Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

This topic, BN+RN, was to critique Carreran Centaur and Champion, same as Capablanca Archbishop and Chancellor, same as Cardinal and Marshall. The demonstration boards of weird positions caused by them need to be reformatted. They are still so popular that Seirawan Chess uses them on 64 the way Betza and Cohen did in 1970s Tutti-Frutti. H.G. Muller calls Centaur the best fairy piece of all because of "synergy between Bishop and Knight."

But the Chancellor and the Minister are still the most popular of variant pieces and I would ask why people can all be so wrong?

Right, I was just adding to close out the first comment that Muller holds up BN as number one fairy piece. And Seirawan thinks of them, RN and BN, as the essential expansions. They are pretty natural, or at least simple to learn, and should be in the top 15 or 20 variant pieces. You could use Duniho's Gross Chess essay to get what most of us would agree belong in the top couple dozen; I think he has about 20 piece-types explained there.

Thank-you for the reply Mr Duke.

So Mr Muller seems to agree, at least in part.  What are bizarre positions in Chess? - some of the most exciting positions I've ever seen in Chess might be considered as strange by some - Anderssen v Kieseritzky has a huge material imbalance for example, towards the end.

I once wrote on CVP about more manufacters of chess-like pieces manufacturing [more] popular fairy chess pieces. I had dug up an old Comment thread started by CVP editor Joe Joyce on the idea of using what he called Universal Pieces (i.e. an assortment of the most popular types, if I recall correctly). I was unaware webmaster Fergus Duniho wrote an article on popular types of fairy chess pieces (it seems tough to highly organize such a massive website as CVP, so that anything relevant to a topic can be brought to one's fingertips, even if one was unaware of that thing or article's existence).. Anyway, one point I made is that there is going to be some quasi-duplication of piece types if manufacturers ever do start to produce fairy chess pieces en mass. That's since some pieces go by different names, and thus different piece figurines might need to be produced for those who preferred them by a certain name. Such would be the case for the Archbishop, for example, which is also known as a Princess, etc. This is a quirk of chess variants that can be kept in mind, such as when compiling lists of popular piece types.

P.S.: Note to CVP editors: I submitted a variant I invented, for your review, about the 9th of January.

Since this is Piece topic, it is new idea to have one or few pieces that can be moved by both sides (not that it has to be "popular"). Or that could be way to introduce the greatest, most popular all-time piece Centaur(BN): start it on e4 and let both sides own it and optionally move Centaur in lieu of regular move five times a game -- a difference from Seirawan Gating. Necessarily such "Blue" BN is uncapturable but figures fully in capturing opponent and mate. Starting the immortal Blue Queen(BR) or Blue Centaur on e4 will create more a-, b-, and h-file flank-play to avoid her/him, but Pawns may still vie for the center.

I submitted a CV as Blue Queen last fall and will resubmit it in final draft. Blue Queen is the problemists' piece owned by both sides. Actually any of the 2000+ pieces could be introduced this way at central square and available to both on regular 64. This is a whole new class of pieces uncapturable, befitting prefix "Blue." For example, BLUE DABBABAH, or stronger BLUE ALIBABA, not two per team or even one per side, but one for both shared at e4, or d4 or e5 or d5.

Or Gilmanesque BLUE MIRROR WAZIR CAMEL ALTERNATOR, starting at e4, and thus moving Camel-Wazir-Camel...stopping on either type of leg -- and movable by either player (because Blue). By extension, we could carefully sprinkle very large boards with several these very best available immortal Blue pieces, not too powerful to disrupt judicious play.

(On small 8 by 8 the Blue Queen or Blue Centaur phase starts Move 11, precluding 1 e4xe7 #. Blue Centaur quick mate is 1 e4-f6 #, dis-allowed by having ten normal opening moves then up to five optional Blue moves to end.)

Designers' most popular piece is the early 17th century Centaur: Bishop+Knight. Glossing over its mythological roots, prissy 19th century started re-naming, in turn into the 20th century: Equerry, Chancellor, Minister, Archbishop as Duniho's piece article above documents.

Centaur. For board 8x10 and for the two Knight compounds, Carrera should be credited, Carrera, not grandmaster Bird or Grandmaster Capablanca. Even recently Grandmaster Seirawan, ignorant of history, emotes that apparently, after all, these fairy pieces are four hundred years old, whoa not original with him and Harper, and of course renaming them yet again. Medieval ingenuity had more commonsense than these degenerate times and modern Chess came about 500 years ago. Then the collective renaissance gemeinschaft richly-layered produces, midst art and science and empire-building Carrera's insight of logical Knight compounds with the separate Queen legs. Carrera's Centaur is invented by 1617, and in 1612 "The Tempest" has scene of chess-playing, Shakespeare's only play in the west hemisphere (Caribbean). [“O, brave new world that has such people in't!”]

The piece mix R, N, B, K, Q, P, Centaur, Champion(RN) is the only Chess form that accepts "new CV" just by re-arranging the initial array or altering Castling. As a result there are thirty or more separate inventors of slight variants in basic Carrera, counting deepened board 10x10. If you switch Coordinator and Long Leaper where they start in Ultima, it is still Ultima by Abbott. If you exchange Rococo Swapper and Immobilizer in the back rank, that is still Rococo by Howe and Aronson. But any little tweak Carrera-Bird-Capablanca (important earlier ones), then the designer claims a new CV. It has proved the most popular, Centaur especially getting wider play than Champion in CVs that at least change the other six pieces somewhat.

Using CENTAUR as widely as possible can only further popularize.

BLUE CENTAUR is on e4 to start. It is owned by both sides, cannot be captured, and does figure in capturing and checkmate normally. Player may move immortal BLUE CENTAUR up to five times in place of regular move.  No moving Blue Centaur until Move 11, but of course it blocks off the e4 square as expected the first ten moves too. This problemists' piece as uncapturable BLUE QUEEN could readily be used, but the following score describes BLUE CENTAUR on e4.

1 d4 d5 /Since e-file gets blocked, d-file is important. 2 e3 a5 / Positioning for Rook egress.  3 N-a3 b6. 4 c3 Ra8-a6 /Black Rook safe distance from Blue Centaur. 5 B-d2 B-g4 /Black wants to draw the Queen into harm's way near the Blue. 6 Qxg4 e7-e6 /White Queen cannot resist the bait taking Bishop. 7 0-0-0 h6. 8 Q-h4 Q-d7 / Both Queens jockeying away as Blue Centaur phase nears. 9 K-b1 Q-a4. 10 K-a1 K-d8.   Upcoming move 11 Blue Centaur can be moved, and six pieces are in the a-file away from e-file, achieving some safety from the Immortalist. No diagonal from e4 reaches a-file after all. Likely over 1/3 the remaining moves will be Blue Centaur, and games run fewer than 30 Moves, but it's anybody's guess. At first Blue Centaur, whichever side uses him first can only capture Pawn, since pieces have stayed clear of the reaches. White's King is particularly well-disposed on a1, which from e4 is quite a slog.

Play would be different with Blue Queen instead of Blue Centaur, to avoid Blue Queen lines of attack differently.

Popularity is more elusive to measure the greater the sample size. A plurality of mere 2% could be the number one when voting among 100 or 150 elements. Take the sample space of Baby Names past century: Names of USA excluding Canada etc.

Fairy Pieces are like baby names in having many members not regarded that differently. Mary at 2% could very well be comparable to four-centuries Centaur(BN) after a survey, that is probable #1 whether at 1 or 2 or 3% all variant pieces arrayed however the CVs widely-authored are configured for enumeration. Already #2 "Patricia" is less than 1%, 0.932%, #10 Sarah 0.593%, but #100 Kathy (perhaps less used Padwar of Jetan counterpart, for example) still a healthy 0.2%, or 1 in 500. Is high-rank Sarah popular and Kathy unpopular? Or Cannon(maybe #10 likewise) highly-regarded and #100 Padwar not, even though there is just a factor of three let's say -- to make estimate correspond to the female names such same-ranked -- in their two different usages within separately-defined CVs fully dis-ambiguated at least as to how their pieces move?