Comments by Uli Schwekendiek

@Fergus Duniho

Thanks, upload worked now!

Please, I don't want to name it Bison ...

@Bn Em

I don't think that it is exactly the same concept. Different board size, different extra piece (leap), different pawns, different setup. Falcon is simply a cool name for such a piece and relates to the eastern mythology.

@H.G.Muller

Against an undeveloped position, the falcon can force a precise defense early on. For example, after 1.Fc4 black has probably only one reasonable answer: 1. ... e6. This might be ok, since there are many situations in chess where the defender has only one working defending move, but nevertheless a good (if not a winning) position. And I doubt that an early bird has real advantages except threatening fools mate.

A first move block for the falcon would be necessary for a shuffled setup comparable to Fischer-Random, since an early bird can be an instant win here, depending on the initial placements of the falcons. I built in this rule for a point symmetric setup. See https://chessxp.com/docs/rules.html.

From a developed position, an enemy falcon is pretty manageable, according to my experiences.

I took out the falcon-rook comparison from the spec and leave a proper estimation of its strength to further tests.

@Greg Strong

I didn't know that such an engine exists. That's pretty cool, I'll check it out.

@Fergus Duniho

I would like to stay with falcon. It is the most logical name for a flying piece in chess, since falcons are the birds of kings in many cultures and stand for aggressivity, dynamics and speed. Hawk or eagle would be alternatives, but they are not as precise.

Another cuddly option would be terror bird (t-bird). Could not fly and was - according to recent discoveries - probably plant eater. Like the bison.

@Bn Em

Dukes spec/patent settles clearly for a 8x10 board, a non-leaping falcon and a rnbfqkfbnr setup. He mentioned a 10x10 board as one of a bunch of variation possibilities, probably to broaden the claim his patent covered, along with chinese pawns and the giraffe piece. But that's not a spec. That's simply numbering a list of items. Or to put it another way: You can't list a number of chords and claim copyright for every song that's written with this chords.

A commonality of both specs is to minimize the necessary rule adjustments compared to classical chess and to extend the b, n, r line with the next logical piece. However, in both cases he came to different conclusions than I did.

Btw, https://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/bison.html tells us that the bison was used as early as 1974.

@Fergus Duniho

Thank you very much for approving my submission.

I admit the name collision is not an ideal situation. While working on this project, it occurred to me that naming is the hardest part, not programming or figuring out the rules. Regardless of whether you are looking for a domain name, a game name or a piece name, the obvious and even the most non-obvious solutions are already taken.

As you and @Bn Em already pointed out, the piece naming system is partially broken. Since the Bison/leaping Falcon is an important piece for building game variants close to classical chess, this is probably a good opportunity to revise this part of the nomenclature.

I added a "buildings blocks" section to my paper where George Duke is given credit for the commonalities shared by both specs.

@Jörg Knappen

Many thanks for your suggestion, but I suspect that if this variant should ever get a community, people would not really embrace this name. too far away from first choice solutions.