Comments by JorgKnappen

First of all, the write-up of the rules is a bit too sketchy and a lot of interpretation is needed in order to bring this game to play.

Second, it is a straight and boring win for white under the following interpretation of the rules: If a piece is watched by a knight (friend or foe) it must move and this zugzwang cannot be lifted by capturing the knight unless the capturing move is also also executed by a piece forced by a knight.

The sample game starts as follows:

1. e3 e6 
2. d3 d6   The first two moves are forced. Taking double step
3. Na3 Nh6 Other black responses won't help either
4. c3 f6
5. Nb5     Now black must move the pawns on a7, c7, and d6 while
           white has three free moves. Afterwards, the knight moves
           to c7 pressuring Ra8, Ke8, e6. White has free moves again.
           Eventually white blocks a pawn and the game is over.           
           Alternatively, white can bring out its queen to checkmate the 
           black King.

A great idea and a great story together with the traces of playtesting. This makes an excellent new chessvariant.

Of course, a cooperative game can be regarded as a puzzle for one player only (fighting againts the dice), but my experience (from playing Rengo) shows that reading the partner's ideas adds another twist to a game.

A very interesting note worth reading again from time to time.

What makes me wonder here are the remarks about old shatranj and that
K+4F (same colour) should win against K+R. I tried this by hand and found no way of confirming this claim. 5 Ferzes of the same colour are a different thing: A chain of Ferzes along the long diagonal can confine the rook in one diagonal half of the board (with the help of the King and noting that it is forbidden to give permanent check in Shatranj). Then, the net of Ferzes can be tightened until the rook is caught in a net and can be taken by the King.

There is still considerable counterplay by an active defending King, and exact play is needed.

I think, the mentioned scenarioes are worth a computer analysis.

--Jörg Knappen

An excellent to this game!

Maybe the author has not read the comment below, otherwise he would have been frightened by the task he has underdone. On the other hand: Can a Spartan be frightened?

http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/chess-different-pawns.html

--JKn

References

• Index of Ralph Betza's work on piece values
• A Pawn is as Strong as the Hand that Holds It Part I
• A Pawn is as Strong as the Hand that Holds It Part II
• A Pawn is as Strong as the Hand that Holds It Part III

Unfortunately, no one seems to know the circular chess variant I have
sketched in the previous message of this thread. The board was similar to
this one:

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSknightsofthero

and the rules for going through the center were similar like in this
variant

http://www.chessvariants.org/shape.dir/globe.html

First, look at the recognised chess variants here:

http://www.chessvariants.org/rindex.html

Then, all national chess variants with a player community and some
tradition; i.e., Makruk, Sittuyin, Shatar (Mongolian Chess).

You may also look at contest-winning chess variants and contest finalists,
see here:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/mainquery.php?type=Contest&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Contests

Unfortunately, Ibis is a well established and published name for the (1,5)-leaper, see e.g., here:

http://www.dieschwalbe.de/lexikon.htm

We tacitly assume that strength can be measured by one number and that the numbers can be compared using a transitive relation like 'greater than'. However, this needs not to be true, see here for a simple game with dice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice

So here is a new chess variant challenge: Chess with nontransitive armies

Design a chess variant with different armies such that, whatever army your opponent chooses first, you can choose another army having an advantage over your opponent's army. (To avoid the first move problem assume 2 games where either army moves first once)

Charles,

I will not ask you to assign the name Ibis to the Zemel (we can live with multiple names for the same piece), but IMO you should consider giving the (1,8)-leaper another name.

Fergus,

you underestimate the strength of the fairy problemist's community very much. Fairy chess problem do not only occur in the mentioned journals (note that I posted recently a list of fairy pieces and fairy conditions hosted by Die Schwalbe); they are even included in FIDE albums (where you can earn points for becoming a chess problem grandmaster).

And there are lots of active composers for fairy problems around, they are creative with new pieces (like the Zabel pawn), and they are younger than Dawson :-)

If you are really interested in chess problems, the language of the journal is a minor issue: The diagrams speak for themselves and the conditions or special pieces use some standardised notation. The journals or problem books often have bilingual or trilingual glossaries.

I vote for the cat, alltho the other images are also good.

Great work! You should submit your package also to CTAN; 

http://www.ctan.org

there are some more chess-related TeX and LaTeX packages (and as a bonus, a Go package), but they don't handle chess variants AFAIK. (Chinese Chess is there; Shogi is missing on CTAN).

In fact, a bishop limited to 3 steps can be found in Taikyoku Shogi (The
monster version) under the name Rikishi (Wrestler). On the other hand, a
piece named Rikishi or Wrestler with different moves occurs in Tai Shogi
and Maka Dai Dai Shogi: Here it is a limited bishop who can move also one
square horizontally. In Ko Shogi, the Rikishi or Wrestler is lion mover. So
sticking to Bishop's Dog for the limited bishop is probably the best
choice.

This also gives me the opportunity to advertise Derzhanski's list again:

 http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/whos-who-on-8x8.html

The huge advantage of this list that you can actually find pieces when you
know how they move; either
by searching the move notation or by estimating their strength and scanning
the appropriate strength region.

First, an excellent to the 2 new pieces, the knave and debtor. The two are nice findings and worth the consideration of other chess variant authors as well.

It is not an excellent for the whole game, because I think board design, piece mix and rule setup don't work as well as they could. For most pieces, 10x10 is already a too large board making them slow. The standard chess bishop and queen aren't good counterparts to knave and debtor. The standard chess rules on stalemate also don't accomodate knaves and debtors well: How many of them do you need to force the checkmate of a lone king?

Knave and debtor have a strong 'shatranjian' feel; probably a very good variant is taking standard shatranj and replacing the knights with knaves and the alfils with debtors. Note that the original shatranj has only 2 alfils (where 8 are needed to cover the whole board); in the same manner shatranj with knaves and debtors has only two of each species. In shatranj, stalemate and lone king are wins, which reduces the number of draws.