Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Carlos Cetina wrote on Wed, Jul 1, 2009 07:29 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I cannot less than celebrate, Charles, your choice of including the sissa in one of your game designs. Excellent!

Certainly, this piece has not been adequately explored in other chess systems. I have had the oportunity of seeing some of its peculiarities on an 8x8 board starting from the randomly positions of my Cetina Random Chess and Cetran Chess 2 proposals.

'Instead of boring the player with arcane references to complex, convoluted, and contrived theoretical jargon,...', as you just say, I would like to show here some samples of THE SISSA IN ACTION!

At the following position White to move:

White moves Sc1+ [moving path: d1-c2-c1 or d1-d2-c1 / checking path: c1-h1-c6]:

At the same time the sissa is menacing the rook by c1-c2-b3 or c1-b2-b3. Obviously if Blue moves his king, would lose his rook. Fortunately Blue has salvation by moving Rf3 that obstructs the h1-c6 diagonal, interrupting, cutting the check:

At the following position Blue to move:

In the real game Blue moved Kd5, but what would happen if he moves c4?...

... White would make Sa5+...

... moving path: b3-a4-a5 / checking path: a5-b5-c6. Notice that the sissa covers both b5 (a5-a6-b5 or a5-a4-b5) and d5 (a5-a8-d5). Blue is losing his pawn on c4, so Kc5 is unique...

But now White makes the surprising and spectacular movement Se5+!

Moving path: a5-a1-e5 / Checking path: e5-c7-c5 or e5-e7-c5 or e5-e3-c5.

The sissa covers
b5 by e5-e8-b5;
c6 by e5-d5-c6 or e5-d6-c6 and
d5 by e5-d6-d5 or e5-d4-d5 or e5-e6-d5 or e5-e4-d5.

Blue has two options: Kd6 and Kd4. If makes Kd6, obviously would lose his pawn on c4. And if he makes Kd4? Let's see it:

Then White wins the rook by moving Sd7+...

...moving path: e5-e6-d7 or e5-d6-d7 / checking path: d7-g7-d4 or d7-g4-d4. The rook is captured by d7-c7-b6 or d7-c6-b6.

Viewing these examples of what the sissa can do on an 8x8 board, we can hope reasonably that on a 10x10 its powerful will be increased greatly, overall by acting in combination with the remain venomous pieces.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Venomous

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.