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

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, Aug 18, 2012 03:26 AM UTC:
Wouldn't the argument that white's advantage is due to pawn promotion
actually just boil down to my argument one step removed? Why does white
promote that much more often that black? Because white moves first...?
Still no mechanism. My argument is that the mechanism is the "infinite"
ranges on a very small board with irreversibility built into the move
structure accounts for the white win percentage, even if white's wins are
70% determined by the effects of pawn promotion. Why wouldn't/doesn't
black get exactly the same benefits from promotion as white, and thereby
block white from getting an advantage? Mobility. That's what makes the
average step so big that black cannot even out the race over the short
course. 

The arguments presented to me seem to amount to saying that the average
step is large, and tends to put most of its length into moving white toward
the goal of winning, at a 4:3 ratio when draws are dropped. The ratio could
be 5:4, but isn't likely to be as high as 3:2. I see the individual steps
more as a kind of semi-random walk in Warlord, where one or even several,
do not necessarily advance the player toward the goal in any meaningful
way. But the steps are never large with respect to board size, where in
FIDE, the available steps become larger on average over the course of the
game. Certainly, it is the case that in most FIDE games there comes a time
when the scope of the pieces is not limited to 3 or less squares in any
direction, thanks to piece densities. That nver occurs in the much larger
Warlord games.

Edit Form
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.