I now also tested the possibility to declare one of the piece types to be a 'sniper', through the parameter sniper=N. (Only in betzaNew.js.) Attacks from a sniper piece would not be considered checks, i.e. it would not be illegal (altough of course very unwise) to expose your royal piece to those. This only affects stalemates, in particular when these would be scored as a draw: the King might be forced to expose himself to sniper attack through moves that otherwise would have been illegal, and subsequently lose by being captured by the sniper.
A possible application would be the variant 'Sniper Knight' I conceived, which differs from orthodox Chess only by the Knight being a sniper. As a consequence a pair of Knights can then force a win against a bare King. This is different from declaring all stalemates a loss for the stalemated player, which would also have great impact on the K+P vs K end-game.
Interesting thing is that it would then consider the position below a draw through stalemate, as black has no legal moves, but is not in check:
I now also tested the possibility to declare one of the piece types to be a 'sniper', through the parameter sniper=N. (Only in betzaNew.js.) Attacks from a sniper piece would not be considered checks, i.e. it would not be illegal (altough of course very unwise) to expose your royal piece to those. This only affects stalemates, in particular when these would be scored as a draw: the King might be forced to expose himself to sniper attack through moves that otherwise would have been illegal, and subsequently lose by being captured by the sniper.
A possible application would be the variant 'Sniper Knight' I conceived, which differs from orthodox Chess only by the Knight being a sniper. As a consequence a pair of Knights can then force a win against a bare King. This is different from declaring all stalemates a loss for the stalemated player, which would also have great impact on the K+P vs K end-game.
Interesting thing is that it would then consider the position below a draw through stalemate, as black has no legal moves, but is not in check: