Comments by PeterAronson

I don't think simply removing the Pawns from the FIDE array would make a good game. Consider Derek Nalls various all-rider Chess variants -- they use rather different arrays indeed. <p> Maybe something like:<b><pre>+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | r |:q:| k |:r:| |:::| |:::| +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ |:b:| n |:n:| b |:::| |:::| | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | |:::| |:::| |:::| |:::| +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ |:::| |:::| |:::| |:::| | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | |:::| |:::| |:::| |:::| +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ |:::| |:::| |:::| |:::| | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | B |:N:| N |:B:| |:::| |:::| +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ |:R:| Q |:K:| R |:::| |:::| | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+</pre></b> Of course, different pieces might work even better, such as halfling pieces or powerful but short ranged pieces, such as Half-Ducks for Rooks and FAD's for Bishops and a FAWDH for a Queen. Experimentation is certainly the key here.

There's a mistake here -- Ralph didn't want the previous page <strong>replaced</strong> by the rules page, he wanted it to reference it or be merged with it! I have a copy of the old page at work and will fix it on Monday, unless one of the other editors has a pre-modification copy. <p> Sorry Ralph!

I do seem in general to have been influenced by Parton. I share his interest in non-replacement capture; although in my case I came to Chess Variant design from a general interest in games, and have looked at many games over the years with many forms of capture. <p> But many of my games seem to owe somthing to Parton: Snark Hunt, Jumping Chess and Interweave in particular. <p> But there could be worse models.

Another fix, I'm afraid, this time for a capture by a Pawn landing on the 7th rank, and not promoting. Previously, if you did not promote, you did not actually capture, which was wrong. ZRF is now at Rev. 1.5.

I am convinced! The last paragraph of the <b>Notes and Comments</b> section now contains the suggested terminology.

Well, to damn it with faint (or dubious) praise, it seems reasonable to me, at least at first blush. <p> With forced captures and an attainment goal, the play will not be particularly Chess-like, I suspect. Not that that's a problem. <p> It has some simularities to <a href= '../diffobjective.dir/giveaway.html'>Losing Chess</a>, but only in the middle. I do wonder if the board will just become hopelessly clogged, particularly the middle board. The problem is, pieces can only be forced to move by offering them captures, and captures can only be offered <strong>on</strong> the squares you want to be able to move pieces <em>off</em> of. <p> Perhaps some form of capture other than elevation is required for the outer boards, such as <a href='../difftaking.dir/circe.html'>Circean</a> capture where captured pieces are returned to their starting square.

<h4>CV Descriptions as Literature</h4> Ralph Betza recently complimented on how my page on <A HREF='../other.dir/ruddigore-chess.html'>Ruddigore Chess</A> was written. This led me to think about Ralph's excellent pages for <A HREF='../other.dir/nemoroth.html'>The Game of Nemoroth</A>, and wonder: can an Chess variant's description also be a work of literature? <P> (Let me note that in my view, literature comes in a quite a large range of quality, and piece of writing does not have to be to the standards of F. Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce to qualify. The fast and loose definition I'm going to use here is that literature is writing of at least reasonable quality, intended to be pleasurable or moving to read. (The intelligentsia may now commence my immolation.)) <P> A possibly analogous situation. One of my two degrees is in geography, and of course I was educated in its history. Until the late 19th Century, Geography (with the exception of Cartography and related disciplines) was primarily a descriptive science, and could be and was looked at as a variety of literature -- the literature of place. A piece of geographic writing was judged almost as much by the quality of its writing as the correctness and completeness of its facts. <p> Chess variants as described in these pages are a combination of rules and description, of algorithm and literature. While I would hardly suggest that the quality of the writing is anywhere near as important as the quality of the rules, yet sometimes the writing is very good. If you search through these pages, you will admittedly, find many bare-bones or clumsy descriptions of Chess variants. Often it is not the fault of the author, who may be laboring with a foreign language, or simply not have time or writing experience for the type of description they would like to produce. And opinions vary; as editor, I have corresponded with authors who prefered a very minimalist presentation of their designs. But still, if you wander through these pages, you will find stories and jokes and puns, references to arts and popular culture, small essays on the processes of designing and playing games, and snatches of biography and history. Sort of a literary smorgasbord. <p> Does all of this additional material add or detract from the rules that are the <I>raison d'etre</I> of the pages in the first place? Do readers like their Chess variants straight, or with a splash of story?

This is looking interesting. Have you tried it yet? If you don't have an opponent it would be easy enough to program for Zillions, given that Halflings have been figured out for ZRF. <p> In his page on <a href='../dpieces.dir/amontillado.html'>Amontillado Chess</a>, Ralph Betza speculates that a Halfling Nightrider is worth in the neighborhood of 1/2 a Queen, or approximately the value of a Halfling Queen. I don't see this as a problem with your game, mind you, but if it is correct players will have to be careful to keep in mind the new balance of power amongst the pieces. <p> I do wonder about the piece density -- 16 pieces on 64-squares do seem to rattle around a bit. I suppose you could double the back rows except for the Kings, although I'm not sure that would improve matters. <p> I'm not sure if it necessary, but if the game tends to end in draws even with the stalemate rule, you could also add victory by Bare King.

Well of course elegance is in the eye of the beholder, but that's hardly a satisfying answer, is it? <p> Why only one doubled piece? Well, the descent of Rococo is from Orthochess via Ultima, and in Orthochess of course there are three pairs of pieces, while in Ultima there are two pairs, and Rococo has one pair. It seems as piece types are added, doubled pieces are removed. <p> But that's history, not an answer. One way to look at it as is that pieces in Rococo are either <strong>paired</strong> or <strong>doubled</strong>. Here are the pairs: <p> <ul> <li>King and Chameleon. This is the weakest pairing, but does correspond roughly to Orthochess's King and Queen: the piece the must be captured and the piece that captures in the most ways.</li> <p> <li>Advancer and Withdrawer. The two mirrored capture methods, also the two capture methods borrowed from Fanorona.</li> <p> <li>Immobilizer and Swapper. The piece that stops opposing pieces from moving, and the piece that can move opposing pieces.</li> <p> </ul> This leaves the Long Leaper doubled up, as it doesn't seem to have a logical complementry partner. Can you think of one?

<blockquote> 'The only other rule I can think of is that if it's your move and the other player is already in check, you cannot capture the King but you can play any other legal move you choose' </blockquote> This also deals with the discovered check problem in multiplayer variants: that is, when player A moves a piece that was blocking player B's piece, so now player B's piece attacks player C's King, and the turn sequence is A-B-C so player C never gets a chance to move out of check before being captured.

No warrentee is provided on the following idle speculation. Any damages resulting from incorrect application of others work is not the problem of the author. <p> Since I wrote this, Ralph has revised his estimate of the value of the Crooked Bishop back down to about a Rook (see: <a href='../piececlopedia.dir/crooked-bishop-revisited.html'>The Crooked Bishop Revisted</a>). (Peter Hatch's revision, if I understand it correctly, if correct, would only make 0.04 of a Rook's difference, or about 1/5 a Pawn.) That means my estimated value for the Eaglescout is off. Using Ralph's colorbound correction number of 1.15, the value of the Eaglescout can be calculated as: <blockquote> <pre>1.15 * 4.5 + 1.5 = 6.67 Pawns</pre> or <pre>1.15 * 5.0 + 1.5 = 7.25 Pawns</pre> </blockquote> depending on what value you use for a Rook. This is roughly equivalent to the value of a Cardinal: <blockquote> <pre>1.15 * 3 + 3 = 6.45 Pawns</pre> </blockquote> (There appears to be missing 2nd correct factor for the Knight's contribution, since the Knight is no longer color switching -- surely that ought to be worth something?). Anyway, that makes the Eaglescout worth a bit more than a Cardinal, but not that much, but still noticable weaker than a Queen. However, given the Army seems strong enough or too strong, there's nothing wrong with that. <p> This downgrading of the value of the Eaglescout makes me wonder again: is the strength of the army due to the combination of the pieces, or is perhaps the value of the Left- and Right-Rhinos and maybe Crabinals higher than estimated?

Links added -- sorry about missing them the first time! And I see John actually beat me to the punch.

<h4 align=center>What's the Value of a White Elephant?</h4> Here are some thoughts on a variant I've played around with, but never finished as I was uncertain about the balance. I thought they might be of minor general interest, so here they are. <P> Sometime back, after reading the Piececlopedia article on the <a href='../piececlopedia.dir/alfil.html'>Alfil</a>, I started thinking about the other sort of Elephant piece, the one that moves like a Ferz or one step forward (fWF), found in <A HREF='../oriental.dir/burmese.html'>Sittuyin</A> (Burmese Chess) as the Elephant, in <A HREF='../oriental.dir/thai.html'>Makruk</A> (Thai Chess) as the Thon, and in <A HREF='../shogi.html'>Shogi</A> (Japanese Chess) as the Silver General. <P> It's a simple piece, but what is it worth? A <A HREF='../piececlopedia.dir/ferz.html'>Ferz</A> is generally accepted to be worth about 1/2 a Knight (balancing colorboundness with a good forward move), but how much more does that single forward move add? I'm not as scientific about these sorts of things like Ralph Betza is, but it does add a lot. First, an Elephant is not colorbound like a Ferz is, and second, its forward moves are the same as a <A HREF='../piececlopedia.dir/man.html'>Commoner's</A>. In fact, you could look at an Elephant as 5/8's of a Commoner, which is generally considered a Knight-valued piece and about which Ralph Betza says: <BLOCKQUOTE> This is a very short-range and very flexible piece that is much weaker than a Knight in the opening, very strong in the middlegame if it can occupy the center, and almost always wins against a Knight or Bishop in the endgame. </BLOCKQUOTE> Of course, an Elephant is less flexible in the endgame where the opposing pieces very well might not be in front of it. But on the other hand, it has the three most useful moves of the Commoner for the opening. So we'll assume 5/8's of a Knight is about right; roughly two Pawns. <P> The next thought I had on the subject was what if I were to combine the Alfil and the Elephant? This produced a piece that moved one or two (jumping) diagonally or one square forward. Looking at this, I realized that if I added a two square jump forward (yielding fWFfDA) , I would repeat the shape of the Elephant's move (supposedly four legs and a trunk) on a slightly larger scale. Thus was born the 'Great Elephant'. <P> Now, what's the Great Elephant's value? It attacks 10 squares on an empty board, and it is neither colorbound nor colorchanging. The simplest calculation would be a Knight and a quarter -- 3.75 Pawns. The lack of colorchanging might kick it up to as much as 4 Pawns. <P> OK, the actual variant. Thinking about Ralph Betza's game of <A HREF='../d.betza/chessvar/ghost.html'>Black Ghost</A>, where black is given a piece worth less than a Pawn to balance white's first turn advantage, I decided to give white an Elephant-based army worth a tiny bit less than black's in order to balance white's first turn advantage. <h4 align=center>White Elephant Chess</h4> The rules for <B>White Elephant Chess</B> are as for <A HREF='../ichess.html'>FIDE Chess</A>, except where stated otherwise. <P> White's Bishops are replaced by Elephants (fWF), and Knight's by Great Elephant's (fWFfDA). Black's array is the usual FIDE array. <P> Pawns may promote to any non-Pawn, non-King piece that started the game on either side (Elephant, Knight, Bishop, Great Elephant, Rook or Queen). <hr> My suspicion (backed up unreliably by Zillions) is that white might be a tad <STRONG>too</STRONG> weak. I tried adding the Alfil's move to the white Queen's to produce the Queen Elephant, but that didn't seem right, either.