Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Jan 29, 2018 02:23 AM EST:
Tonight an idea occured to me for a chess variant, although it may need more work - for one thing there may turn out to be far too much chance in the game. I'm thinking along the following lines: the variant would use two standard 52 card decks, one for each player (or maybe just one deck, if Game Courier could handle that for use by both sides). After each card draw and completed turn by him, and then the same by his opponent, a player's drawn card is put back in the deck and it is re-shuffled, just prior to making his next one card draw. Each card in the deck corresponds to a square on the 52-square board, as depicted in the diagram of the setup that follows. On each turn a player first draws just one card, then may either teleport an uncaptured piece or pawn of his to that square, if it is unoccupied, with some restrictions, or else he may make a normal move according to FIDE chess rules (although the goal in this game is to actually capture the enemy king, so it's legal, though not productive, to not get out of check or walk into it). A player must either teleport or move normally each turn, and there is no stalemate in this variant.
The restrictions on teleporting not already mentioned would be that a king can never teleport, and a pawn cannot teleport to the first or last rank, nor can a pawn teleport to a rank behind the one occupied at the moment by the enemy king (else I thought many endgame races could become too much of a joke). Otherwise, it would be legal for a player to have 2 or more bishops on the same coloured squares after teleporting.
A 50 move draw rule would be in effect, except it applies only to there being no captures for 50 consecutive moves (pawn moves being now irrelevant to the rule). Three-fold repetition of a position is a draw, regardless of the card drawn at each move (a card drawn might allow a player by luck to avoid such a drawn game, e.g. by willingly blocking a checking piece with a teleported piece before the 3-fold repetition occurs). There's no draw by perpetual check due to the possibility of teleportation arising, so the 50 move rule (or 3-fold repetition of postion rule, if applicable) would be used instead to call it a draw, unless the players agreed to a draw. There's no castling, but double step pawn moves are possible from a player's 2nd or 4th rank (even if a pawn of his was teleported or moved normally to there in the past), and en passant capturing is possible in either case.
[edit:2 I'd tentatively estimate the piece values for this variant idea as: P=1; N=B=2; R=5; Q=R+B+P=8; K's fighting value=4.9 approx.].
If this idea for a variant still appeals to me after studying the following diagram at leisure, I'm thinking I may call it 52Chess [edit: this variant idea may well be infeasible, as the centre might often become rather clogged by pawns, and then perhaps only great luck might allow a breakthrough, if soon enough in the game, either that or risk trying to exchange a minor piece for two pawns if ever allowed, which actually might often be an equitable trade [edit3: this seems so, if my value estimates are right, and rest of the previous sentence seems a bit doubtful in hindsight]. Also, too many pawns might often be traded off in a game, and games might hardly ever be won with a nice quick attack. [edit3: this last point not so terrible, as there's lots of slow paced variants]]:
Tonight an idea occured to me for a chess variant, although it may need more work - for one thing there may turn out to be far too much chance in the game. I'm thinking along the following lines: the variant would use two standard 52 card decks, one for each player (or maybe just one deck, if Game Courier could handle that for use by both sides). After each card draw and completed turn by him, and then the same by his opponent, a player's drawn card is put back in the deck and it is re-shuffled, just prior to making his next one card draw. Each card in the deck corresponds to a square on the 52-square board, as depicted in the diagram of the setup that follows. On each turn a player first draws just one card, then may either teleport an uncaptured piece or pawn of his to that square, if it is unoccupied, with some restrictions, or else he may make a normal move according to FIDE chess rules (although the goal in this game is to actually capture the enemy king, so it's legal, though not productive, to not get out of check or walk into it). A player must either teleport or move normally each turn, and there is no stalemate in this variant.
The restrictions on teleporting not already mentioned would be that a king can never teleport, and a pawn cannot teleport to the first or last rank, nor can a pawn teleport to a rank behind the one occupied at the moment by the enemy king (else I thought many endgame races could become too much of a joke). Otherwise, it would be legal for a player to have 2 or more bishops on the same coloured squares after teleporting.
A 50 move draw rule would be in effect, except it applies only to there being no captures for 50 consecutive moves (pawn moves being now irrelevant to the rule). Three-fold repetition of a position is a draw, regardless of the card drawn at each move (a card drawn might allow a player by luck to avoid such a drawn game, e.g. by willingly blocking a checking piece with a teleported piece before the 3-fold repetition occurs). There's no draw by perpetual check due to the possibility of teleportation arising, so the 50 move rule (or 3-fold repetition of postion rule, if applicable) would be used instead to call it a draw, unless the players agreed to a draw. There's no castling, but double step pawn moves are possible from a player's 2nd or 4th rank (even if a pawn of his was teleported or moved normally to there in the past), and en passant capturing is possible in either case.
[edit:2 I'd tentatively estimate the piece values for this variant idea as: P=1; N=B=2; R=5; Q=R+B+P=8; K's fighting value=4.9 approx.].
If this idea for a variant still appeals to me after studying the following diagram at leisure, I'm thinking I may call it 52Chess [edit: this variant idea may well be infeasible, as the centre might often become rather clogged by pawns, and then perhaps only great luck might allow a breakthrough, if soon enough in the game, either that or risk trying to exchange a minor piece for two pawns if ever allowed, which actually might often be an equitable trade [edit3: this seems so, if my value estimates are right, and rest of the previous sentence seems a bit doubtful in hindsight]. Also, too many pawns might often be traded off in a game, and games might hardly ever be won with a nice quick attack. [edit3: this last point not so terrible, as there's lots of slow paced variants]]: