Ratings & Comments

[Editor's Note: This was moved from a submission page Max asked to be deleted. He had previously claimed that Shafran's Hexagonal Chess was unplayable, and H. G. Muller had asked him why.]

When you play 1.e5 in Shafran's chess, after black's response you can move your bishop to e2 and then attack both black rooks simultaneously. This leads to forced defensive progressions like b5 and h8 (the black knight won't work due to a3). It's roughly like playing 1.e4 a6 and h6 in orthodox chess. After that, you may want to move like a3 or h8, and after exchanges end up with an open vertical. Note that your rooks will be safe since the black bishop cannot attack them both at the same time. I didn't calculate the sequences where rooks will leave their positions, but I guess it would be challenging for black to keep his rook from being attacked by white minor pieces.

Mirrored response (1.e5 e6) would be devastating for black since after exchanges white queen will start destroying black by capturing on h9. You cannot respond the same way due to check sequences.

I am not a Shogi player so I cannot make any assumptions, but I guess it's more different from hexagonal chess.

Now you are overreacting. I never said nor implied that rectangular variants are a requirement. Just that as a matter of personal taste I don't like hexagonal boards very much, and as a consequence have never really studied the Shaffran's Hex Chess. So that I have no opinion on its playability. (Even though a first glance doesn't show up anything that is very different from what hundreds of other Chess variants have. There is nothing 'unplayable' about a hexagonal topology per se; it is just different.) Likewise I never implied that there is anything against larger than 8x8 rectangles even tastewise. (Even though I would probably qualify 1000x1000 as 'unplayable').

Ideas that don't work, no matter how original, are not really of interest, IMO. If they could be made to work in another context, then just present those ideas in that context. If they are really worth persuing, that should not be too difficult. There is also a large difference between small flaws, (like a slight imbalance, participation of a piece that isn't very useful, spurious rules that in practice are never invoked), and fatal ones (such as a guaranteed draw or win). And indeed, a lot of variants here suffer from minor flaws. But that cannot be an excuse for just allowing anything to pass; it means we have to be even more careful then we were in the past.

I don't think the existence of many sub-variants prove there was something wrong with any of those, though. On the contrary; their existence indicates how successful the original was. Being imitated is a complement. Many people with not too much imagination try to share success that way, and I am pretty sure that others just joined in to annoy Ed Trice. Ed's analysis on Capablanca Chess is flawed, btw: it is based on incorrect piece values (it assumes the difference between RN and BN is as much as the orthodox exchange, R vs minor). So his line that is supposed to provide a winning advantage for white in practice just leads to equality. (The open file created in the Archbishop for Chancellor exchange is enough compensation for the tiny difference in piece value.) Statistics on computer-computer games has shown that the white advantage in Capablanca Chess is not larger than in orthodox Chess.

Although I am an editor, I don't really consider it my task to referee and publish submissions; I was mainly made editor for upgrading existing articles with Interactive Diagrams. That doesn't stop me from commenting when I suspect to be a major flaw when I stumble across one, though, like any contributor can.

No one complained about anything. You are right in the statement that it is better to finish the previous ones rather than submit more, but I simply forgot about this variant. I tend to delete variants which I hadn't edited for a long period of time rather than mess around with them even if they can potentially work, since I tend to rise my own criteria. OK. I'll remove this. I have more interesting stuff to offer, but as you decline it, I'll become a good guy and will never post anything beyond 8x8.

Which one of my other submissions, except this one and Trefoil chess (I gave up on both), fails to meet any quality standard? It's extremely interesting.

Not sure what to make of "Anything that can potentially both work and being not described previously, can exist by default." It doesn't seem to apply to this website. Things that have been described previously can be described here, as long as the author properly credits prior art, and 'potentially' doesn't seem good enough.

That's why there are thousands of chess variants, and at least a quarter of them sucks. The bottleneck board is an attempt at originality, again, purely theoretical, but which can be remade in another way, but it seems that it is not encouraged. OK

My claim about Capablanca's chess is proved by the reason why there are so many RN-BN variants. It is beyond non-absurd. Ed Trice, the inventor of Gothic Chess, already described and analyzed the subject and why it is unplayable. In Shafran's chess, after the first and most obvious move, you can attack both opponents' rooks with your bishop. Aside from an array of other flaws which result from this, this is already something that sounds off.

I once promised myself not to post or sell to anyone any rectangular variants, in which I am as uninterested as you in the hexagonal ones. I made a mistake. Sorry.

Well, you brought this upon yourself by complaining that you could not submit additional chess variants because you used up your quota for unprocessed submissions. But if there are still unfinished submissions amongst those, you'd better spent your time on finishing those than on producing more of those. That people point out serious (not to say fatal) flaws should be helpful in finishing them. This is why CVP gives exposure of submissions already to general members, rather than just editors and the author himself.

Not sure what to make of "Anything that can potentially both work and being not described previously, can exist by default." It doesn't seem to apply to this website. Things that have been described previously can be described here, as long as the author properly credits prior art, and 'potentially' doesn't seem good enough. And a board with a long bottleneck only a single square wide through which most pieces could not even pass if the board were empty doesn't even deserve the qualification 'potentially'. As some other editor remarked recently, this website is not intended for dumping random ideas. To make this publishable you would have to address that in a more constructive way than adding a disclaimer that this might not be playable.

I am not very much interested in hexagonal variants, but that you claim Capablanca Chess to be 'unplayable' seems absurd. I have watched many high-level games of Capablanca Chess in the process of conducting the 'Battle of the Goths' tournament, and they were amongst the most interesting and exciting games I have ever seen. Why do you think it (or Safran'sHex Chess) is unplayable?

I agree that chess-variant inventors often highly exaggerate the quality and importance of their inventions. Editors would therefore do well to tune down any claims of the kind you are describing before publishing a submission. And there indeed is an over-abundance of variants embedding a BN and RN (and sometimes QN) piece in an orthodox set on boards of many different sizes. (Varying the board size alone would already provide an infinity of those, BTW, and you would ony have to go up to 1000x1000 or so to exceed a million...)

Too many submissions fail to meet any quality standard because they haven't been playtested even once, and have received only a minimal and sorely insufficient amount of thought. One cannot rely on peer review to fix all the flaws these have; this would catch only the most shocking ones. If someone would try to sell me a boat without a bottom, I would kindly decline the offer. But I probably would not notice if the shape of the hull was such that it is prone to capsizing in heavy wind, while this is just as lethal.

First, there are plenty of common chess variants which are actually unplayable to a bigger or smaller extent, like Shafran's hexchess, Capablanca chess, or some minor ones whose names are out of my memory.

Second, I didn't claim or post that this page is finished, which can be seen as a requirement, and I wanted to showcase the whole topic or a concept, since I tested different types of boards and found the whole concept to be playable. Anything that can potentially both work and being not described previously, can exist by default. Again, the proposed board is the most, default, basic way to represent that. It is an idea, and the description is unfinished.

There are not millions of chess variant ideas. In fact, they are limited. In a dramatic way.

Thrid, if not me, there would be someone to propose another original 8x8 modesty or something with RN and BN as new pieces and claim that it's the most revolutionary thing in the world which would solve world hunger and break the laws of thermodynamics if applied on a common level instead of orthochess. If it suits the intended way, I may step down.

And you think this website is the proper place to describe unplayable chess variants??? I am sure there are zillions of ideas we have not seen before. For most of those there is a very good reason we have not seen them before.

Moving a Pawn quickly to 7th rank would be the first thing I would do when playing against a far stronger opponent. And then protect it with as many pieces as possible. It can only be attacked by two Rooks and a Queen, after all; Bishops and Knights are trapped on their own half.

@H.G., I doubt that it's a common practice for opponents to move a single pawn several times in the opening stage. There's a disclaimer that it is not intended to be playable 'non-theoretically'. It's just an idea that I hadn't seen before, that's the most basic way to represent it.