Comments by RichardHutnik

Which side would have an advantage: Pieces following Near Chess or normal chess rules?

Near Chess was discovered in an attempt to adapt Christian Freeling's Grand Chess to an 8x8 board.  This produced a formation where both sets of pieces shift up one row.  This was streamlined even more by dropping castling, how pawn promotion works and having king captured instead of checkmate.  Near Chess is positioned as a chess variant friendly for those who don't normally play chess.

Anyhow, out of development of Near Chess came the question about how pieces following Near Chess rules would do against those following normal chess rules.  To answer this question,  Near vs Normal Chess was created to pit pieces following Near Chess rules against those following normal chess rules.     Initially I thought the Near Chess side would have no chance.  However, it ended up initially being closer than I expected, running it on the computer and personally playing it against human opponents.

After running the game a bunch of times over Zillions, I would likely give a slight edge to the Normal side, but I am not sure. I would like people here to perhaps speculate on which side has an advantage. Let's say we follow all of normal chess rules, except the Near side changes things this way:
1. Near moves its pieces up one row.
2. Near doesn't castle.
3. Near can En Passant Normal's pawns, but due to the limited movement of Near's Pawns can't be En Passanted.

Game is won on checkmate, and like in normal chess, you can have more pieces than usual counter mix. So, the question is, which side has an advantage in your assessment?

Near's advatages are:
1. Its pawns can be defended easier early, and aren't subject to en passant. In Near vs Normal, en passant is treated as a weakness with Normal chess pawns, not as a move that normal chess pawns do distinctly. The pressure Near's pawns put on the center also restricts how Normal would develop its pieces.
2. It can't be subject to a back rank mate or fool's mate.
3. Its pawns all start one row closer, meaning more pressure across the entire board on the center.
4. Its rooks can get mobilized earlier.
5. Its Knight, Bishop and Queen can mobilize behind its and protect themselves. Normal must bring its pieces out in front of its pawns normally to mobilize them.

Near's disadvantages:
1. No castling. King stays in middle of the board.
2. Near's non-pawn pieces are a bit limited in how they mobilize. If you bring a knight out, for example, Normal can manage to push a pawn 2 spaces, threatening to capture the Knight.


So, I will ask, which side do you believe has an advantage? My take is the sides are likely close enough to be able to have skill offset any advantage, but Normal probably has a slight edge.  However, this represents play in Zillions mostly, so it is only one computer AI.

I ask this question, because if the sides are close enough, then Near vs Normal could be a variant people could play normally to mix things up, as a side game.  If one side clearly has an edge over the other, then the stronger player could take the weaker side.  Of course, there is white vs black, and perhaps that would also impact things in that maybe White Normal vs Black Near is an advantage for Near, while White Near vs Black Normal is an advantage for Normal.  I don't know, which is why I ask here.

I guess also it would answer the question of whether or not castling plus intial pawn double move is stronger than all pieces shifted up one, and an empty back rank, without castling.  

Comments are welcomed here.  I am curious to see what people might have as thoughts regarding this.

- Rich

Near Chess was discovered in an attempt to adapt Christian Freeling's Grand Chess to an 8x8 board.  This produced a formation where both sets of pieces shift up one row.  This was streamlined even more by dropping castling, how pawn promotion works and having king captured instead of checkmate.  Near Chess is positioned as a chess variant friendly for those who don't normally play chess.

Anyhow, out of development of Near Chess came the question about how pieces following Near Chess rules would do against those following normal chess rules.  To answer this question,  Near vs Normal Chess was created to pit pieces following Near Chess rules against those following normal chess rules.     Initially I thought the Near Chess side would have no chance.  However, it ended up initially being closer than I expected, running it on the computer and personally playing it against human opponents.

After running the game a bunch of times over Zillions, I would likely give a slight edge to the Normal side, but I am not sure. I would like people here to perhaps speculate on which side has an advantage. Let's say we follow all of normal chess rules, except the Near side changes things this way:
1. Near moves its pieces up one row.
2. Near doesn't castle.
3. Near can En Passant Normal's pawns, but due to the limited movement of Near's Pawns can't be En Passanted.

Game is won on checkmate, and like in normal chess, you can have more pieces than usual counter mix. So, the question is, which side has an advantage in your assessment?

Near's advatages are:
1. Its pawns can be defended easier early, and aren't subject to en passant. In Near vs Normal, en passant is treated as a weakness with Normal chess pawns, not as a move that normal chess pawns do distinctly. The pressure Near's pawns put on the center also restricts how Normal would develop its pieces.
2. It can't be subject to a back rank mate or fool's mate.
3. Its pawns all start one row closer, meaning more pressure across the entire board on the center.
4. Its rooks can get mobilized earlier.
5. Its Knight, Bishop and Queen can mobilize behind its and protect themselves. Normal must bring its pieces out in front of its pawns normally to mobilize them.

Near's disadvantages:
1. No castling. King stays in middle of the board.
2. Near's non-pawn pieces are a bit limited in how they mobilize. If you bring a knight out, for example, Normal can manage to push a pawn 2 spaces, threatening to capture the Knight.


So, I will ask, which side do you believe has an advantage? My take is the sides are likely close enough to be able to have skill offset any advantage, but Normal probably has a slight edge.  However, this represents play in Zillions mostly, so it is only one computer AI.

I ask this question, because if the sides are close enough, then Near vs Normal could be a variant people could play normally to mix things up, as a side game.  If one side clearly has an edge over the other, then the stronger player could take the weaker side.  Of course, there is white vs black, and perhaps that would also impact things in that maybe White Normal vs Black Near is an advantage for Near, while White Near vs Black Normal is an advantage for Normal.  I don't know, which is why I ask here.

I guess also it would answer the question of whether or not castling plus intial pawn double move is stronger than all pieces shifted up one, and an empty back rank, without castling.  

Comments are welcomed here.  I am curious to see what people might have as thoughts regarding this.

Played this recently, except the pawn promotion rules were opposite.  I would recommend this as a variant.  In the way that it was played recently, player have one rook (Marshall), one bishop (Cardinal) and one Queen.  When a Pawn promotes, it only promotes to a captured piece.

The version played was 2 player only.

Near vs FIDE can be found here on here as Near vs Normal:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSnearvsnormalch

I have been following this discussion a bit, am pretty confused, but think I have a few things down.  I had a few questions here regarding this entire discussion:
1. I know when they try to evaluate American football for fantasy league play, and are evaluating players, they will tend to treat the defense as a single entity.  The reason for this is that it is next to impossible to be able to tell the value of a single player in defense.  Can one argue that chess is similar?  Pieces work with one another.
2. Similar to this last question, are the value of pieces in Chess960 the same as they are in FIDE Chess?  Also, if players had free set up in the back row with their pieces, would they have the same value then?  Are rooks worth more if they start out in the middle, instead of the outside?

I ask this question, because of some things I am interested in doing here.  First, I would be interested in pitting Chess against Shogi or XiangQi in some way that would have the sides roughly equal to one another, by either point handicapping or something else.  

Secondarily, if you take a look at Near Chess, I have found that the game takes on entirely different dynamics if you move the rooks back or not.  This also relates to doing Near Chess vs Normal (FIDE Chess).  Playing the Near Chess side is a different animal than Normal Chess, and I found, even without castling, Near Chess holds its own.  For FYI, Near Chess is here:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSnearchess

(I just bring up Near Chess now, because it fits a concern I have, and it seems like the conversation).

So, in a nutshell, would anyone want to focus on the value of a set of chess variant RULES vs another one, rather than single pieces without a context they fit into?  How about a test, for example of the value of a Queen in Chess960 depending on where it starts, and which pieces are next to it?  Maybe even work out a bidding system for configurations. 

I hold out hope that this may be a reality one day, to effectively balance a range of chess variants, so a player could play with their favorite set up, against another player's set up, and it be reasonably close.

What is the URL for them being up?

And in games where both players have no pawns left on the board?  If Braves says as you state, it appears to me to turn chess in kinglet chess, where the objective is to capture all your opponent's board.  You could award people 1/8 of a point for each pawn they have left, when their opponent has no pawns left.  Kinglet chess win condition would actually be an interesting mutator to apply sometime.  Actually the variations on extinction chess where one or more pieces types are considered royal, is an interesting one.  In these games, I would suggest scoring = how many of those piece a player has left divided by number of those pieces on the board, as an interesting mutator. One could even integrate King capture, instead of checkmate, as one of these.

For people who have objections to SETS being 'too complicated' or has other issues, may I suggest:
1. It should only be used in tournament settings.
2. It could only be used when there is a dead draw to see who actually wins the game.  You could also take the sum of all draws, in event a multi-game match ends in a complete draw, and go with the player who scored the most.
3. I suggest people propose other weighting or explaining why the conditions I laid out should be dropped as not being valid?
4. What I describe is detailed, because these are all the potential draw conditions that are in chess currently.  Also, it looks to the original win conditions in Shatranj to get them also.  Again, I would ask people to not throw out the baby with the bathwater here, but propose tweaks or propose your own approach that is like this.  

I would also like to speak out to people who say, 'Well, if a game had just better rules for play, we would have less draws!'  Why shouldn't the chess variant community look towards draw conditions of a very draw-prone game, and effectively evaluate it?  If people don't want to do this (find it too complicated), then how about you have 3 judges that treat each game like a round, and they subjectively award points based on their experience for who won?  At the end of the multi-game match, the player with the most points wins.  Count a checkmate as 10 points and so on, or even 20.

If you want to streamline Braves further, you can make it be so that a player wins a minor victory seen in Kinglet chess, that being the first player to have all their pawns eliminated loses the game.  This should streamline the rules even more than normal.  So, a player who thinks they can't win by checkmate, can end the game by capturing enemy pawns.

You could also count up the differences between pawns on sides and award 1/8 point for each pawn you have left.  If you happen to end up eliminating all of your opponent's pawns, and you have 3 pawns left, you are given 3/8 points.

My take on the value of the pieces is for the following purposes:
1. If you want to do a universal build your own army variant, this allow you to see if the sides would be balanced.
2. When pitting one side against another, if the sides are unbalanced, this system should allow a balancing in points for handicapping reasons of the forces.

I believe spaces attacked are a subset of spaces a piece can move onto.

Hereclitian-Calvinball is coming to my mind here again.  The question again
I will ask is whether or not these set rules can be combined in an infinite
number of configruations

Ok, for those who think Simplified Chess takes too much out, consider Skirmish56 Chess:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSskirmish56ches

This is normal chess, outside of the pawns moving only one space forward (no initial double move).  Checkmate, regular pawn promotion, and castling are back in.  Maybe this is what Skirmish Chess actually needed to greater interest.

I found these two sites:
http://www.lutanho.net/pgn/board2fen.html
http://www.bytewings.nl/fen/

Off this thread on the SchemingMind site:
http://www.schemingmind.com/topic.aspx?topic_id=75068

They look of value to me.  The second one allows ? spaces.

Preset for Near Chess is on here now at:
/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DSimplified+Chess%26settings%3DNC1


Mr. Lewis, consider getting that link into the description above.