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Shambhala chess. Maybe, it's the misterious first form of chess? Actually, most probably, not. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Daniil Frolov wrote on Fri, Apr 1, 2011 07:13 AM UTC:

Well, of course, it's most probably not the first chess, but i think that it can be roughly balanced opponent for FIDE chess in Chess with Different Armies:
Powers of pawns, bishops, knights and rooks are similar. General and advisor with special moves are better than one king (i think). And two elephants with pawns, already advanced on 3rd rank may compensate the rest value queen (correct me if i'm wrong, i know that i'm bad at counting piece values). Only promotion rules must be changed. Two variants: FIDE also promotes pawns only to captured pieces, or Shambhala chess can promote pawns to non-captured pieces (including general and advisor with special moves), while FIDE can't make new queens (elephants, maybe, but not generals and advisors).

Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Apr 2, 2011 12:41 AM UTC:

One issue I see with playing this game is the 'advisor may one time during the game move as...' rule.  Looking at the board of a game in play you have no idea.  True, castling in chess has a similar problem but it is uncommon (did the king really move and then move back to its starting square and thus lose the right to castle?)  And that castling rule is pretty kludgy anyway, although it does work and does make chess a better game.  Anyway, my point is that in chess, castling is an opening move, and if you look at a game in the opening and the king and rooks are on starting squares, you can probably castle.  Being an opening thing, castling or not generally gets resolved early, and moving pieces off starting squares and back onto them is rare and not generally advantageous.  In this game, with the Advisor leap as I'll call it, you've got to remember during the entire course of the game if you've used that ability or not and looking at the board of a game in play won't give you the slightest hint.

To make it workable, I think you have to consider it two different types of pieces - the Advisor-Who-Hasn't-Leaped and the Advisor-Who-Has-Leaped, and they'd need to be represented by different pieces.  Probably better to alter or drop the rule, in my opinion...

💡📝Daniil Frolov wrote on Sat, Apr 2, 2011 04:36 PM UTC:

Greg Strong: yes, you are right, but in games, where king can make one knight leap in any square don't use two pieces for king in it's two different states (although it's more practical).

p. s.: the fact that this page was published on 1st of April is just coincedence (or joke of editors :) ). But still i don't think that it's actually first form of chess. But anybody can make such 'historicalvariants', i just was the first (probably).

David Paulowich wrote on Wed, Apr 27, 2011 07:24 PM UTC:

Greg Strong asks: '... did the king really move and then move back to its starting square and thus lose the right to castle?'

That has created confusion in the past. Go to Tim Krabbe's website and click on the [Greatest number of castlings] for an official game where White castled twice: 10.O-O and 33.O-O-O. Most computer databases will cut off this game record before the second (illegal) castling.

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