Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
The best way to really study the opening of a given chess variant is to have a lot of games played with said variant, and analyze how the games went. Since no chess variant has traditionally had the popularity to have enough games played to say anything meaningful about the variant’s opening, H.G.Muller suggested having a chess engine play thousands of games with a given variant to get a sense of the opening.
After some 30,000 Schoolbook games, I got two significant pieces of data from all this simulation:
- Some strong black replies to certain opening moves by white. 1. f4 c5 looks good for black, and 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nb6 looks to equalize. It was somewhat problematic to find a fully satisfying reply to 1. c4, and, indeed, 20,000 of the games were played to see how to minimize black’s problems after white makes this move; I finally settled on 1. c4 Mh6. One line of research I was not able to complete in the timeframe I allocated this project was to see if black had a reasonable reply to minimize his problems after 1. c4 e6 2. g4 (1. c4 e6 2. Bc2 f5 equalizes for black, but we can not depend on white cooperating so); I was not able to find a fully satisfying reply for black.
- Over 100 mating positions, which can be downloaded and looked at in Winboard; go to http://samiam.org/schoolbook to download them. I hope to one day make an inexpensive book with nothing but Schoolbook mating problems, a la Reinfeld’s classic 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate (without the tactical errors the original book had)
The nice thing about the technological age and the ready availability of powerful home computers (did you know that an inexpensive netbook has as much computational power as a then start-of-the-art Cray XMP from 1984?) is that we can research information that previous generations could never dream of. I would like to thank H. G. Muller for making all of the software freely available so I could do a meaningful in-depth study of a chess variant. Indeed, I have coined 1. c4 in Schoolbook the “Muller attack” since it was his software that first showed me how powerful this line is for white.
What was really written 'years ago': Carrera's Chess was written up about 1617. This one's eight-piece mix is still being debated. I guess it stood the test of time. 'Mad-Queen', now 'FIDE' or Orthodox, Chess developed about 1480. Mediaeval ingenuity had more common sense than we do today. Or, think about the heyday of Chess Variants and novelties (before these poor degenerate times): Sam Loyd (1841-1911), Henry Ernest Dudeney (1847-1930), Thomas Raynor Dawson(1889-1951). Use the hat-pin method to pick any game developed after 1950. Would Loyd or Dudeney or Dawson devote more than an hour or an evening, if that, to 99% of them? They did not need a method of exhaustion to allocate their time, because they still had standards. (Actually Dudeney is fond of looking at every possible permutation for his number puzzles.)
Touche! :-) I wrote that years ago and have forgotten the wording enough that when I reread it nowadays I keep thinking, criminy, what pompous a$$ wrote this stuff?
Each king may 'free castle' once in the game with either the nearest rook on its left side or the nearest rook on its right side. This variant idea comes from the Kibitzer web article 'Bring Back Free Castling!' by Tim Harding. Note that free castling simply switches the King and Rook, if they are adjacent at the start of play. A Pawn promotes on the last rank to a Chancellor, Queen, or Archbishop of the same color. Nothing else.
Thanks to George Duke for reminding me of The Kibitzer #31, in his 2004-09-24 comment to Grotesque Chess.
In an earlier comment, I wrote:
According to Pritchard, the Champion (R+N) goes on the King's side and the Centaur (B+N) goes on the Queen's side. He also mentions that Murray mixes the names. Since this page describes the positions of Champion and Centaur as the reverse of what Pritchard says, and given what he says about Murray mixing the names, it looks like this page gets the setup of the game wrong. It would seem that it is my Capablanca variation, not Aberg's, that has the same setup as Carrera's Chess.
I just came back to this page, because I was reading Parton's description of this game in Dasapada. Parton gives the same description as Pritchard, but I have just noticed that the King and Queen are reversed in the diagram provided on this page. The White King is to the Queen's left instead of to her right. Thus, the descriptions given by Pritchard and Parton actually do fit the diagram given here. But I think confusion has arisen from the general understanding that Queen-side means White's left and King-side means White's right. In this game, it is the reverse. It turns out that the setup shown on this page is just the mirror image of the array used for Aberg's Capablanca variation, and they are mathematically identical.
The game starts with only the pawns on the board. Each Player divides the remaining pieces into five pairs: R+R, N+N, B+B, K+Q, and C+A (using the names Chancellor and Archbishop). White begins by choosing a pair and placing them somewhere on the first rank. Black copies this placement on the eighth rank and then places another pair of pieces somewhere on the eighth rank. White copies and then places another pair. Black copies and then places another pair. White copies and then places the final pair. Black copies on the eighth rank, resulting in an opening setup with every Black piece on the same file as the corresponding White piece. No castling allowed and no need to place the rooks on either side of the King. The only special rule is: Bishops must be placed on squares of opposite color. Naturally this also means you are not allowed to fill all the available squares of one color before the Bishops have been placed. The game should be played with the modern rules for pawn movement and capturing. Promotion to Archbishop, Chancellor or Queen works perfectly. Back on August 18, I discussed the myth of underpromotion in games with this piece set - see the Comments to 'Mainzer Schach'.
I was thinking of the same thing. It would be easier to program not only for Game Courier but for Zillions too and maybe ChessV as well. I had thought I had seen a new ZRF for Aberg's, and I was hoping to download it and use it to test whether free castling gives White too great an advantage, as some people have claimed it does. But I guess it doesn't exist. I had never programmed free castling into my ZRF for Aberg's, because I didn't know it was part of the game. I was tending toward free castling, because there is already a name for it. Perhaps I shall use a half-enhanced castling and call it flexible castling. It would work like this. The King would move two or more spaces toward the Rook, and the Rook would leap over the King to the immediately adjacent space. By omitting the option of moving one space toward the Rook and moving the Rook to the King's original space, a program doesn't have to distinguish between a King's usual one-space move and a castling move, and it will remain less confusing for players to enter notation into Game Courier. It also helps to avoid making the castling move too powerful. I think one of the complaints against free castling was that it would allow the Rook to go directly to the King file. This may make castling too powerful by increasing the opportunity of using castling to check the enemy King. The flexible castling I'm suggesting won't allow the Rook to move to the King file. Here's another thing I like about flexible castling. It forces the player to make a choice between one thing he wants and another. Is it more important to move the King to a certain space or to move the Rook to a certain space? He sometimes has to give a little to get what he wants. He can't have his cake and eat it too. In contrast, free castling is basically two moves in one. I think it's best to avoid that. So, I think I will use flexible castling in Grotesque Chess. However, I'm now toying with different ideas for the opening setup. I'm going to try out some different setups with a Gothic Chess set and see which I like best.
Hmmm... I do like the idea of the Enhanced Castling presented here, but it might be a bit too powerful. How about a half-enhanced castling, in which the King can go as far as desired, but the Rook must then always be placed just on the other side? That should be a little easier to program, and I think I like the rule better, too... I don't like giving the King a free choice of any square, *and* letting the Rook pick the open file, all on the same move.
Greg, I'm going to abandon my old Capablanca variation, since it is nothing more than the Carrera and Aberg setup with the same rules as Capablanca's Chess. But I am working on a new one, which you might be happy to include in ChessV when it's ready. I was inspired by some other comments you wrote recently to create a game I am calling Grotesque Chess. For the present, I will just leave this name as a riddle to be figured out. I have decided on the setup for the game, but at present, I am still debating over whether to include free castling, as Aberg's does. It seems like a nifty idea, but it will make it much harder for me to implement the rules with Game Courier. I'm going to sleep on it and see what I can come up with tomorrow.
Ohhh... Thank you for pointing this out! I will have to update ChessV to correct this. Actually, I'd like to add support for the Duniho variant, too (now that I'm aware of its existance.) Is this OK Fergus? and what are the additional rules? Thanks! Greg LATER EDIT: I had posted this before Fergus had posted his additional comment. Now I'm really confused ... :)
Dear William, I consider your effort to prepare Unicode support for Fairy Chess and chess variant pieces very laudable. The naming of the pieces, however,seems a little problematic. Personally, I prefer calling the Carrera Champion a Marshall and the Carrera Centaur a Cardinal, others call them Chancellor and Archbishop. A Champion in Omega Chess is a different beast altogether. Neutral Names, IMO, would be rook-knight and bishop-night for the naming of the positions in the code, the writer then could in the text of course use whatever name suits him. Bernhard U. Hermes
Looking at http://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/carrera.html which is the Carrera's Chess page I notice that both Queens are on a square of their own colour at the start of play. Looking at the start up position in the Java applet of http://chessvariants.com/play/erf/CarreraC.htm I notice that neither Queen is on a square of her own colour at the start of play. Does anyone by any chance have access to reproductions of any illustrations from the 1617 book please so that the matter may be determined historically please? I have recently been devising some code point and illustration pairings of Unicode code points and chess symbols. I have now added some more code points so as to include the Champion and the Centaur of Carrera's Chess. I have published these in the hope that that might lead to some Unicode compatible chess founts being produced, perhaps including the Carrera pieces. The first document is at the following address. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/chess.htm The second document is at the following address. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/chess2.htm Both documents are available from the index at the following address. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/golden.htm The index page of the webspace is as follows. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo As I am interested in typography I am interested to know what designs the 1617 book suggested for the Champion and the Centaur (if indeed any). Does anyone know please? William Overington 20 June 2002
Does anyone play Carrera's Chess please? I like the idea of playing this game simply because it is so old. I have seen the note in the older feedback which leads to mention of a 19th Century translation of his book. Does that book deal with ordinary chess or with Carrera's Chess, or both, please? Are there any documented games of Carrera's Chess please, in particular from the 17th Century? William Overington 19 June 2002 [email protected]
19 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
Errors now corrected on this page include the following: