Comments by JorgKnappen

Here's my interpretation of A. Blacks criterion 17:

17. Pieces moves like chess pieces can move.

(a) Pieces move like leapers (true leapers or 'lame' leapers), riders, chinese or korean cannons, or combinations of those.

(b) Pieces have highly symmetric movement patterns (full 90 degrees rotational and reflectional symmetry for all non-pawn pieces, reflectional symmetry with different forward and backwards movement [like in the Shogi gold and silver generals] counts as a mild violation of this)

(c) Pieces move and capture the same way or their move and capture are at least 'similar' in some sense (I consider the pawn movement and capture similar because of forwardness and shortrangeness, also the pieces of separate realm chess or chinese cannons are similar in movement and capture. Frank Maus' knibis and bishight aren't). 

This allow much more pieces than just the traditional FIDEs ...

@hubert It is not about a naming police, it is about respect to what is already here from traditional and modern chess variants. And paying respect includes noting that the pieces and the names were already used before. A designer may choose to differ and make this explicit in the exposition of his or her game.

Another point addresses potential players: It makes learning a game much easier when pieces with well-known names move as expected from their names.

[25] There is Zugzwang: players with legal moves are obliged to move even if every legal move leads to defeat.

This is one of the most outstanding features of chess and its variants. Compare it to go, where no player is ever forced to deteriorate their position, they may just pass instead.

Now there is a lot of input for thought, and I may create another army based on the fairy theme ...

For aesthetical reasons I don't like a 'queens left' setup, but H. G. Muller makes a strong point to consider it nevertheless. I have to think what rules for castling to prefer (Fischer random rules or just mirrored castling).

As a replacement for the phoenix/waffle piece, another knight-strength piece is needed. Candidates are the Kylin/Diamond/Duke (FD compound) or the 3 simplest amphibians Frog {1,1}+{0,3}, Toad {0,2}+{0,3}, and Newt
{2,2}+{0,3}---all of them are very thematic, but I have to playtest how they work together. That the halfduck is feasable in CwDA suggest that the amphibians aren't too dangerous to use.

This is a good game: It is fun to play. I even like the name showing some humour.

Since Charles suggested elsewhere to drop or change this game: please let it stand here as it is. It even inspired another game (I'm a Ferz, get me into there).

All in all, this game has well thought 'game mechanics' and is worth keeping.

@Joe: The clue to my rating of the Shatranjian Shooters is the observation that a Ferfil ist worth a Knight is worth a Bishop. To my experience this is true for a single Ferfil compared to a single Bishop. A pair of short range Ferfils does not generate a feelable pair bonus, though.

The Shaman ist about 1.25 pawns above the Ferfil. The Hero is similar to the Shaman, but has a larger overall mobility, I rate it half a pawn above the Shaman. The War Elephant is like a Queen, therefore it is 1.5 pawns better than its components. This gives the following calculation:

2 Heros @4.75 Points   = 9.5 Points
2 Knights @3 Points    = 6   Points
2 Shamans @4.25 Points = 8.5 Points
1 War Elephant         @10.5 Points
===================================
Sum                     34.5 Points

compared to 32 Points for the FIDEs. I don't know whether the Shamans already have a feelable pair bonus, therefore I don't put it in.

Of course, with a jumping general (about 7.5 points) the army is on the low end of the CwDA scale. 31.5 is less than the FIDEs have. The Hero and the Shaman are very tactically dangerous pieces, specially against the FIDEs with their unprotected rooks in the back rank.

By the way, Falkener goes further back in time than expected: The Dover reprint was made from an 1892 edition!

Falkener, Edward, Games Ancient and Oriental, Dover Publications 1961 (reprint of 1892 edition)

I have taken the time to cross-check the list of Shogi pieces with the sources I have. I found no errors (but I discovered some in my own transcripts ...).

A few comments: The Chinese Cock moves differently in Taikyoku Shogi on one side and Maka Dai Dai Shogi and Tai Shogi on the other side. The movement pattern given here is the Taikyoku pattern. A piece with the same move is known as Blind Dog (Moken) in Wa Shogi.

Old Kite and Old Kite Hawk are different translations of the same japanese word (kotetsu), what is named old-kite-hawk here is the piece from Taykyoku Shogi.

Savage Tiger (or with different translation of moku: Fierce Tiger) has different moves in Taikyoku Shogi (like a Lance), Dai Dai Shogi (the move given here represent english sources; japanese Wikipedia has 2 steps diagonally forward), and Heian Dai Shogi (moves as Cat Sword, better known in the west as Ferz).

Fergus, while at testing: The navigation from a user submitted page to the comments is currently gone. The newest comment is displayed (if there is one), but there is no way to the full list of comments or the function to add a comment.

Editor-made pages are not affected; they have the navigation right.

Fine, it works again. Good work, Fergus :-)

Unfortunately, the fix is not yet complete; here is the Link to Archabbot Chess from the Alphabetical Index section "Ar":

http://play.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MParchabbottches

and it now returns a 404 (instead of the home page of the pbm system).

After some hacking, I found the true link which works:

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MParchabbottches

-- replacing "play" with "www" fixes the link.

First, it is really good to see Bittern in place of Ibis.

The table format is good, though I'd like to see the non-oblique leapers,
too. I was able to 
extract their names (assuming extensive use of Bi- and Tri- prefixes), the
only missing ones are 11:0, 11:11, 13:0, and 13:13 up to diameter 15.

If you consider further replacements; I'd suggest to take out Wyvern
because of its usage in Glenn Overby's Beastmaster Chess for a combined
leaper.

Problemists use different names for a few pieces in the table, but this is
not a serious problem for me. Synonyms are much easier to deal with than
homonyms, because the piece name is a handle to its moving pattern.

Considering articles, I suggest the following additions:

Une (french)
L' (french)
Les (french)
Il (italian)
Gli (italian)
Lo (italian/spanish)
Los (spanish)
Las (spanish)
De (dutch)
Het (dutch)
Een (dutch)

I think it is a good thing to ignore articles in subject ordered lists.
Traditional german library instructions do exactly this.

Look here

http://xkcd.com/1078/

Ralph Betza somewhere defined the quantum of advantage (aka one tempo) and
quantified it to 0.33 pawn units.

But: It is not clear at all that the advantage truely exists. For example
look at the game known as Dawson's Chess: Black and White have lines of
chess pawns placed on the 3rd and 5th rank. Winner is whoever manages to
break through the opponent's pawn line.

Whether White or Black wins is intricately dependent on the number of
pawns, there are even mathematical papers on this subject, e.g., 

http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tom/papers/unpublished/DawsonChess.pdf

Dawson himself analysed the game by hand to upto 40 pawns.

After following the long thread on the first move advantage in chess, I am
curious about the first move advantage in Shogi.

The major difference between chess and shogi lies in the "decisiveness"
of the two games: Western chess is rather drawish, while almost all shogi
games come out as wins or losses.

Is there a first move advantage in shogi (I don't know statistics, but I
suspect that there is a first move advantage, although some Shogi pages
claim the opposite) and how large is it?

The compound of Quintessence and Rook is namend Leeloo in Quintessential Chess after the Fifth Element in Luc Bresson's film.

The compound of Quintessence and Queen is namen Pentere (with synonym Quinquereme) in Quinqereme Chess

The missing compound of Quintessence and Bishop I name Sai after Fujiwara no Sai, the ghost in the Go board in the manga Hikaru no go. Go is in japanese homophonous to the number 5. The ghosty connection is suggested by the analogous pieces Banshee (Nightrider-Bishop compound) and Dullahan (Knight-Ferz compound). Speckmann also reports that the Janus/Paladin (Knight-Bishop compound) was called "die reinste Geisterwaffe" (a pure ghost-weapon) by a problem solver.

The Sai is even stronger than the Banshee (having more directions and attacking more fields on the same board), but seems to be less tactical on 8 times 8. Because of its strength I wasn't yet able to design a CwDA army for the Sai. A simple modification of the Fearful Fairies is not possible.

Can-mate Knight: Moves and captures as a normal FIDE Knight; but when the endgame KN vs. lone K is reached, it gives immediate check (and checkmate, if the lone King cannot capture it).

Switching off the can-mate property is not so easy. Just defining a Cannot-mate Rook as normal Rook, but when the endgame KR vs. lone K is reached, it it automatically a draw, unless the last capture gives checkmate -- seems to work, but in practice the stronger side will be keen to keep a pawn or two on the board and perform the mate with the full Rook before it is too late.

Thanks, Matteo, for digging out the reference. It says

"Of the 2,323 public matches in fiscal 2008, white players won 1,167
and lost 1,156, a win rate of 50.2 percent, it was discovered on
Tuesday. The previous highest win rate was 49.5 percent in fiscal
1968, and the lowest 46.4 percent in fiscal 2004."

So, there was a constant black (who moves first in Shogi) advantage for
4 decades, but in 2008 the situation was reversed. Given the relative small
number of recorded Shogi games, the 2008 result may be just a statiscal
fluctuation. Are there more recent numbers published somewhere?