourage everyone else to do the same. I normally playtest my games
against Zillions and make changes based on playtesting. And when I can't
make a game good, I avoid releasing it.

'I think what Robert and George are arguing for is: quantity with
quality.
Whereas, Fergus, Roberto and Michael are arguing for is: quality with
quantity.'

Yes, this summarizes the main argument elegantly.

When dealing with reasonably small numbers, it remains possible to
overcome the inverse relation between quantity and quality thru much hard
work (playtesting, analysis, research, theory, invention, etc).  In fact,
some [but not all] so-called prolific game inventors (usually less than
50
games) have done admirably well at maintaining quality throughout their
body of work.

Unfortunately, when dealing with astronomical, combinatoric values such
as
8!-10! or even much greater, the people who have undertaken this work
(even
though they comprehend the mathematics behind their craft) are, by their
own realistic admission, helpless to adequately playtest and analyze all
of the individual games they nonetheless encourage people to play.

At this extreme, the inverse relation between quantity and quality
becomes
inescapable and uncontrollable.  Furthermore, quality will exist at its
lowest possible average within the greatest permutative set (quantity).
A randomization of quality itself actually occurs with a maximization of
quantity.  Contrary to popular belief, a randomization of quality does
NOT
approach an average.  Instead, it approaches the lowest possible value
since the definable nature of quality involves order and structure. 
Chaos
and statistical randomization are the opposite process- inverse or
destructive to isolated existences of order and structure.  Finally, it
is
prohibitively labor-intensive to filter-out the works which are defective.

So, they must remain as hazards for gameplayers.

My final conclusion- I think it is wise to avoid this unmanageable,
permutative extreme of game invention entirely and forever.

'I think any conscientious game developer is concerned about quality.'

Yes but to varying extents.

On one's list of priorities, if quality is not #1.  Say, for example,
quality is considered important but ranks #2 with quantity ranked as #1
... in practice, quality may suffer greatly.

'I'm quite certain that he is not.'

You are correct.
I have even criticized Bobby Fischer in one message dated 2004-11-29.

I think one way we may be able to test the quality of variants is with
computer analysis.  So, if we have a shuffle variant with, say, 100,000
possible permutations, we can have the computer play itself all of those
permutations, In order to find one that is playable.  

Of course, computers play Chess differently than humans, so a computer's
idea of playability may be different than a human's.  And, computers are
generally programmed to find the best move in a given position, so
translating that to playest a game may be tricky.  

Greg Strong is much better qualified to say whether this is feasable or
not.  :-)

- Sam

It was classic, is vintage, popular, aclaimed, and various so on and so forth. As the only surving form of shogi, and as it has international tornament like support, i propose that it be in....

i have noticed, if you click on 'Recognized Chess Variants' on this page,
it takes you to a page where all the variants have a picture, and are
described etc etc.
now, with the game 'chaturanga for 4 players' there is this comment.

'Two player variants would be, in this theory, formed by unifying two
armies, replacing the second king by a different piece.'

i don't know who wrote this, but i don't think they have ever played the
game. First of all, this completely destroys the 'doublemate' game. It is
perfectly playable with 1 player taking 2 sides, and the other player
taking 2 sides, with all kings in the game. 
It would stop the fun of having one army mated, and that
player fighting to release from mate with their other army.
Secondly, how are you going to make it balanced, where are you going to
put exactly, the kings, you will have a 'king army' attacking a
'non-king' army and 'non-king' army attacking 'king-army' for one
player, (or whatever) while the 2nd player won't have the same.
it is a natural way of the game, that 'red' and 'yellow' are against
'black' and 'green', with red in bottom left hand corner, and red
moving first, game going clockwise. red naturally attacks black, (of
course can attack green, but the way the pieces are set, it is easier and
natural to attack black, mainly because of the pawns) black natural
attacks yellow, yellow attacks green and green attacks red, so this makes
the problem of just making 2 kings.
i think it must be total speculation, to say remove a king per side and
add another piece, i have played the game, with one vs one, each taking 2
sides, it plays perfectly. I have never seen anywhere written this idea.
it comes from a conditioned mind that chess is 1 vs 1, 1 king per side.
oh and btw, red should be lower left corner, yellow is top right.

Whoops, I didn't think that I shouldn't nominate it because I made the
page.  I thought that I could do so because I didn't invent the game.

As for its popularity, it was made into a Super Famicom (Japanese SNES)
game (not many CVs are besides Chess and Shogi), although the rest of your
argument sort of makes this a moot point.

Atomic Chess is popular, it is played in several live chess sites. I don't
see a reason wht it shouldn't be a recognized variant. There are even
websites about it. To name two : 

http://virtual.parkland.edu/lblackburn/Atomic/atomic.html

and : http://vagonchik.info/sigge/tipau/

http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/janus.html

I would like to recommend Makruk/Ouk Chatranj as a recognized variant.  It
has been around for centuries and is widely played in Thailand and
Cambodia.  It appears to have a similar popular status in Thailand as
Shogi does in Japan (media reports of professional games, etc.)  It is not
'obsolete,' but is still popular in some parts of the world.  If Xiangqi,
Shogi, and Janggi are recognized, I think Makruk should get a spot on the
poll.

A quick review: I don't have much time to write one, but I'll briefly
state that I find it a very subtle game with a lot of tactical plays and
nuances.  Although similar to Western/Orthodox Chess, the lack of the
powerful queen and bishops in this game provides the players with the
challenge of overcoming the wall of pawns (called bia) by tactical
manoeuvres perhaps even seemingly costly sacrifices.  The khon is a
particularly interesting piece -- it moves like the silver in Shogi, and
is generally slower than the knight (called ma), but in end game
situations it can be considerably more powerful due to its unique
movements.

Accordingly, I strongly recommend making Makruk/Ouk Chatranj a recognized
chess variant.

Hi;

I have seen an interesting variant, called though I can't find it anywhere
it is quite fun. All players are labeled on the bottom with numbers, each
unique. Every type of player is assigned a number of points it is worth,
pawns, 1, rooks 2, horses 3, bishops 4, and the king and queen are not
assigned any.
Each of the two players is given a certain number of points, perhaps five.
They then each have five cards of paper (same number as points), and
secretly 'choose' their enemy's players, writing their numbers of the
chosen players on their cards before the first piece is moved. A player may
choose to 'buy' five of their enemy's pawns, or their bishop and a pawn,
the horse and a rook, etc, to equal the amount of points they were given.
During the game the players can order their enemy's players to desert, or
refuse orders at any time, and they will then change color. Your opponent
must 'prove' he has 'bought' your player before game started by
presenting the card he wrote the number of that player on to you. You may
kill your own players on suspicion of treason, and you may kill your own
players to get out of a checkmate. This makes for an interesting game. Has
anyone else here played this? What is it called?

A favorite chess variant of mine that I've played on the Zillions of Games
software is called Alekhine Chess. Of all the chess variants that I played
on Zillions it's my favorite. You can read about it here 
http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=39

It has a non-standard board size of 8 x 14 squares and 3 non-standard
pieces. The rook/knight, bishop/knight and a queen/knight. All the other
chess pieces are used. If you wanted to play it on a standard 8 x 8 board
you could play a variant of this variant by just using one rook, knight,
bishop, bishop/knight, rook/knight and queen/knight and that way get in the
3 different pieces on a standard board. 

I recommend Alekhine Chess to anyone looking for an interesting chess
variant. May not be easy to find someone to play it with though you could
play it on the Zillions of Games software. Zillions came out years ago and
am not sure if it is compatible with Vista or Windows 7 but it is with XP
and earlier versions of Windows. Anyone looking for a way to play chess
variants against a computer might want to check out Zillions of games.

Fairy-Max should also not have any problems playing such a variant,if you configure it for it.

Superchess,as predefined in Fairy-Max, is sort of an implementation of this on an 8x8 board, where the orthodox pieces are randomly replaced by RN, BR, QN and KN.

Gives as usual good staff.
Continue providing us with new material.