Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Just to add a note to my previous remark on Most popular pieces:

I've just looked at Fergus's Gross Chess and a lot of the pieces do indeed include those of Western Chess, Chinese Chess and Capablanca Chess.

So we come back to these three games and their pieces once again.

Xiangqi has only one piece of interest, the Cannon, a great idea and probably the best Hopper we can think of -- along with its diagonal equivalent Vao by T.R. Dawson. The challenge of Xiangqi then comes from the sections of the board, the Palace and the division into two, not creative pieces like the Japanese were able to do for so long in large Shogis. There is less potential applicability by Chinese Chess to Western Chess, that is real Chess, than say Grande Acedrex or Carrera's or even carefully-chosen Shogi short-range pieces.  I will re-make the boards demonstrating unaesthetic positions from BN and RN not engendered by more logical Queen (and company). An argument against Carrera's two is that they do not get paired as individual types. One cannot exist without the other, and there is no way to tell which of the three pairs is best RB and RN, or RB and BN, or RN and BN. Just plugging in all three is too powerful piece-mix up to 81 squares. Here is one CV that does single out Centaur: Janus, dispensing with Champion. Janus may be more effective than Carrera's or Seirawan's or especially low-density Grand Chess, but Janus is not much better than those.

Thank-you for your interesting opinions Mr Duke.

But, if I may say, these remarks are mostly your individual opinions and some of these would not, I think, be shared by all, including myself.

The point I am making is that of popularity and I can see no other games or pieces that have made such headway on this site compared to the three games and their pieces I've mentioned.  Shogi I have no real knowledge of and so cannot comment on, but it seems (and I may be wrong) that this game is played by a large number of people but not in such a geographically wide area compared to Western or Chinese Chess.

One point I would mention with Capablanca Chess is that the large combined strength of the pieces to commence with is reduced once an exchange of the very strong pieces is made and then reduced still further once another exchange is made, so the game will often "scale down" to something resembling Chess on a larger board (but not greatly larger if 10x8), and if there are different very strong pieces left this could make for very interesting games (IMHO) and perhaps less likelihood of a draw. 

Unaesthetic positions are difficult to define since there is a saying I remember from long ago that "One man's meat is another man's poison" and so I would simply look at a position on the board from any of these three games and see what could be made of it from either side.  Sometimes there are possibilities in a game that are hard to see and the more unusual the position the more you may be able to cause your opponent to go wrong by playing unexpected moves combined with time pressure, if this can be brought about. 

There are three other basic piece compounds I find interesting and I think I first heard these mentioned a number of years ago by one of our editors - Joe Joyce, and they are the Rook, Bishop and Knight each combined with a non-royal King (or Commoner as this piece is sometimes called).  Of these the piece I personally like most is the Knight/Commoner compound and I have called this an Earl - a dangerous piece if he can get into the enemy camp; thanks to Joe for mentioning these pieces.

Anyway its past midnight in the UK and I will have to sign off for now.

By coincidence, Glenn, see Carrillo's Ajax Chess (whose comment intervenes right now) for the one CV already done

with all those  Commoner/Man compounds.

Here is an oft-forgotten but enjoyable game that uses those same type of pieces as Capablanca chess plus an amazon: Gollon's "Turkish" Great Chess I.