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Johnny Luken wrote on Thu, Mar 26, 2015 09:34 PM UTC:

I see a lot of larger variants here that seem to exist as "collectors items", happy to expand the piece set, yet paying little consideration towards preserving the mechanics of 8*8 chess. How many 144+ variants here can be considered even close to as well designed and playable as the core variant this website is based on?

Common problems I see;
1. slow, unreactive buildup
2. weak, attritional, short range pieces that bloat the board
3. slack, fragmented gameplay
4. sparse piece layouts

A larger variant does not have to suffer any loss of quality-it can simply be a more complex equivalent-in the same way Go on an 19*19 is unconditionally superior to Go on a 9*9.

Chess is less easily scalable than Go, but Chess 256 more or less achieves a perfect mapping to a larger board based on 3 rules.

1. conditional second step for short range pieces
2. symmetric group movement of connected pieces of like type
3. diagonal gliding

Proof of concept I believe, is that Chess 256 can perfectly emulate a regular game of chess. Fools mate and Scholars mate are both achievable in an equivalent number of moves.


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