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Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
The measurement that was used by Gabriel Vincente Maura to justify the design of his variant, Modern Chess (Ajedrez Moderno), http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/modern.html is kind of interesting. This is taken from the booklet that came with my Modern Chess set, 'Mathematical Thesis of Modern Chess', 50 p., 2nd English Edition Revised, 1974. He defines the maximum mobility of each piece as the number of squares it can move to from its best position on the board, that is: K=8, Q=27, B=13, N=8, R=14, P=2 The maximum relatve mobility for the total of each player's pieces is the sum of the maximum mobilities of all the pieces, divided by two, because there are two players. Thus: (K+Q+2B+2N+2R+8P)/2 = (8+27+26+16+28+16)2 = 60.5 He defines the maximum mobility that the chessboard offers simply as the number of squares. He wants the maximum relative mobility of the pieces (60.5) to be equal to the maximum mobility offered by the chess board (64). Since the numbers aren't equal, he declares FIDE Chess to be defective. Needless to say, for Modern Chess, with the addition of the Marshall, both numbers work out to 81. Some example calculations for other variants: 'mobility' board Grand Chess 98 100 Timur's Chess 86 112 Xiang Qi 59.5 90 Shogi(unpromoted) 45.5 81 Shogi(promoted) 75 81 I believe that this is little better than numerology, but it's still fun to play with.