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Fighting Kings. The King has switched places with the King Pawn - The King is now a fighting piece. And the pawn must be protected. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, Oct 21, 2006 12:12 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
This situation is certainly to be expected, and will happen more and more.
The total number of chess variants is in the thousands now, and can only
go up. In the short time I've been aware of and active in chess variants,
I've seen my ideas pop up in other games, and others have seen my games
reflect their ideas; all without any previous knowledge on the part of
whomever was 2nd [or 3rd...], so we might as well get used to it. 
As for the royal pawn idea, Jeremy's game I found very interesting - I
playtested it with him - but as he says a little gimmicky, as the RP
stayed in the line of pawns, blocking a number of pieces. Gary's version
is a better chess game; more traditional and a lot easier to figure out
just what to do in, but not a better idea. The idea in both, a royal pawn,
is an excellent one. The treatments are also good in both; Jeremy's being
much quirkier. I don't know which might be considered a better game [not
a better chess game, but a better game]; they are so different it is
difficult to compare them. Since I'm playing a game now with Gary, I have
the opportunity to see just what both are like; others should take the same
opportunity.
Enjoy.

💡📝Gary Gifford wrote on Fri, Oct 20, 2006 11:18 PM UTC:
Thanks Jeremy. Somehow I missed (or overlooked) the arrival of your Royal 
Pawns Chess. Sorry about that.  Joe Joyce and I chat a good bit and if it
were not for him I'd still be unaware of your creation. You and I
certainly had similar ideas here. I feel like I was involved in one of
those ESP experiments where person 'A' goes to a location and person
'B' tries drawing the scene.  There is a case in which 2 chess problem
composers created nearly identical problems at about the same time... each
unaware of the other's composition.

Jeremy Good wrote on Fri, Oct 20, 2006 09:59 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Gary, your game, with its castling rule, is a worthwhile improvement on Royal Pawn Chess which is more of a gimmick game. Though similar, I very much welcome it.

💡📝Gary Gifford wrote on Fri, Oct 20, 2006 09:10 PM UTC:
Yes Peter, you are correct.  And thanks for pointing that out as many who
are new to chess variants may not be aware of non-royal kings.  

This non-Royal King is also the Joe Joyce General (from his Modern Shatranj), and the piece
undoubtably lives in many games by many names (as you point out).  Joe
Joyce recently told me, 'It [the Fighting King] is exactly the same piece
as the one in your recently-posted 6 Fortresses game, ...the one in 6 F has
a feather, and the new one doesn't...'  

Please do not think I was trying to invent a new piece in these games...
I was only trying to create a chess variant that had a very slight modification which would
greatly alter the play of the game.

In regard to Royal-Pawns; I was not familiar with them from other games... 
However, as I was writing this comment Joe Joyce told me of Jeremy Goods' 'Royal Pawns Chess.'  So I just
 looked that game up, and felt a bit awkward at what I saw because my variant, though created 
independently and later, is very similar to Jeremy's.  Had I been aware of Royal Pawn Chess 
I would not have posted 'Fighting Kings.'

As a later comment: I just now looked at Bruce Zimov's Knightmate - this game has 2 non-royal
kings and a royal knight.  Very Interesting.

Peter Aronson wrote on Fri, Oct 20, 2006 06:00 PM UTC:
Non-royal Kings, AKA Commoners AKA Mann AKA Man, etc., are hardly a new piece. I suspect you could find at least a couple of dozen varients on pages that already use them without any real effort. Royal Pawns, on the other hand, while also not new, are a lot less common.

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