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My next thought was that since the bishop wazir is said to be in the same class as the rook, it could add a bit of symmetry.
Your reference to knight-guards / centaurs made me think I should add those, but I've been wondering lately: To what class do they belong? The same as rook-ferz and archbishop?
Here is a thought: Enhanced Chess
Okay, so there is more power on this board than our departure point, but it is power that is more equally distributed.
According to Betza (at least at one time -- his values have varied), a Crowned Knight (Knight + Mann) is worth two Knights (the same as a Cardinal) on an 8x8 board. Because it is a short range piece, it might be worth less on a larger board. On the other hand, it is very powerful in the endgame.
R-N-Dragon Horse-B-Dragon King-K-B-Centaur-N-R is Capablanca's Chess with three piece substitutions. Dragon Horse moves like Bishop or Wazir - called a 'General' in Mir Chess 32 and Midgard Chess. Dragon King moves like Rook or Ferz - called a 'Crowned Rook' in The Duke of Rutland's Chess. Centaur (Crowned Knight) moves like Knight or Ferz or Wazir.
I am thinking of [R+P] value for the Dragon Horse and Centaur on 80 squares and [R+P+P] value for the Dragon King (also the Archbishop).
EDIT: 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Ke2 Qe4 is a FIDE checkmate that also works if the Queens are replaced by Dragon Kings.
- A crowned bishop is worth about a pawn more than a rook: 6 pawns.
- A crowned knight has the same value: 6 pawns.
- A crowned rook is worth somewhat more, probably about as much as an archbishop: 7.5 pawns
- In total, 19.5 pawns of force for these three pieces
Now, it would be nice if Greg added the ability for black and white to value pieces differently in ChessV, so that we could more fully test the values of pieces.
I wonder if there is some other way of enhancing the rook, knight, and bishop to give us even less force on the 10x8 board than the 'crowned piece' enhancment. One idea: A non-capturing king's move. Or, if that doesn't give the pieces enough power to make the game have interesting tactics, A non-capturing camel's move.
If we simply have another rook, knight, and bishop, that adds 11 pawns of power to the board. The weakest usable enhancment I can think of is a non-capturing leap one or two squares forward. This makes the enhanced bishop non-colorbound, and allows the enhanced rook to more quickly get in to play, and makes the enhanced knight a little more mobile.
Before finishing off, some quick random thoughts:
- They have just recently solved 8x8 checkers (Look up Chinook). How long will it take to solve Chess?
- 3d printers will very soon go from costing $100,000 to costing about $10,000. This will make it possible to somewhat affordably make custom Chess variant pieces without having to have an arts and crafts project.
- FIDE chess: 47.50/4.14/48.35
- Janus Chess: 50.32/2.19/47.47
- Embassy chess: 50.36/2.26/47.37
- Grand chess: 50.07/2.68/47.23
- Capablanca random chess: 50.84/3.07/46.07
Is 'crowned chess' closer to this ideal then FIDE chess or Capa chess? I have no idea. The only way to find out is via computer and other testing.
I can also make the argument that my Capa setup, Schoolbook, is closer to 50/0/50 than other Capa variants, since having the powerful pieces in the corner and harder to develop and having the area around the king well defended may lower White's advantage.
- Sam
I don't know exactly what is going on at BrainKing but I would refrain from using their limited stats without reservation to draw firm conclusions. The first-move-of-the-game advantage for white in Chess by a few percent is well-documented via various, numerous reputable sources. I suspect that a minority of individuals there are experimenting- attempting, mostly without success, to devise radical yet effective opening theory gambits when playing white. Such people are unconcerned about winning the game compared to 'discovering something great' that works against all-most other Chess players. This could skew the stats by a few percent. I doubt that there is a chess genius amongst them of the caliber of Bobby Fischer. I doubt that large, radical shifts in opening theory remain to be discovered today. The win-draw-loss stats for CRC and related games seem to make sense, though. They can be used to draw tentative conclusions (with a sizeable plus-or-minus margin for error).
Do you have any ideas for an ideal opening setup for my proposed 8x10 chess variant that this thread is about? Basically, take the standard FIDE Chess pieces, and add a 'crowned rook' (Rook + non-royal King), 'crowned knight' (Knight + non-royal King), and 'crowned bishop' (Bishop + non-royal King). What is the best opening setup for this mix of pieces?
- Sam
'What is the best opening setup for this mix of pieces?' ________________________________________________________ Are you wanting every permutation for this mix of pieces or can you define a piece set by relative numbers? [The latter, I hope.] Yes, I could easily create something of similar design to the 'select CRC analysis tool' adapted to this class of games. It would only yield one to a few of the most stable positions available. It would NOT yield the most playable positions consistent with your preferences, though, unless you just happened to like what was also one of the most stable positions. Most likely, this would not be what you regard as the 'best opening setup'.
I also noted that the perfect game (for myself, at least) would both have no draws and no advantage for the first player to move.
Looking at some other games, it looks like drops helps us get closer to this ideal:
- Shogi (called 'Japanese Chess' over there): 48.63/0.98/50.37
- Chessgi (called 'Loop Chess' over there):52.38/0.49/47.11
- Minishogi:51.62/0.80/47.57
- Player #1 makes a move for white
- Player #2 chooses whether to play white or black
- The game continues normally
Another idea is to take Capablanca chess, and add the pie rule in order to neutralize white's advantage. In fact, maybe it is possible to further reduce draws by adding even more powerful pieces to the armies. Hmmm, Grand Chess with the Amazon added, and the knights augmented with an Alfil (2 squares diagonal) jump, and the pie rule may make for an interesting game.
In reply to Derek's comments that the numbers at BrainKing may not be perfect: The numbers are the best numbers I can find for win/draw/loss ratios of chess variants. While not perfect (and no numbers in the real world ever are; this is why we really can't have piece values more accurate than 0.5 pawn or so), this gives us an idea of what variants will make for a fair, competitive variant where draws are rare and neither side has an unfair advantage.
One piece of data I wish I had was good win/loss/draw data on the doublemove variants. The nice thing about doublemove variants is that we can lower White's advantage by giving him only one move for his first move.
I don't believe the BrainKing mass of games is reliable. Too many beginners. If, somehow, you could get the percentages where both players in a game are among the top ten, you would get a better estimate. As I said in an earlier thread, I don't believe the first move advantage is a flaw. I think it is the most natural thing. Incidentally, the setup I prefer for this variant is : R N B R* B* K N* B N R
Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Aug 1, 2007 03:20 AM UTC:Hi, Sam. Was away when you started this, and just now have read this topic from the beginning. I was going to offer 'Great Shatranj' as a Capa variant, but I see from your footnote in the initial post that you're not too keen on shortrange pieces: '[1] We can take this idea all of the way, and make a variant of Cherry's Capablanca Shantraj where the rook is wazir + dabbah, and the bishop is ferz + alfil, and the queen is the combination of those two pieces. However, Chess variants already have a hard enough time attracting interest without us making the movement of all the non-royal pieces different, making the game even harder to learn.' But you still like augmented knights, so how about this: make the 2 additional pieces the knight-ferz and the knight-wazir, each capturing as it moves, and each worth about a rook, and change the queen to an amazon? This would give you a rather knight-oriented army, and one that is not that powerful. Question: what pieces do you include in as chesslike enough, and which are out? Or am I misunderstanding the quote, and you really think woody rooks and modern elephants are okay as pieces in a game, but only with more standard chess[like] pieces? In other words, to cross topics a bit, if we could get them, what are the pieces you'd get values for, and what are the ones you wouldn't bother with?
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But, for people not comfortable with all of the force on a Capablanca Chess board, the question is this: How do we have a set up pieces that is 'balanced', the same way the Capablanca Chess pieces are balanced? Well, the rook, knight, and bishop make sense, since these three pieces combined cover all 24 squares one or two away from where the piece is located. [1]
So, we need some way of naturally extending the movement of the rook, knight, and bishop that doesn't put quite as much force on the board. My idea is based on ideas from Shogi and a variant available in ChessV called royal court chess.
In royal court chess, there is a piece called a 'crowned knight'. The crowned knight is a non-royal piece with both the moves of the knight and the king. This is a interesting way of improving the knight without making the rules needlessly complicated.
I proposed extending the idea of the 'crowned knight' to the rook and bishop: The 'Crowned Rook', which is a non-royal piece with the move of rook + king; and the 'crowned bishop', which has the combined moves of bishop and king. I'm not quite sure how valuable these three pieces are, but their combined value is considerably less than the combined value of the Archbishop (Knight + Bishop), Chancellor/Marshall (Rook + knight), and Queen. The crowned knight and bishop are probably each worth about a pawn more than a rook, and the crowned rook is probably about 2.5 pawns more valuable than a rook. 19.5 pawns value total; compare this to the 25 pawn value of the three combined pieces in Capablanca chess.
So, the next question is this: What is the ideal starting setup for this 'Crowned Chess' variant? There probably isn't a single ideal opening setup, but I am curious what ideas other editors have for the opening setup.
- Sam
Footnote:
[1] We can take this idea all of the way, and make a variant of Cherry's Capablanca Shantraj where the rook is wazir + dabbah, and the bishop is ferz + alfil, and the queen is the combination of those two pieces. However, Chess variants already have a hard enough time attracting interest without us making the movement of all the non-royal pieces different, making the game even harder to learn.