Single Comment

''Very Strong Chess'' is misnomer. 
Planar they are as legitimate piece-type.
'Fussy'' is to properly point out when something has been done before so as not to keep wasting people's time. ''Fudgy'' is not to do so. I question ''extremely powerful pieces,'' as that applies only to Tianwang. Now Tianwang is John Conway's Angel of the 1970s. Those are two points in one. What other pieces in LiQi do you think are more powerful than Queen? I think LiQi is kind of cool and original. The usual critique, if we are ever going anywhere, applies widely that since no one much is going to play it, it's another artwork to be appreciated at a distance, being nothing fundamental about LiQi per se. The ''flavour'' Larry refers to no one beyond a handful of dabblers will ever enjoy and we are all perfectly glad to take his word for it -- this dynamics of developer as sole tester has been demonstrated over and over. It's almost a given. But Planar Pieces ARE probably fairly basic or fundamental. Not singling out Larry Smith on planar, but applying to, for example, Joe Joyce on differences between Shatranj and OrthoChess (an immediately concurrent topic), and applying to Rococo copycats of say Michael Nelson or Charles Daniel, and applying likewise to the majority of games after about 2005 -- why not perform differently? In the future, instead of cliched ''new CV'' ''new CV'', like a 911 alarm, no one will ever much play, why not consider making a reference article or history or piece-type essay?  Here JiaoYe and FeiYe and BenYe, Larry says, are the whole point of LiQi. J. and F. are just about Bishop/Knight value until the end. B. is about Rook value until the end. There is only the one strong piece made in the likeness of Conway's Angel (I think there is some Shogi near-equivalent), so in a nice artistic game, those certain statements about strengths are incongruous and frankly seeming to be wrong. This is the fun of it to find the flaws and failsafes in the fantasies.