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Bob Greenwade wrote on Wed, Mar 20, 2024 02:31 PM UTC:

246. Cue Ball. This is another quite recent invention of mine. The name just popped into my head, and I started to wonder how I could make it work in a chess variant. Working out the XBetza for the basic form was surprisingly easy.

The text description is like this: the Cue Ball moves like a Queen, but cannot capture. Instead, it can displace any piece, friend or foe, and cause it to move Queen-like in the opposite direction, either directly or after a 45° turn. (mQpafhauibcdQ)

I would've liked to have added to the XBetza to let it do this multiple times in a cascading shot (up to 3 displaced pieces for illustrative purposes), but the code I came up with just didn't quite work right. I also wanted to be able to push a friendly piece into an enemy one to capture the latter, but again it didn't quite work right in practice.

I'm not sure, but it might also be possible to designate certain squares as "pockets," and pushing any piece into one means that it's captured.

I like this model; it came out much better than expected. (You can't really see it from this angle, but the back of the platform and shaft has a partial sphere scooped out as if it's a hole in a pool table.)


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