Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
George Duke wrote on Wed, Aug 5, 2009 05:18 PM UTC:
I think Joyce misses some irony about Shatranj Shuffle in his good points. Frankly Shatranj is not worth playing but is of utmost historical importance. The infinite sliders, Queen and Bishop, are here to stay. That's as sure as the fact that infinite slider Rook has ALWAYS been here. When they radicalized Shatranj around 1492, they didn't go far enough. The concept of complementarity from 600 to 1492 meant Rook, Knight, Alfil and Ferz going to mutually exclusive squares. Variantists tend to waste time thinking up anything, ignoring the perfection inherent in complementarity of piece-moves. It was inappropriate to have Ferz any more once adopting full-range Bishop and Queen. 'Regina rabiosa', today's F.i.d.e. chess on 64 squares, improved Shatranj by instituting Rook, Knight and Bishop, one and all mutually exclusive, and necessarily dropping Ferz and Alfil both to the dustbin of history. Further extension of complementarity has to take a large board, such as enabling Rook, Knight, Bishop and Falcon on 8x10 like Complete Permutation shows -- or some other scientifically-chosen piece-mix on 8x12. (There are other solutions too, but Joyce-involved experimental proliferation is hopeless; and more importantly, the solutions are appearing impossible on little 64 squares anymore.) This business of ''high levels'' of Chess being exhausted flaunts the reverse reality. OrthoChess64 has lost whole generations at the lower echelon, where kids don't even know the rules of RNBKQP. Why? Because to 21st-century sensibilities of the general public, there is no more intrique in OrthoChess64 than in Shatranj.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Shatranj

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.