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Team-Mate Chess. Variant with 8 different pieces, none of which is able to checkmate a bare king on its own. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Oct 20, 2014 05:29 PM UTC:

I was indeed afraid the game would be drawish. But when I tested this in self-play with Fairy-Max, to my surprise only 26 out of 100 games ended in a draw. (When I do that with orthodox Chess, it is some 30%, but the statistical noise with only 100 games is ~5%.)

The point is that 3-vs-2 Pawnless end-games are pretty rare. Most games have the opponent clearly beaten at a stage when both sides still have one or more Pawns, and these then promote unhindered. That unfortunately means real 3-vs-1 end-games are also not that common, but of course much more common than KBNK in orthoChess, as they can happen in so many combinations.

I will certainly investigate the 3-vs-2 matter with tablebases. All pieces are fully symmetric, and the board is 8x8, so I can use the 'fairygen' EGT generator for it, which can do 5-men EGT. Only problem is that it cannot do bent sliders like the Aanca, and I would have to treat the Cobra as a plain Gnu (which in end-games usually makes no difference). My guess is that the 4 minor replacements would all succumb to a minor replacement + something stronger (Rook or Queen replacement), as KBBKN is already won.