Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

The nightrider is an interesting-enough piece, but if it's the best we can do, it shows a serious lack of imagination. Basically, it's forcing the knight into the same mold as the other non-royal pieces in modern western chess, and it becomes a sort of chimera, a 'leaping infinite slider'. The one piece on the modern board with a unique character, and it's being twisted into line with the other pieces, standardized into a linear slider. Horsefeathers! ;-) The knight has 2 characteristics, not just one, and the nightrider amplifies one and ignores the other. Not only does the knight jump, but it 'moves crooked' - it approaches the linear sliders from an angle they can't attack. This compensates for its slow move. The nightrider doesn't have the slow move, but it keeps the oblique approach, which is why its value is so relatively high. But if the height of imagination for the mainstream is to take the knight's move and stick it on every other piece in the game, including the other knight, well, I'm glad I'm on the fringes.

By the way, with a sissa in place of the NN, the problem does not work as intended. Unlike the nightrider, the sissa, moving to the key square of the original puzzle, puts the black king in check. The bishop attack of the original problem blocks the sissa, and moving the king to capture the bishop does not unblock the sissa. Instead of making the nightrider's key move, the sissa moves from the starting square e5 down to e3, and then diagonally down to c1, giving mate. note: edited May 4 2009 - switched sentences 2 and 3 and added 'of the original problem'

Joyce's ''take the Knight move and stick it on every other piece in the game'' is interesting. Irrespective of NN, that's what Carrera does in Centaur (BN) and Champion (RN). And what Bird does with the same two expropriated. And what Capablanca with the same two. And Seirawan does with a little gating effect from off-board, the same guys. I think that is being Joe's point here. The mainstream has no imagination (they play blindfold or they play fast, whee), and the fringes lack commonsense discrimination and discretion.