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Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Jörg Knappen wrote on Fri, Apr 3, 2015 04:48 PM UTC:

With the new results on the relative strengths of the different armies, how can they be fine-tuned to the FIDE standard?

For the Nutty Knights several proposals exist (replacing the charging knight with a drunken night or with a charging moo, e.g.); but what about the other armies?

The Rookies can be weakened in two obvious ways (a) Replacing the Short rook R4 with R3 or (b) making the Woody Rook WD a non-jumping R2. I think both adjustments will have the right size of effect.

The Colorbound Clobberers are more difficult because the adjustment needed is smaller. Maybe replacing the Bede (BD) with a BzF2 (Bishop + Crooked Bishop aka Boyscout restricted to 2 moves) has the right size of effect. What would be a good name for the BzF2?

EDIT: Changing the notation from BzF2 to BzB2 suggests the nice name "Busy Beaver" for this piece.