Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.


[ Help | Earliest Comments | Latest Comments ]
[ List All Subjects of Discussion | Create New Subject of Discussion ]
[ List Earliest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]

Single Comment

[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Sep 10, 2008 06:57 PM UTC:
Dale Holmes' Salmon P. Chess has 7500 squares, and the write-up alone is
worth reading. Dale also did Taiga, a full 10,000 squares, with rules
found on the CVwiki. Sadly, the fine diagram he provided is gone, victim
of a broken link.

Why larger games? [Because I've done a nice 30x15 that I want to push?!?]
Because you can do things in them that you cannot in the small games. A
good large multi-move game allows concentrations of strength in time and
space that cannot be duplicated sequentially or on smaller boards. It
gives the opportunity for new strategies and tactics, and radically
different setups. It allows you to play games that are recognizably chess
variants, but ones that use different organizing principles to achieve
some unexpected results also. And because the game I'm working from is
scalable, it can be clearly demonstrated that there are effects that only
occur on larger scales. Besides running a 16x12 up to 24x12 and 30x15, I
also cut it down to 8x12 and 10x10. These 2 small games start each player
out with 2 moves/turn for 16 pieces/side. The 16x12 has 4 moves/turn and
32 pieces/side, the 24x12, 6 and 48, and the 30x15 8 moves per turn and 64
pieces per side. They all end in some 35-40 turns generally. The pieces in
each game are identical, with a minor difference in one game. So the
variations of strategy and tactics that occur are easily related to the
change in scale.