Single Comment

I think Joyce misses some irony about Shatranj Shuffle in his good points. Frankly Shatranj is not worth playing but is of utmost historical importance. The infinite sliders, Queen and Bishop, are here to stay. That's as sure as the fact that infinite slider Rook has ALWAYS been here. When they radicalized Shatranj around 1492, they didn't go far enough. The concept of complementarity from 600 to 1492 meant Rook, Knight, Alfil and Ferz going to mutually exclusive squares. Variantists tend to waste time thinking up anything, ignoring the perfection inherent in complementarity of piece-moves. It was inappropriate to have Ferz any more once adopting full-range Bishop and Queen. 'Regina rabiosa', today's F.i.d.e. chess on 64 squares, improved Shatranj by instituting Rook, Knight and Bishop, one and all mutually exclusive, and necessarily dropping Ferz and Alfil both to the dustbin of history. Further extension of complementarity has to take a large board, such as enabling Rook, Knight, Bishop and Falcon on 8x10 like Complete Permutation shows -- or some other scientifically-chosen piece-mix on 8x12. (There are other solutions too, but Joyce-involved experimental proliferation is hopeless; and more importantly, the solutions are appearing impossible on little 64 squares anymore.) This business of ''high levels'' of Chess being exhausted flaunts the reverse reality. OrthoChess64 has lost whole generations at the lower echelon, where kids don't even know the rules of RNBKQP. Why? Because to 21st-century sensibilities of the general public, there is no more intrique in OrthoChess64 than in Shatranj.