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Elevator Chess. Multiple boards with simultaneous games are linked through central elevator squares.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
John Lawson wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 05:57 AM UTC:
Nerdy indeed!

I had envisioned something like 'Heads up! Bishop coming though!'  But the
clock runs while you're on your hands and knees under the table looking for
it, so restraint would be encouraged.

Spinal Tap vs Terror Chess. The Spinal Tap Chess army vs the Terror Chess army in the battle of the 11x11 variants. (11x11, Cells: 121) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
John Lawson wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 06:10 AM UTC:
In George Hodges' 'Ten Shogi Variants', Wayne Schmittberger states, in the
Tai Shogi section, 'A single Pawn, or other weak piece, advanced too far to
be protected can, under certain circumstances, be fatal in a game of Tai!' 

If this is true, then it's unlikely that Spinal Tap vs. Terror Chess has
reached the stage where there is so much material imbalance doesn't matter.

Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 06:43 AM UTC:
Well, given that in Tai Shogi pieces promote when they capture (I think), he might have been discussing something other than material.

Grand Chess. Christian Freeling's popular large chess variant on 10 by 10 board. Rules and links. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Tue, Jan 2, 2001 12:00 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I'd rate both the site and the game as excellent, the site because the comments at the top prompted me to try the game, which has become my preferred form of chess. I haven't seen a zillions file for this; I wrote one myself which works fine except for the limited promotion rule -- given the current Zillions language, FIDE type promtion to any piece is easy, promotion restricted to previously captured pieces would be tedious to code.

Ultima. Game where each type of piece has a different capturing ability. Also called Baroque. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jesse Plymale wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 05:38 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
<p>Thanks for your good treatment of Ultima. It seems like this game is a common assignment for computer science students in AI classes. My programming class just had to make a 'Baroque Chess' program, and I put mine on my web page as an applet, just in case you want to link to it.</p> <p><a href='http://people.tamu.edu/~jwp2654'>http://people.tamu.edu/~jwp2654</a></p> <p>Thanks again for the help your site offered in designing the program. BTW, I did cite your website in my program report. :-)</p> <p> Jesse Plymale <br> jesseplymale@tamu.edu <br> http://people.tamu.edu/~jwp2654/ </p>

3D Chess, a Different Way of Looking at It. A scheme for a geometric translation of 2d piece moves into 3d.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
ChrisWitham wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 07:12 PM UTC:
This is kind of a beta, it has not been tested and changes may need to be
made.  One thing that I have noticed already is that it is possible to
completely avoid alowing the rook to get to a square from multiple
directions is to have it move as a normal rook or move in any diagonal
direction followed by an (optional) ouwards rook move.  This seems to work
better in all possable ways except that it does not feel right to have a
diagonal move for a rook.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the game.

Another mistake I noticed was that I asked anyone who found a way to fix
the bishop to email me, and then I didn't give my email.  It is
cpw@maine.rr.com

Feeble Chess to Weakest Chess. Some Chess variants with weaker pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
ChrisWitham wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 07:40 PM UTC:
I was just wondering exactly how values add up. It says that the weakest Rook's estimated value is 1/24 of a Rook. Which means that one weakest rook is worth 1/24 of one Rook, but does it also mean that haveing one Rook is the same as haveing 24 weakest Rooks? I don't think that that is true. So, if I'm right, how does one add values together?

3D Chess, a Different Way of Looking at It. A scheme for a geometric translation of 2d piece moves into 3d.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
David Howe wrote on Wed, May 1, 2002 09:02 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
This is an interesting idea. Here's a logical extension of it: <p>In 2d chess (thinking in the abstract), pieces are 0 dimensional (ie. points) that move in a line (1 dimensional movement). <p>Perhaps in 3d chess, pieces could be 1 dimensional (ie. line segments) that move (as suggested) in a 2 dimensional plane. Their direction of movement would be constant, it would simply be their area of movement that would cover a two dimensions. <p>In the diagram below, the 3d Rook piece at [a1,d1] could move to [a2,d2] or [a3,d3]. It would be blocked by the 3d Bishop piece at [c4,d4]. It could, however move to [a1,d1] on the next level up, assuming no friendly pieces are blocking it. However for the 3d Rook to move to the other half of the board (ie. files e-h) it might have to rotate. Or then again, perhaps in that direction it only covers a single rank instead of a plane. <pre> +---+---+---+---+ | | | | | 6 +---+---+---+---+ | | | | | 5 +---+---+---+---+ | | |---B---| 4 +---+---+---+---+ | | | | | 3 +---+---+---+---+ | | | | | 2 +---+---+---+---+ |-------R-------| 1 +---+---+---+---+ a b c d </pre>

Anonymous wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 12:17 AM UTC:
I hadn't even thought of that.  The next step is to find out how to
implement it.  On an 8x8x8 board it would make sense to have each large
piece to take one column.  But then you would have a normal chess game,
as
near as I can see, for this reason they would need to be less than 8,
which
has been the standard size of everything so far, long.  I would welcome
your imput on how long they should be, and how to implement a 1
dimentional
bishop, I don't think that it should be the same as a rook.  If I can think
of a way to do it i might try to make a second 3d chess variant that
utalizes this idea, if you can think of a good way to implement it please
tell me.

All of this so far assumes not rotation, if rotation can happen then the
best set up I can think of would be each piece in its normal place,
taking
up the entire column, if no one rotates any pieces it is a very odd
looking
game of normal chess, but when rotation does occur things get more
complex
elemets appear.

If anyone knows of a good rule for rotation, or has any ideas on how to
implement smaller than 8 sizes of 1d piece please say so here.

On two final notes, I'm trying to find a system to extend chess into nth
dimetions, useing point based pieces.  This would be too big to have in
reality, unless your nuts like me.

Second I'm sorry about my gramma, spelling, and general writing style; I
write how I think which is sometimes confuseing even to me.

84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 12:26 AM UTC:
Looks like Invasion is currently in the lead. :-)
Are people preparing entries for this contest?

3D Chess, a Different Way of Looking at It. A scheme for a geometric translation of 2d piece moves into 3d.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
John Lawson wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 12:31 AM UTC:
A couple of off-the-cuff ideas:

Rotation:
A rotation of a piece would count as a move (a la 3M's Ploy), but perhaps
should be limited in such a way as rooks remain rooks and bishops remain
bishops, etc.

Size:
Pieces could start at eight squares, and change size as a move.  That might
be interesting, because a shorter piece would have less influence but might
be able to slip through places otherwise blocked.

84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Peter Aronson wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 12:32 AM UTC:
The editor handling the contest, Fergus Duniho, hasn't been available to
work on it of late.  But there's plenty of time, and it will be caught up
eventually.

3D Chess, a Different Way of Looking at It. A scheme for a geometric translation of 2d piece moves into 3d.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
ChrisWitham wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 01:05 AM UTC:
This is how i see rotation as playing out, each piece is 8x1x1 and acts
like a normal 2d piece because it can only move in two dimentions, but by
rotateing it (in multiples of 90º) you can change which 2 dimentions it can
move in.  What I'm not sure about is what it would rotate around, if the
piece is to rotate around it's middle it could only rotate when in one of
the center squares.

In this idea 3d moves don't really matter.  But if the piece size is
changeable then 3d moves could happen, then the question is what type of 3d
should it be?  I'm not sure how this (the 3d moves presented here) would
translate with a piece that takes up more then one square, I'll look into
it when I have the time.

Shogi set photo's. Photo's of shogi (Japanese chess) set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Link wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 03:20 PM UTC:Poor ★
Your explinations are both to complicated and confusing you should try simplifing the discription and how you explain the rules. This is just a suggestion so if you get mad its your bad. In conclusion I would like to say people hate reading complicated things because it will, most of the time, confuse them and remind them of the many grolling years of grammer school they attended.

3D Chess, a Different Way of Looking at It. A scheme for a geometric translation of 2d piece moves into 3d.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
David Howe wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 06:25 PM UTC:
I was thinking of a setup such as: <p>Each piece is a vertical line of length 4. The leftmost white Rook (for example) would initially occupy a1 on levels 3 though 6. The leftmost white Knight would occupy b1 on levels 3 through 6. Etc. Black pieces would occupy similar positions on levels 3 through 6. <p>Rotation would be allowed, but only allowing pivot points on the ends of the lines. Rotation would require an entire move and capture by rotation would not be allowed. For white pawns that have been rotated to be horizontal, forward is up. For black pawns, forward would be down. Pawn promotion would still only occur on the last rank (and not the last level).

ChrisWitham wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 07:16 PM UTC:
That sounds like a good set up, do you see moves occuring in the same patterns as I presented above, just wider in one dimention, or do you think that a more tradional, or even entirely new move system should be used? I'll draw up move diagrams with 4x1x1 pieces, do some calculations and see how it comes out, but I'm almost entirely sure that the pieces will come out stronger than they should be. It shouldn't be hard at all to do the same for tradtional 3d moves so I'll do the same for them.

ChrisWitham wrote on Thu, May 2, 2002 08:11 PM UTC:
Well I'm not going to figure out how my moves would work with larger pieces
because I thought to begain with the biger pieces would be too strong, and
I guess I was being optimistic, because the the pieces would probably be
able to get to almost every square in one move.  On the other hand I found
the tradtional 3d moves gave intresting results: the bishop was far
stronger than the rook.

I think that an entirely new system of 3d moveing would have to be created
for 1d pieces to maintain normal values.  I don't think that I could make a
new one that fits well with the 1d piece, on the other hand you guys seem
pretty smart so maybe one of you can.

Chess Handicaps[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Jianying Ji wrote on Fri, May 3, 2002 12:36 AM UTC:
Continuing with this subject let me propose the following:

let their be 9 levels of mastery (similar to asian game ratings, but 
                                  in keeping with western chess theme,
                                  we need a different name than dan)

Between each level and the one below is divided 4 sublevels. 
(Again a name is sought)

The difference between sublevels is one point, as described by Ralph Betza

in  http://chessvariants.com/d.betza/pieceval/p3-01.html.  The move is 
good enough for difference of one sublevel.

The difference between levels is then naturally 4 points, or pawn and
move.

For other handicaps we need to temper with the army somewhat, but 
whatever we do must be ballanced, from openning to endgame.

Also as can be calculate, I envision the largest handicap to be 36 
points, roughly the value of an amazon. I think this is a reasonable
 upperbound but as I am not a good chess player, input would be really 
appreciated.

84 Spaces Contest. 84 Spaces Contest begins![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Fri, May 3, 2002 03:38 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
I know of three other entries that have been submitted, and one more in playtest. I presume that Fergus is simply backed up for now.

Chess. The rules of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
ian wrote on Fri, May 3, 2002 04:07 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

Tandem Chess. 4 player variant where pieces taken from your opponent are given to your partner. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Theycontrolus wrote on Fri, May 3, 2002 06:54 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
In Spain is called 'vicio' that mean vicious because when you start to play you can´t give up. If you need any other information about can look for me in ICC

Warp Point Chess. Knights are replaced by Warp Points that other pieces can move between. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Dane Hoffstadt wrote on Fri, May 3, 2002 09:50 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Very well explained rules! I played it with a good friend of mine and can't get over how the pieces move through the warps. Fun!

Chess. The rules of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jake Steinberg wrote on Sat, May 4, 2002 01:58 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Thanks i didn't know which way the king could move thank you so much

Jake Hodgetts wrote on Sat, May 4, 2002 06:42 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I think you should be able to have a mini game of chess

Rules of Chess FAQ. Frequently asked chess questions.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
scott wrote on Sun, May 5, 2002 12:48 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
can a king switch places with a pawn when in check?

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