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Pretentious Chess. (Updated!) All Pieces can move as and demote to a Knight. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Peter Aronson wrote on Mon, Mar 6, 2006 05:19 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
Interesting. Aside from the King, this resembles a more restrained version of my Potential/Demotion Chess.

💡📝Adrian Alvarez de la Campa wrote on Mon, Mar 6, 2006 06:36 PM UTC:
That's right. Also coincidentally, I experimented with using a Dragon (in place of a Knight) which demotes to a Pawn, just as in your game! I may include this variation when I post the ZRF. Another one of my variants with 'potential' pieces is Undecided Chess. Anyhow, thanks for commenting!

💡📝Adrian Alvarez de la Campa wrote on Mon, Mar 6, 2006 06:58 PM UTC:
And let me also thank you and the other editors of these pages for your work. I have long admired the site.

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Mar 6, 2006 09:25 PM UTC:
This is just to clarify the credits. The graphics are based on the pieces I made from Armando Marroquin's Chess Motif font. My Marshall piece puts the Knight in front of the Rook, not the Rook in front of the Knight, as has been done here.

💡📝Adrian Alvarez de la Campa wrote on Mon, Mar 6, 2006 11:36 PM UTC:
True. I thought these graphics were perfect for this variant since visually it almost looks like the Knight is hiding behind the major Pieces, waiting to jump out on its own, and I modified the Marshall piece to match the others.

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Tue, Mar 7, 2006 09:45 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
A Royal Knight is an interesting idea. The King has remained mostly unchanged because of the difficulty in checkmating a more powerful piece. However, a Royal Knight may be viable. Have you tested this?

💡📝Adrian Alvarez de la Campa wrote on Wed, Mar 8, 2006 03:35 AM UTC:
Yes, I have tested the game with Zillions and because all the pieces have additional Knight moves and Pawns are promotable to Queen+Knight pieces, giving the King a Knight move as well does not make him much more difficult to mate. And in fact a lone Queen+Knight can still mate the Centaur-King.

David Paulowich wrote on Wed, Mar 8, 2006 04:05 AM UTC:
Comments to the 'Knightmate' page state that Royal Knight and Queen can force mate against Royal Knight. It usually takes a Royal Knight and two of the weaker pieces (Rook, Bishop, Commoner) to force mate. [edit] This comment refers to Kings in this game that have lost their ability to move like Kings and now move like Knights.

This game prohibits a King from entering (or staying in) check. So as long as you move your Queen about the board like a Queen, it will affect your opponent's King like an Amazon.


💡📝Adrian Alvarez de la Campa wrote on Tue, May 23, 2006 01:52 AM UTC:
I have been wondering about piece values in this game since there are some interesting exchanges possible (e.g. Bishop takes Knight via demotion to Knight). I made a ZRF, but the Zillions values seem way off. For example, the 'pretentious' Queen is valued at about 29,000 compared to a full-fledged Amazon at only 19,000. Does anyone have a better idea of what pretentious pieces are worth?

Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Dec 29, 2006 11:55 PM UTC:
Regarding the previous question about the value of the pieces, it is always tricky to know with games with off-the-beaten-path rules such as this one. It appears to me, however, that the values should mostly stay the same since they have all been augmented in the same way, with the obvious exception being the Knight. The Knight is not augmented, but is still a good piece because it can move as a Knight without being demoted. I would say that the values remain the same, except that the Knight is about half a pawn weaker. And, when a piece moves as a Knight and is demoted, it becomes the same value as the Knight. I assign no value to the King whether or not it has been demoted - as a royal piece, its value is infinite.

Gary Gifford wrote on Mon, Feb 26, 2007 11:36 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I found this game to be very thought provoking and enjoyed it very much. I think it plays well and can be very tricky and exciting. It is a great game that certainly has the players always thinking about Knight moves, in addition to standard chess moves. Well done, Adrian!

🔔Notification on Wed, May 7 08:10 PM UTC:

The editor H. G. Muller has revised this page.


H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, May 7 08:55 PM UTC:

The Interactive Diagram's heuristic for estimating piece values is not really able to handle pieces that must change type on moving. It should be possible to fix that, though. On of my engines plays Kyoto Shogi, where pieces flip type on every move, and some pieces even get stuck after a finite number of moves. (The (Shogi) Knight / Gold General alternator must move up at least 1 rank in 2 moves.) I assigned piece values there based on 'future mobility': For each square the value was the sum of the number of squares a piece could go to, plus some factor times the value the piece would get if it would actually go there. This worked pretty well.

For the I.D. using the location-dependence of the number of moves might be a bit too advanced. (This was really only important for pieces that are doomed to get stuck because of the irreversibility of their move. For pieces that can move everywhere the value is usually not very location dependent.) But it derives the value now from the average number of moves a piece would have on a 25% filled board. It could weight those moves by a factor value(resulting piece)/value(initial piece) for moves that change the type. If the piece does not alter type this factor is 1, and we get the normal value. But moves that demote the piece would not fully count.

One would have to iterate this procedure to consistency, though, as the weights would change the values, which again would change the weights. E.g. an Amazon spperas to be worth as mucj as Queen plus Knight, say 9 + 3 = 12 to make the marth easy. But if the Amazon demores to a Knight on using a Knight move, the Knight moves should be weigthed with a factor 3/12 = 1/4, and such an enhanced Queen would be worth 9 + 3/4 = 9.75. But that would alter the weight to 3/9.75 = 0.3076, giving 9 + 0.3076*3 = 9.92. In the next iteration the weight would become 3/9.92 = 0.3024 and the value 9 + 0.3024*3 = 9.907. So it convergest fast, and a Queen in this game seems to be worth nearly one pawn more than a normal Queen.

The  Rook value would increase more, because the demotion is not that bad, and the moves that demote therefore more useful. The tricky thing is that there is synergy here: the value of RN is higher than the sum of the values of R and N, more like 9 rather than 8. Let's assume the synergy suffers the same penalty for demotion as the extra move, so that adding the N moves is worth 4.When these are demoting moves this should be multipled by 3/8, which gives value 5 + 3/8*4 = 6.5. In the 2nd iteration we get 5 + 3/6.5*4 = 6.846, then 5 + 3/6.846*4 = 6.753. So a gain of about 1.8 Pawn for a Rook in this game.


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