Comments by DougChatham

Larry,<br> Technically, there are other ways to win. For example, your opponent could resign, run out of time, or be declared the loser by the arbiter.

Is there a way to restrict access so that *only* the Piececlopedia editor (currently Fergus) can post Piececlopedia pages? If that's not possible, then how about an official policy restricting Piececlopedia entries to pieces used in Recognized Chess Variants?

Has anyone come up with <i>De</i>moters (for example, a piece that can only capture Pawns and demotes anything else it could capture in ordinary chess)? This strikes me as a way to get a chess army weaker than that described in Betza's <a href='http://www.chessvariants.org/diffmove.dir/feeble.html'>Weakest Chess</a>. I don't know yet if such a game would be playable, though.

It might be a good idea to read Wikipedia's <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_Votes_for_deletion'>policy on page deletion votes</a> before participating. Votes by people who haven't already done much work on Wikipedia may be discounted.

Someone asked if there was a variant where the castling privilege is extended to the Queens.<p> Well, there is <a href='http://www.chessvariants.org/diffmove.dir/oomost-chess.html'>OOmost Chess</a>, in which ALL pieces castle, and <a href='http://chessvariants.org/other.dir/modest-moverule.html'>Castlemania Chess</a> (Castlemania is in a long list of variants, so you might have to scroll down to find it.) I wouldn't be surprised if there were other examples of variants where the Queen castles.

Those who like this game might also like the puzzles in the August 22 entry of mathpuzzle.com under the heading 'Fourteen Queens on a 7x7 board for the Heawood Graph'.

On the subject of making variants that eliminate chess draws: Has anyone tried a 'Maker-Breaker' variant, where White (as 'Maker') wins in the usual way and Black ('Breaker') wins merely by making it impossible for White to win? (So, 'draws' would be counted as wins for Black.) Would that give Black too much of an advantage?

If you don't like Stanley Random Chess, then you'll probably hate the following games, too:

• Mornington Crescent. See http://www.dunx.org/mc/ for example.
• Mao, a card game where the rules are not revealed to new players. See http://www.pagat.com/eights/mao.html (and Mao is definitely not a joke)

If you look at the Pawn diagram on this guide for beginners at the US Chess Federation website, the description says that the White Pawn that hasn't moved yet can attack.

I hope that's authoritative enough for the know-it-all.

Jared, your question is answered in a previous comment -- the inventor wants it to look like the players have different armies.

Now, I notice this game still uses a board. (How quaint!) I suggest replacing the board with a deck of cards, or perhaps a voice-operated game where a player tells the opponent what he wants the piece positions to be...

The fact that checkmate cannot be forced in this situation is irrelevant.

According to the FIDE Laws of Chess, Article 9.6,

The game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves, even with the most unskilled play. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing this position was legal.

(Emphasis added.)

To answer the last question: In your example, taking the white rook is not a legal move, since it would put the white king next to the black king (Read the answer to 'Can kings move next to kings?' on this Kings and Check FAQ page). Also, taking all the non-king pieces of the opponent does not automatically end the game.

Plusgoodthinkful, but what about players who are color-perception-challenged? :-)

In the second paragraph of the Rules section, 'the royal king' should be replaced by 'the royal pawn'.

For each k>=0, if N is large enough, it is possible to place N+k queens and k pawns on an N x N chessboard so that no queens attack each other. See http://home.earthlink.net/~drrdchat/N+kqueens.pdf and http://home.earthlink.net/~drrdchat/N+khandout.pdf for more details.

Slight typo in your description. 'Chekmate' should be 'checkmate'.

Me, I'm waiting for someone to get their kicks from a 'root-66' :-)

David,
I tried it out on Zillions with 3 minutes/move, and White Rook and King was able to checkmate the Black King in about 20 moves.

Several weeks ago I saw a webpage with Sudoku variations, including one where chess pieces were put in some of the cells so that no piece attacked another. That gave me an idea for a Chess variant involving elements of Sudoku.

The board is 9x9, divided into 3x3 squares just like a Sudoku board. Each side has 9 pawns, 2 rooks, 4 bishops, 2 queens, and a king. (Yes, there are no knights) Pawns start in the player's second row, and the player's first row is RBBQKQBBR.

Pieces move as in FIDE, except each non-pawn has the ability to leap anywhere in its current 3x3 area (unless the destination is occupied by a friendly piece, of course).

Comments?

Stalemate is covered in Article 10, item 3:

The game is drawn when the king of the player who has the move is not in check, and this player cannot make any legal move. The player's king is then said to be 'stalemated'. This immediately ends the game. [If the stalemating move was actually legal!] .

In many chess variants (e.g Grand Chess 2) pawn promotion is restricted to pieces captured by the opponent. Why? Why is this restriction so popular among chess variants?

A related question: Has anyone tried turning this particular restriction around, restricting pawn promotion to those piece-types that have not been lost? (i.e., if you lose a Queen, you couldn't get it back through promotion, and if you lost both Knights, you couldn't get them back.)