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Kangaroo (Newton). compound of Knight and Alfil.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jul 3, 2008 09:42 PM UTC:
The Kangaroo is yet another Knight + Short-Range leaper compound with mating potential: King + Kangaroo vs King is generally won on all boards upto 10x10 (on 12x12 it is usually draw). On 8x8, only 192 positions (out of ~250,000) are not won with white to move: when the Kangaroo is on a corner square and attacked by the bare King diagonally, and its own King is too far away for the Kangaroo to leap into its save haven.

The longest mate against perfect defense on 8x8 is 35 moves. There are 260 such positions, e.g. w:Kb1, Kangaroo a2, b:Kb3 (white to move).

Anonymous wrote on Fri, Mar 20, 2009 08:44 PM UTC:Average ★★★
Is a Kangaroo stronger than a Rook? Or just equal to it??

H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Mar 23, 2009 02:05 PM UTC:
I have not actually playtested it, but the general formula for short-range leapers (value = (30+5/8*N)*N, where N is the number of target squares and the value in centi-Pawn) predicts a value of 450, i.e. slightly below a Rook. I would expect it to be a little stronger than the Carpenter, (which also has 12 target squares) though, because it has one more foreward move, and forward moves seem to be approximately 2 times more valuable than backward or sideway moves.

Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Thu, Dec 29, 2022 09:08 PM UTC:

Do anyone know if a piece playing as King and Alfil (KA=WFA) has been ever used in chess variants?

As far for the King-Dabbaba (KD), I only know the use by Clément Begnis for Reformed Courier-Spiel who called it a "Champion". Do you know another use of the KD?


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Thu, Dec 29, 2022 10:09 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 09:08 PM:

I found a KA in "Chess on a Really Big Board" https://www.chessvariants.com/d.betza/chessvar/16x16.html

Is there any others?


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