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Must have noted my play :)
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Adrian should be getting email whenever a comment is made on one of his pages. I can also forward email to Adrian if anyone wishes to contact him.
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'can a king switch places with a pawn when in check?'
<p>The answer is no. A king may never switch places with a pawn, whether in check or not.
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give more history?
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I wanted something in between Poor and Good here actually. I like the game and the movement but I would have liked a bigger board. This feels more like a tabletop wargame then a chessvariant but I guess that it's a chessvariant in the aspect that pieces have preset moves on a squared board (something not all chessvariants follow even ;) I watched Zillions play this game for a while and realised that the powerful strategies behind a great played game is way above normal chess. It is a bit complicated for my mind and a bit defensive for my taste. Still, the idea is wonderful and I would love to see it come back with a bigger board variant *smile* This is a game I want to have at the table at home to play with my friends rather then playing it over the net or with the computer. Adding two more players would also increase the fun level since tactics would increase and you could help eachother out, if rules allowed it....I'm now changing from poor to good actually *smile*
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the page gives good information but when you show the games you sould be aloud to play a mini version of the game and see if it is intresting because from what i read i thought these games look fun and i would like to play a number of them before i download it. thanks for you time.
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this is completely in error, chataranga is a four player game pre-dating crist, you dopes.
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Great! I have to try Chaturanga with my friends. Very interesting!
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At least pople are agreeing that India had some form of chess from the earliest of times Thanx for the info.
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Holly crap I've never been to a site with so much info on chess....i mean wow this is a really good site and im a huge chess fan
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This site is o.k. but you should let people play chess on it!
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I must say that I have fell in love with this game. You say in your description that you don't like the setup of the pieces but I enjoy them very much. The consept of the one ring is wonderful and really adds to the game. I am just about to download the bigger version as well and find out why you like that even more then the smaller one. Congrats on a wonderful variant. Tomas Forsman
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Just as I loved the smaller version I fell in love with the bigger one. I have just watched the white side crush the black side again. I'm using a slightly slower computer then you (450 Mhz) wich might indicate that the black has some advantage but has to think things through more. Anyways, I love this game very much and I am very greatful that you invented it. I enjoy variants that doesn't change to much on the original rules. Just enough to make it interesting. Simple changes are often more enginous, this one certenly were. With regards Tomas Forsman
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Hey! I'm as innocent as a kitten! I wasn't even there! And if I was there, I didn't do it! And if I did it, I was lead astray by evil men!
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There's a well-known old philosophical problem that states: 'If a Go Away screams on the middle of a board, and there's no one near to hear it, does it count as a valid move?' Well, The question here is if one could 'pass' by making an isolated Go Away scream. On first thought, I said that this was not legal because it would be a repetition, but it's not true because now the other player is on move. Additionally, if some ichor is on the board it evaporates if only partially, so even the board changes, not only the player on move. This of course doesn't save anybody, so it's legal only if you have no compelled pieces (unless you use evaporation as a saving move). But should it be allowed? Why would someone do that is beyond my range, but maybe some day a situation will arise in that this is desirable. So, is it legal?
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In the second castling picture, white can't castle anyway. He already moved his king.
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This game is highly remaniscent of Capriccio described by Mark Thompson at http://home.flash.net/~markthom/html/capriccio.html. though maybe arguably better since the goal is better defined.
I am creating a pawnless CV, which suddenly led to the question of: What happens in FIDE chess if we remove the pawns and disallow castling. Does white have overwhelming advantage or is there a good defense for black?
I don't think simply removing the Pawns from the FIDE array would make a good game. Consider Derek Nalls various all-rider Chess variants -- they use rather different arrays indeed.
<p>
Maybe something like:<b><pre>+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| r |:q:| k |:r:| |:::| |:::|
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|:b:| n |:n:| b |:::| |:::| |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| |:::| |:::| |:::| |:::|
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|:::| |:::| |:::| |:::| |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| |:::| |:::| |:::| |:::|
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|:::| |:::| |:::| |:::| |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| B |:N:| N |:B:| |:::| |:::|
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|:R:| Q |:K:| R |:::| |:::| |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+</pre></b>
Of course, different pieces might work even better, such as halfling pieces or powerful but short ranged pieces, such as Half-Ducks for Rooks and FAD's for Bishops and a FAWDH for a Queen. Experimentation is certainly the key here.
Actually my game will be different from just removing pawns from standard FIDE setup. The reason for my question is more along the lines of giving a pawnless FIDE, what are the shortcommings of such a game, and why wouldn't it be a good game. Or in other words what is the mininum that can be done to make it a good game.
Thinking about it, let me restate my question in the form of 2 challenges: Construct the shortest possible fool's mate for the following variant: FIDE chess without pawns nor castling. Then construct the shortest possible computer's mate (named after early chess computer programs), by which I mean that it will respond to any possible mate within 3 moves. Or another way to say it is construct the shortest game that leads to a win in 4 moves.
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> When you're really stuck with probabilities, you can use the > laborious case-by-case analysis. Indeed. Instead of checking each case for two-path bonus, it's easier to just check each case to see whether it is blocked, and just add up the probabilites. With 5 squares that can be blocked (e3, d2, d4, f2, and f4) there will be 2^5 = 32 total possibilities. 1 possibilty has no squares blocked, 5 have one square blocked, 10 have two squares blocked, 10 have three squares blocked, 5 have four squares blocked, and 1 has all five squares blocked. The probability of each possibility is 0.7^(number of unblocked square) * 0.3^(number of blocked squares). The no squares blocked possibility lets us reach the destination square, as do 4 of the one square blocked possibilities (all but e3), and 2 of the two squares blocked possibilities (d2 and d4, f2 and f4). None of the rest do. So the total probability is 0.7^5 + 4 * 0.7^4 * 0.3 + 2 * 0.7^3 * 0.3^2 = 0.51793, which agrees with my formula. So I'm confident I'm right again. :)
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