Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Continuing alphabetically thru the 'Large CVs', informally and
retrospectively, 'Chess on a Really Big Board' is more like Ralph Betza's
changed style by 2001-2004. Gradually Betza becomes equally interested in being
entertaining as CV analysis. Making his game rules, or piece-value
methods, clear was more of a priority in 1970's and 1980's. Never fatuous, Betza's
sarcasm always has a point and this makes another 'fun' Betza 'read'.
However, sorting out the CVs proposed from the irony becomes problematic. 
Is Betza serious or not about a 256-square board? Here he is both serious, and
he is not, about 576 squares in a Chess embodiment.  Somewhat prolix bombast and
in-your-face leave-taking come to mark Betza's last 20-30 CVP pieces(and Comments).

I didn't say your interpretation was wrong.  I was trying to imply that
the n in funny notation does not really make sense when we apply it to
hippogonal pieces (such as the knight, camel, zebra, etc.) since it does
not intrinsically imply the unblocked path a piece must take.

By 'move' in my previous comment, I meant 'the device by which a single
piece may end the turn on a square different from the one it started on.'

I'm suprised that no one else seems to have thought of a variant using an oversized board (say, 16x16, for example), with the normal 16 pieces per side, but limiting the mobility to that of a normal 8x8 board. The initial setup would be like regular chess, in the centermost 64 squares of the large board, leaving the sides and rear of each players pieces exposed, and the same distance apart as in normal chess. However, despite the extra space, each piece would be able to go no farther in any one move that 7 squares in any one direction (or, 8 squares if you count the one it starts on).

The idea is to give the feeling of meeting on an open field of battle. Some other special rules involving pawns may include allowing them to move laterally, or even backwards, etc..., and promotion would take place upon reaching the starting rank of the opposite king. Of course, this concept could easily be extrapolated to include any fairy pieces (which I don't particuarly care for, although some are interesting), and the actual board could be any size. I think maybe a 24x24 board may be a little better than 16x16, but sill with the 'normal' complement of pieces arranged traditionally in the 64 centermost squares.

Thus, with this set up, rooks could open by moving to their open side, or even backwards; or the King could take a step backwards, either straight or diagonally, etc.... The 7 square restriction would allow for a threatened opposite piece to simply move 'out-of-range', even if it is still in the path of an attacking piece. For example, a rook on c2 could check a king on c9, but the king could move out of check by simply moving to c10, and would be safe because the rook could go no farther than c9 in it's next move.

There may be other issues to work out, but I think the concept is not so far-fetched as some other variants on large boards. Enjoy! If anyone actually tries to play this game, send me some feedback please at [email protected]

Better, perhaps, would be to let the piece, except the knight, stop at the edge, before moving in or out of the territory. Then one needn't bother about move length.
/Mats

To (partially) answer Trae Moore's question, John Williams suggested a 'limited infinite chess' rule HERE in 1997.

In the section "One Set, Four Boards" the author wrote "Seems like a silly idea, but the small number of pieces means that the game won't take so many moves, and the position of the Kings means that they will never be safe -- and so there will be many short games with exciting attacks.".

You've just got to love a variant that's really big, even if you don't want to play it much. Now that there's a rules-enforcing preset courtesy of Nick, the chance of playing game(s) of it went up for me.

The text on this page says: "here is an ugly ASCII diagram of the setup" And what follows is an Interactive Diagram probably made by HGM!

The text could be corrected.

This diagram names the pieces as Dog (for FD), War Elephant (for KA), Jolly Jumper (for NCZ) but the text in the page composed by Betza is not mentioning those names. Who has chosen these names? Is it Betza or HGM?

Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on 2022-12-29 UTC

The text on this page says: "here is an ugly ASCII diagram of the setup" And what follows is an Interactive Diagram probably made by HGM!

The text could be corrected.

The project of inserting IDs also keeps the original text and (possibly ASCII) diagram, within <noscript> tags, for the benefit of users that have JavaScript switched off in their browser (so they would not be able to see the ID). In this case I overlooked that there was some text that was still on the wrong side of that noscript tag. I moved it now.

The text of this article in fact needs many corrections. For one, the brackets in the extension of the 'funny notation' he proposes show up as A instead (qAWFAqAFWA where he means to say q[WF]q[FW]). In fact he acknowledges himself that the part about notation does not belong in this article, and that he will move it away at some point. I guess he never got to do that.

Another issue is that this article doesn't describe a single variant, but gives several initial positions on boards of several sizes, which could each use an ID. For the moment I just picked the one I considered most interesting (i.e. the one involving unorthodox pieces).

And yes, I am guilty w.r.t. some of the piece names. Betza did not assign names, but for the purpose of the ASCII diagrams he did assign letters to the pieces: D for FD, J for NCZ, W for KA. So I just picked some names that matched those letters and for which I had suitable images. The NCZ is actually in the Piececlopedia under the name Buffalo, but the page about it was by Charles Gilman, and he seems to live in a parallel universe w.r.t. piece naming.

Betza's Nine-Board Chess:

Indeed, automatic scaling works! So it seems we now have a trouble-free 'instant diagrams' feature.

BTW, I could not find a 2-letter code for the Nightrider. (Which I only use here as a substitute for the Rose, which is a circular Nightrider, but for which we don't have an image yet.)

For the contrast between blue and green, I noticed that it depends very much on the viewing angle on my display: near the bottom the blue is lighter and the greed darker, and it looks pretty good. At the top, however, their brightness gets similar. If any changes are needed, perhaps the green should be made a little brighter (perserving hue, i.e. multiplying R, G and B by the same factor).

Which I only use here as a substitute for the Rose, which is a circular Nightrider, but for which we don't have an image yet

I have uploaded the Rose.

@HG: your answer is very honest but I think it is not good that you insert names for these pieces that were not explicitly given by the author of this game (Betza) nor they correspond to any previous usage. The reason you give (finding a word starting with the same letter than the one used in an ASCII diagram that has now disappeared) is too weak. I suggest that you return FD instead of Dog, NCZ instead of Jolly Jumper and KA instead of War Elephant. Maybe a note could precise that FD is aka Kirin, NCZ is aka Buffalo.

To HG: Sorry to insist, I had no answer/reaction.

I think that it is not correct to change the name of the pieces of someone else's game, even for an editor.

Here Dog/Jolly Jumper/War Elephant have not been given by Betza.

If you don't want to remove those names in this page, you should at least insert a comment explaining for the readers who has named the pieces as such.

Thx

Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on 2023-01-01 UTC

To HG: Sorry to insist, I had no answer/reaction.

I think that it is not correct to change the name of the pieces of someone else's game, even for an editor.

Here Dog/Jolly Jumper/War Elephant have not been given by Betza.

If you don't want to remove those names in this page, you should at least insert a comment explaining for the readers who has named the pieces as such.

Well, this did not have a high priority, and I have been quite busy.

Although I admit that 'Jolly Jumper' was perhaps over-doing it, some of what you say here is not so obvious. Betza's contributions to the chessvariants community have been immense. But assigning names to pieces was not really his forte. And it is not uncommon at all for CVP editors to object to publication of new submissions because of improper naming of the pieces in their variant.

In the article at hand, Betza gives the move of the pieces, and refers to them by that. He does not give names, nor images. If, for the purpose of making a better diagram, I have to assign images, why not assign names as well. Especially in cases where the pieces with that move are well known, and do have established names. Like FD = Kirin, and NJL = NCZ = Bison.

Referring to the pieces like "FD (Kirin)" doesn't make much sense in the context of the Diagram, as the Betza notation for their move is already in another column of the piece table. I also do not list the Archbishop as "BN (Archbishop)".

So I will probably change the names to Kirin and Bison (is there a commonly used name for KA?), and perhaps add the remark that the diagram calls pieces by their usual names.

Thank you HG. Don't take it bad. It is difficult to discuss as we would do f2f without being apparently aggressive, which I'm really not.

I do agree with your point on Betza's naming. But as a principle i think that if an editor modifies the page of someone else, it should be said that this modification is done by the editor and not by the author of the variant, just to let the reader knows of what is due to whom.

If you just write a remark that Betza did not name these pieces and the diagram call them by their usual names, it will be perfect I think.

Note that the NLJ(=NCZ) is not a Bison (which is CZ) but a Buffalo.

I had described this 16x16 game in my very first written book (Guide des échecs exotiques et insolites) published in 2000, and I had then called the KA a Prince-Elephant. I don't know any other use of this piece.

One Set, Four Boards 960