Comments by PeterAronson

I have a slight concern that because nothing about the contest was being posted for so long, some people may have thought that the contest itself was on hold, and hence not sent in their entries. If that is the case, then it would, I think, be unfair to disallow them to submit those entries. <hr> As an aside, none of this affects me personally as I decided I've won enough contests here of late, and are only sending in non-competing entries.

You could have a version of Castlingmost Chess with captures -- when castling with a friendly piece not separated from the castling piece by friendly pieces, any opposing pieces between them are captured. You may still castle with opposing pieces, just not capture in those cases.

Ralf -- what browser were you using when your workstation crashed? I've tried this page with Netscape 4.7 on Solaris and IE 5 on Windows/NT and IE 5.5 on Windows 98 with no problems.

Actually, the inventor's <em>ISP</em> seems to be missing. Has anyone heard anything about xoom.com lately? I couldn't find any news articles claiming it had been shutdown or anything, but I could have missed them.

Having consulted the Encyclopedia of Chess variants, I think I can answer your questions: <ul><p><li> Yes, you must capture mated pieces. </li><p><li> All mated pieces are captured, in the order chosen by moving player. </li><p><li> If more pieces are mated (of either side) by the removal of mated pieces, then those pieces are captured as well. </li></ul>

Jörg? Do you agree with Ralf? It's your article, but if you want me to make the change he says is correct, I'll make it.

This is a nice idea, but the pieces you call Hobbits have been around for a while. For example, John Williams Brown called them Stewards, and used them in <a href='../large.dir/contest/cenchess.html'>Centennial Chess</a>; however, this is a nice use of them. <p> As for the 9x9 game, I notice that all four Bishops are on White. Now, some people like it like that -- consider Gabriel Maura's game of <a href='../large.dir/modern.html'>Modern Chess</a> which also has four Bishops on the same color -- but you still might want to consider something like Carlos Cetina's <a href='../varvar.dir/bcr.html'>Bishop's Conversion Rule</a>, when one Bishop has to change color on its first move.

I do like to see a good Chess variant with dice once in a while. So many variant designers and players have an attitude about anything with a random element which I suspect stems from delusions about the predictablity of the real world.

What about this situation (white to move):

   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7  |:::| P |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1  |:n:|   |:::|   |:N:|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

If white b8=Q or b8=R, then stalemate. If b8=B, then I believe there is insufficient material for mate -- thus b8=K. I'm fairly sure that K+N can mate bare N. If not, add a B at g1. Two B on the same color + N vs N is still not promising, but K+B+N vs N is surely enough!

The real problem in determining which came first, Chaturanga or Xiangqi (or more likely, the ancestors of each) that when you come down to it, historically games have not been considered important enought to be frequently mentioned in the historical record. Last I knew, we had earlier clear mentions for Chaturanga than Xiangqi, but this may not mean very much -- both games could easily have been played for centuries without making their way into a surviving document. <p> Of course, there is also the issue that with commerce between east and west, the two games could have 'co-evolved' with <em>neither</em> of them coming clearly before the other.

Valid point. However, this version of the problem, with white to move:

   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7  |:::| P |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5  |:n:|   |:::|   |:N:|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3  |:B:|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

Should do it. After b8=K, black Nb3 is forced. After white Kb7, the black N is pretty well trapped.

I have a few games to recommend, some are mine, many are not: <ul> <p> <li> <a href='../41.dir/clash/clashrules.html'>Clash of Command</a> by Peter Strob. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../diffmove.dir/chosen-chess.html'>Chosen Chess</a> by Gianni Cottogni. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../41.dir/fastlane.html'>Chess in the Fast Lane</a> by Francois Tremblay. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../32turn.dir/wormhole.html'>Wormhole Chess</a> by Fergus Duniho. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../other.dir/chessonlongboard.html'>Chess on a Longer Board with a Few Pieces Added</a> by David Howe. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../diffmove.dir/augmented.html'>Augmented Chess</a> by Ralph Betza. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../diffmove.dir/golem-chess.html'>Golem Chess</a> by Peter Aronson and Ben Good. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../other.dir/rococo.html'>Rococo</a> by Peter Aronson and David Howe. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../diffmove.dir/separate-realms.html'>Separate Realms</a> by Mike Nelson and Peter Aronson. </li> <p> <li> <a href='../other.dir/ruddigore-chess.html'>Ruddigore Chess</a> By Peter Aronson. </li> </ul> <p> And that's 10, but I easily could add another 10, but that would be excessive.

Glenn, what's your rev of Zillions, and what operating system are you running on? I had problems with the ZRF earlier, but they were fixed by not combining self-capture and add-partial in the same move. <p> As for not repeating the board position, I'm only checking for the simple case of undoing a previous neutral move -- Zillions isn't capable of anything else, unfortunately (but then, human players are pretty limited there too). Actually, I just noticed a slight error in the neutral move code that if your opponent captures with a Dust Demon, it won't let you move the Dust Demon back to its previous square right away. That I can fix.

I will note that figuring out what pieces are worth in a variant in the first place is often a thornier issue than trying to manipulate Zillions into having the values you want. That's why I have never attempted to tune the values in Interweave or Rococo.

Nicely fluidly weird. Normally leapers greater than maybe (3,0) or (2,1) don't work on a board this size, but with <strong>everything</strong> but the King/General and Pawns/Sergeants leaping, this isn't the usual problem. <p> One thing I noticed is that it is very common for Pegasi to be exchanged, which is unfortunate as they are interesting pieces. It might be nice to treat them as like Lions in Chu Shogi (or Golems in Golem Chess, which borrowed the idea from Chu Shogi) and not let them be exchanged easily.

OK, it simply flatly blows up in Windows XP, then I have something I can tell the Zillions people. I hope they have an XP box in-house!