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I searched all over the internet for basic information on Hexagonal chess and this one website gives me more information than all other websites combined!
Wow, this is definatly one for the logisticly inclined ;) It may make your head hurt, but it's a lot of fun.
I think this version of hexagonal chess has one fatal flaw: The kind has too much mobility and is too difficult to checkmate. In FIDE chess, it is possible for force a checkmate with a king + rook against a bare king; in hexagonal chess, one needs considerably more material to checkmate a bare king.
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I think the easiest and best way to compensate for this is to have the king only able to move to a fully adjacent hex, reducing its move to that of a rook going one square. This way, the bare king can be captured by an opponent's rook and king, just like in FIDE chess.
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- Sam
This is not the only variant with a hard-to-checkmate king; the problem is widespread in 3d games as well. One solution that preserves the move extensions is to make baring the king a victory in itself, as was the case before the Queen and Bishop were introduced to square chess.
Sergei Korchitsky, Byelorussian International Grand Master and vice-president of the IHCF, has a <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/'>site</A> with 20 <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/exercises.php'>problems</A>, more than 200 <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/debut.php'>games</A> played in four tournaments between 1994 and 1998, nearly half of which start with 1. Ndf4 (the moves are in English), and a few other pages in Russian covering <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/rules.php'>rules</A> (stating that a Bishop is worth 3 Pawns, a Knight 4, a Rook 8 and a Queen 16), <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/strateg.php'>strategy</A> (3 images), <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/taktik.php'>tactics</A> (28 images) and <A
href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/ends.php'>endgames</A> (10 images).
I had no idea. Great page and very informative. I think I will try this variant of the month.
Creative! It will probably take hours and hours, or days, or months to reach checkmate (if it's reachable at all!) since there's so much space on the board and I'm not sure if I'd want to play this more than once, but I'd love to have something like Hexagonal Chess as a decoration! Love the idea!
ZRF with a nice graphics can be downloaded from my homepage. ZRF is by J. Mark Thompson and Ivan A Derzhanski, graphics created by me.
By the way, Alfred Pfeiffer found a nice way how to implement Glinski's standard notation in ZRF. One can simply use 'translate' command to give the cells desired coordinates: (translate ('g2' 'g1') ('g3' 'g2') ... ). I updated ZRF on my homepage (see my previous comment) with these changes.
Over three years ago, I pointed out that this game is probably too drawish, based on looking at the game mechanics (the king is too hard to checkmate). I'm not surprised that both games of Glinski's Hexagonal Chess played on the game courier server ended in draws.
My Russian isn't good enough to look at all of the games played in tournaments on the Russian page, so I can't get a sense of the draw percentage there, but I will bet you it's a lot bigger than the corresponding FIDE Chess draw percentage. Here are three ways to make this game less drawish:
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Six games have been played on Game Courier, and only two have ended in draws.
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