Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

What are 'pieces outside the board'? And how can a Bishop outside the board be 'on a color'? What happens on promotion? What happens when I swap a Pawn to the promotion rank? What happens when I swap one to the initial Pawn rank, will it have a double push?

The description seems totally inadequate.

I updated the rules description to make them more clear and unambiguous. I also added definitions in the 'Notes' section.

Pawn's promotions are part of the standard FIDE's chess rules, so they also apply after a swap that places a pawn in the last rank of the board. A pawn promotion is actually an extra move or action that follows a normal move of a pawn.

Pawn's promotions are part of the standard FIDE's chess rules, so they also apply after a swap that places a pawn in the last rank of the board. A pawn promotion is actually an extra move or action that follows a normal move of a pawn.

That is not a logical conclusion. FIDE rules don't allow swapping pieces, and whether you chose to consider a swap as a normal Pawn move with an extra action or consider it a normal move of the piece the Pawn was swapped with, with an extra action is your personal choice, which the reader cannot know unless you mention it in the rules. Whether a Pawn that returns to 2nd rank has a double push depends on which of the equivalent formulations of FIDE rules one uses (i.e. whether a Pawn that never moved before has this move, or any Pawn that is on 2nd rank no matter whether it moved or not, or whether any Pawn that is on its own board half can move up to the mid-line.) The rule description remains completely inadequat.

It is also not clear how promotion affects the set of 'outer pieces', and whether capturing a piece resulting from a promotion adds that piece to the set, or just a Pawn.

And of course I am still of the opinion that your 3 submissions are too similar, and should all be presented in a single article.

1. In ’Swap Chess’ (inner, Outer or Any) a 'swap move' is just a new type of valid move the player can make, in addition to the other types of moves allowed by FIDE’s Chess rules. Any rules that apply to pieces only when they have never been moved before, apply to pieces that have never been ‘swapped’ before as well, since a ‘swap move’ is just another type of valid move in ‘Swap Chess’.

2. In the case of the pawn promotions, we should consider a 'swap move' as just another type of move that allows the pawn to change its position. A promotion should be done in exactly same way as it is done in FIDE's Chess: Swapping a pawn with an 'Outer' piece. So, it would be posible to swap a pawn to place it in the last rank of the board and then promote the pawn. How the pawn reaches a position after a regular move or a ‘swap move’ is not relevant for the promotion to be posible.

3. Capturing a piece resulting from a promotion works the same way as in FIDE’s Chess, the piece captured due to the promotion becomes an ‘Outer’ piece.

4. I can add a clarification note (or another rule) stating that in these variants a 'swap move' is just a new type of valid move that only allows the player to change the position and/or the space (Inner, Outer, Any) of the pieces involved in the swap and that pawn promotions can also follow a pawn 'swap move'.

5. As the author of these variants, I still prefer to keep the three separate submissions, for the reasons provided in my previous comments. However, I can make all the necessary changes and adjustments to each variant description individually, to make their rules easier to understand.

Definitely all these things would have to be mentioned in the Rules section before the rule description can be called "clear and unambiguous".

As to the issue of combining the articles, it would be important to keep in mind that what the editors here prefer in general overrules what the authors prefer. So that when there is a discrepancy there, your only chance of getting anything published is to convince the editor that its original preference would have some very serious disadvantage. So that at least one of the editors involved in judging submissions will change its mind. The remark that you prefer it otherwise is unlikely to do that.

Just to add a few points, having gone through the same process with swapping pieces for a variant I'm working on:

• There is a difference between a piece swapping a pawn into promotion, and a pawn swapping with another piece into promotion. In the first case, it's intuitively the piece doing the swapping whose move it is and not the pawn's, so I don't promote the pawn, as it's not its move. In the second case, intuitively it's the pawn's move, so I follow the normal pawn promotion rules. If you don't want to make the above distinction between the two cases, you should make that clear in the rules, as intuitively a player will make the distinction.

• If you hold with the "not moved before" rules from normal chess, when introducing swapping moves, it can be very difficult to keep track of which pawns have or haven't already moved, as pawn's can reappear on their starting squares, or other pawns can end up on other pawns starting squares, so can get very confusing.

As an additional note: When introducing swapping moves into a variant, it can lead to too much change on the board when playing the game, removing any chance of strategical thinking, and limiting tactical thinking to only a few moves ahead. I'd try to limit the extent of the swapping rules, i.e. don't allow swapping with the royal (King) piece, and perhaps limit the swapping rules to only a handful of pieces.

You have good points. I'll review the rules of the three variants to make them simpler and avoid confusion. Thanks.

I think you have provided very good insights and many valid points, and I have been taking them into account to improve my variants’ submissions. I’ll continue making all the necessary adjustments and additions to the description of these variants, so they are easier to understand with more robust and unambiguous rules. However, I not only expressed my preference for keeping the three submissions separate, I also provided most of the main reasons why I think this is a better approach.

These are the main reasons why I think keeping these three submissions separate is the best way to describe these variants:

1. These variants have different sets of rules, which produce very different game evolutions and board configuration possibilities. Although they share some common rules and the same concept of ‘swap move’.
2. Submitting just one article for the three variants will require that I use just one single name (‘Swap Chess’ maybe?) for just one variant, when in fact there are three variants, each one with its own name. This might add confusion, not clarity to the idea these three variants are different.
3. In the ‘Notes’ section of the article’s submission page I would have to mention that these are variants of a variant, which in fact wouldn’t be an accurate statement nor a good way of communicating these variants’ relationships. I think this would make it more confusing for the end user to understand there are three variants, and not just one. Besides, it will make the ‘Notes’ section longer.
4. Adding the rules description of each variant to the same ‘Rules’ section of one article’s submission page will make it seem as if all three distinct sets of rules would apply to the same game, which is not the case, thus making it more confusing to understand the fact that these rules belong three different variants, not just one. Besides, it will make the ‘Rules’ section longer and unnecessarily much more complicated.
5. Keeping the three submissions separate will avoid the aforementioned issues and further simplify the descriptions of these three chess variants.

Thanks.

You can call it 3 Kinds of Swap Chess like this. This variant reminds me of this.

The author, Guillermo Garcia, has updated this page.