BrainKing - Discussion boards (Chess variants (8x8))

Subject: Re:

Constellation36: come on Constellation. Even it is clear to everyone here that King Bishop against King Bishop is a draw, no arbiter would interrupt the game if both want to continue. In case of a Blitz (5 min), an illegal game would still lose the game

6. February 2009, 22:18:25

Modified by Constellation36 (6. February 2009, 22:20:07)

KB versus KB is not a draw unless Bishops are of the same type(light squared or dark squared).
Moreover if bishops are of the same type and players want to continue they are not real Chess players!*** They can't force mate with any probable unskillful play and one can only lose on time or by resigning of the opponent, but even if someone does lose on time, arbiter will still declare the game as a draw as i've have repeatedly have said and do not repeat again.

If someone resigns the game he is in danger of being disqualified from the tournament or face any other penalties if he doesn't provide a sound reason for his resignation.

I'm not an arbiter and in all my career i have never seen anyone resign in a dead position but i believe his resignation will not be accepted and a dead position is an automatic draw even with resignation of one player.

***Chess is not who has the quickest hands. So to play a draw position that no one can win even with the most unskillful play and just try to out-time his opponent is ridiculous.

6. February 2009, 23:03:54

mangue

Subject: Re:

Constellation36: I am not going to argue much longer about K against K end games as we mostly have the same view.

However, about repeating 3 times the same position or playing 50 moves without pawn moves, I am convinced no arbiter is allowed to interupt the game and therefore in case of a 3-times-repetition or a 50-moves-rules, there is no automatic draw...

6. February 2009, 23:23:54

Subject: Re:

mangue: However, about repeating 3 times the same position or playing 50 moves without pawn moves, I am convinced no arbiter is allowed to interupt the game and therefore in case of a 3-times-repetition or a 50-moves-rules, there is no automatic draw...

Absolutely. I didn't speak about 3-fold or 50-move rule only about dead positions where it's an automatic draw.

24. February 2009, 19:25:55

Lawless

Subject: Three Kings Dice Chess

As everyone's probably realised by now, Dice Chess is quite random. It's not bad to have a game where even a very weak player has a reasonable chance of beating a very strong player. However, if you really want to find out who's better, you have to play two- or even three-win matches. So I think people might be interested in a game that would use the general idea of Dice Chess but wouldn't leave so much to chance.

There has already been proposed a variant of Dice Chess where the player on the move rolls two dice (as long as there are legal moves with at least two kinds of pieces), and gets to choose which one he wants to move with. I think that would be very interesting to play. (We could call it Two Dice Chess, unless it already has a name which I don't know.) But to me a different idea occurred just recently.

I propose a Dice Chess variant which could be called, for instance, Three Kings Dice Chess. The game is started with two extra pieces – white kings on a3 and h3, and black kings on a6 and h6. To win the game, a player has to capture all the opponent's kings. A pawn can be promoted into a king. Everything else is like in Dice Chess.

Apart from requiring at least three captures instead of just one, this variation would also have the advantage of blocking the pawns a and h in the initial position which would certainly make the opening strategy more challenging.

What do you think?

24. February 2009, 20:20:51

coan.net

Subject: Re: Three Kings Dice Chess

Lawless: I like the idea, but what about doing it on a 10x10 board - giving 10 pawns, and 3 kings in the back row (without losing any of the other normal chess pieces)?

... even though I would say keep the rules the same where a pawn can't promote to a king so there is less confusion (and easier programming of the game)

25. February 2009, 11:18:18

Lawless

Subject: Re: Three Kings Dice Chess

My original idea was not good because the kings on a3 and h3 could be put in check right on the first move. This one is better: pawns on a3 and h3 and kings on a2 and h2.

But 10 x 10 sounds even better.

As to pawns promoting to kings: I proposed it simply because I saw no point forbidding it when there are several kings on the board anyway. However, if it were allowed, there would be a problem in positions where a promoting pawn can capture the opponent's last king. In that case, the player on the move would win, no matter what number he'd throw. For instance, in the position W: Ka1, Pb7; B: Ka8, Nh8, if black on the move throws a 2, it will be certain that white can capture black's king on his next move, no matter what. To give black at least some chance, as I think he should have, there should be some kind of a limiting rule, for example: the opponent's only king may not be captured by promoting a pawn to a king. In that case, the other player would still have a 1/6 chance to survive, as he has in standard Dice Chess.

Or if you think it makes things too confusing, we could keep the rule that pawns are not promoted to kings. Promotions are very rare anyway.

25. February 2009, 19:41:26

joshi tm

Subject: Re: Three Kings Dice Chess

Lawless: Just say that if one controls no kings, that player loses.

3. April 2009, 23:52:56

Subject: Ambiguous Chess rules.

Modified by Constellation36 (3. April 2009, 23:57:24)

I have tried to play an Ambiguous Chess game and i can't say that i'm impressed with it. And that's because of the promotion rule. It really weakens the game the way promotions works.

Pawns are the soul of Chess and like that Pawns are the soul of Ambiguous Chess also. You can make nice sacrifices to just be able to promote. You can make spectacular moves to just give the chance to a poor Pawn to promote.
But this can't work in Ambiguous with the current promotion rules. The opponent will just choose the worst piece for you and the sacrifice would be pointless.

Countless endgames are meaningless with current promotion rules.

The rule from my perspective has to be changed such that the player and not the opponent to choose the piece in which the Pawn will be promoted.
That would create a much better game.

Just my 2c.

Perhaps i have this impression for Ambiguous Chess because of my first game. It has lasted 126 and still counting. :-) Perhaps this is a rare exception.

4. April 2009, 09:08:41

joshi tm

Subject: Re: Ambiguous Chess rules.

Constellation36: You should contact the creator of the game (that's nabla) with those details.

4. April 2009, 12:47:28

Subject: Re: Ambiguous Chess rules.

Constellation36: I've played a few more Ambiguous Chess games that you did. I'd say that promotion, or possible promotion is rare enough that this isn't much of an issue. And when promotion can happen, the promoting side usually already has a winning advantage.

I wouldn't call the game ruined because of it.

4. April 2009, 21:37:52

nabla

Subject: Re: Ambiguous Chess rules.

Constellation36: No need to message me, I still read that forum ! Questioning the promotion rule in Ambiguous Chess sounds very valid to me, since it is an important part of the game and I adopted it only after switching back and forth.

At first I didn't even think about it : I had "normal" promotions, i.e. by the piece owner. But a friend made me notice that it was not very consistent with the variant : the opponent is supposed to choose between all moves leading to the same square, the different promotions are (in my view) different moves leading to the same square, so the opponent should be able to choose the promoted piece.

That is for the logic, but then one must see how it plays in practice. That it weakens promotion combinations in the middlegame proved to be of almost no concern. Ambiguous Chess has its share of surprising combinations (especially but not only mating attacks), and frankly I don't think it needs queen promotions in order to spice the tactics.

The endgames are another story though. True enough, promotions chosen by the opponent make a material advantage a lot tougher to convert. A pawn is already more difficult than usual to lead to promotion, and then with the current rules, achieving the promotion is far from putting an end to the game.

I was afraid that it would make most endgames draws, in which case my promotion rule would be a bad one. I don't think that it is the case. Due to abandoning the stalemate rule, almost all pieces-only endgames that are wins in Standard Chess are still wins in Ambiguous. Did you know that even two same-colored bishop were enough to win against a bare king ? I think it makes the future of a material advantage look less bleak.

So unless my assessment of the endgame winnability is wrong, it comes down to a matter of taste. Should one have lengthier endgames, when the result might be the same, except a faster one, with the normal rules ? I like endgames, so I was tempted to answer yes, but I tried not to make my personal tastes account for too much in the balance. In the end, "all other things being almost equal", I just prefered to stick with the more logical and compact ruleset.

If you still can't stand the absence of queen promotions, check the two last diagrams of the following article : http://www.brainrook.com/archives/26-Just-one-more-chess-variant.html#extended

4. April 2009, 23:40:56

mangue

Subject: Re: Ambiguous Chess rules.

nabla: Did you know that even two same-colored bishop were enough to win against a bare king ?
this shows hours

19. May 2009, 12:54:46

Is there a stalemate in Atomic Chess? I assume there isn't but just in case.

19. May 2009, 13:05:21

lukulus

Subject: Re:

Constellation36: no stalemate in AC.

19. May 2009, 13:50:22

Subject: Re:

lukulus: Just for the fun of it, I've built one:
black: Ka8, Rb7, Bb8, pawns a7, b6, c7.
white: pawns on a6, b5, c6, king somewhere. black to move.

Don't ask me how the black bishop got to b8 :)

19. May 2009, 15:37:23

Bughunter42

Modified by Bughunter42 (19. May 2009, 15:38:55)

I think there is stalemate, but nut sure. Similar to rabbitoids position:
White: Ka1, Na7, Nb8, pawn b6
Black: Ka8
After white's turn moving the pawn from b6 to b7. Black has no more moves, because no move is allowed which would explode the own king.
At Fics it would be 1-0, because there is check and checkmate, but I think at brainking it is 1/5-1/5, but not sure.

Other example:
Black: Kc8
White: Kc6, pawn c7
It's black's turn. At Fics it would be a draw, because of the checkrule there. At brainking is no check, so the black king can still move where he wants, except c7. ;)

19. May 2009, 15:44:09

Subject: Re:

FromHell: They play other variants on fics now? it's been a while since I visited it. I think it was only bughouse and suicide, then.

19. May 2009, 17:15:00

Subject: Re:

rabbitoid: I first played at FICS more than a dozen years ago. They already had Fisher Random and several other "wild" variants, next to suicide and bughouse.

19. May 2009, 17:41:38

kleineme

Subject: Re:

FromHell: At first I thought that here on Brainking there couldn't be any atomic stalemate because of the definition of stalemate: "Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check but has no legal moves.". As the BK atomic implementation lacks checks, I thought that there can't be any stalemate (at least in legal positions). Your first example proves the contrary!

Concerning your second example I dare to contradict ;) My understanding of the rules is that a King can always move next to the other King, and as they can't capture each other it's not check! So Kb7 and Kd7 are allowed regardless of the check rule. Only for Kb8 and Kd8 the check rule would make a difference.

rabbitoid: "Don't ask me how the black bishop got to b8 :)" No, I won't do this, I just want to know how the black rook got to b7? :-D

20. May 2009, 16:52:44

Subject: Massacre Chess Strategy

Modified by Herlock Sholmes (20. May 2009, 16:57:09)

Here are some hints I would like to share with you ...
1. Capturing queens first looks natural ... they have the most capturing power and should be elimintaed first ...
2. Try to capture pieces with the most capturing power (they may capture in many directions) ...
3. Try to avoid capturing pieces that are dead in regards their capturing power ... they are not dangerous to your pieces right now ...
4. Try to capture in such a way that you position your piece in a place that is not attacked by enemy pieces ... bur you still can attack ...
5. Try to capture and move at the same time to the middle of the board ... this way you increase your capturing power ... pieces left on the edge of the board often are without this power ...
6. Always look for "open doors" after you capture ... it means looking for more capturing power ...
7. Be careful while capturing and opening lines of capture for enemy pieces ... it's very often ovelooked and changes situaton on the board dramatically ...
I hope it will help all of you to play well Masacre Chess ...
One more thing ... the seed for success in this game is planted in the first 16 moves (one fourth of the moves) ... it may not be so obvious but to master this game you need to use your imagination and intuition from the very first move ...
Initial position is a real jungle, I must admit ... this is why I stated somewhere else that the computer will always win this game with humans ... unless ...
Cheers,
Andy.

21. May 2009, 02:02:39

wetware

Subject: Re: Massacre Chess Strategy

ChessVariant: I'm not sure how good computers would be in the opening. It seems to me that the branching factor would be a computational hurdle. But I know I wouldn't care to play against them from the middle-game on, when they could "see" everything through to the finish.

21. May 2009, 02:20:32

Subject: Re: Massacre Chess Strategy

wetware: it would be interesting to see this branching in some way ... I am pretty sure the beginning of the game is just planting the seeds for a victory ... we are unable to make any optimal move ... the only thing we can do is to think about areas of the board to find some group of opponent's pieces and try to isolate them and make them "dead" ... but, as far as I know computers CANNOT compete with master GO players ...
at least for now ...simply too many branching ... so maybe there is a chance for us in Massacre Chess ...
well, I didn't know I created a monster ...
Andy.

22. May 2009, 02:57:52

happy hermit

Subject: Looking for opponents Dark Chess, Embassy Chess

Anyone up for a game?

27. May 2009, 22:57:25

Walter Montego

Subject: Re: Looking for opponents Dark Chess, Embassy Chess

happy hermit: A little Dark Chess, eh? Sure, a couple of invitations coming your way. :)

4. June 2009, 10:51:51

Bughunter42

Subject: Re:

kleineme:
You're right. My second example seems to be wrong. Connecting kings seems to be allowed there. But you can't move to b8 or d8 at FICS, but at brainking it's allowed. I'm sorry for my fault.

10. June 2009, 12:36:30

Subject: Massacre Chess: longest game.

Modified by AbigailII (10. June 2009, 12:36:50)

The longest possible game in Massacre Chess is 31.5 moves. This game lasted 29 moves. Is that a record so far?

10. June 2009, 12:44:53

aaru

Subject: Re: Massacre Chess: longest game.

AbigailII: 30 moves -> Massacre Chess (Jaymom vs. aaru)

18. June 2009, 14:35:28

WhisperzQ

Subject: Re: Massacre Chess: longest game.

aaru: Game would ahve been shorter and white would ahve won if 28. Rxa7 was replaced with 28. Bxb7 Bxb7 29. Range of moves for white and nothing more for black :)

18. June 2009, 17:09:14

Subject: Re: Massacre Chess: longest game.

WhisperzQ: The limit for the longest is obvious.
Not so for the shortest. Who can come up with the shortest game? (truly ended ones, of course. Don't bother with the timeouts-on-move-1, resigned or draw without reason)

Subsidiary theoretical question: who can come up with an initial position that can lead to a blocked game in the shortest possible number of moves? I have a trivial one that blocks after move 8, black.

19. June 2009, 10:03:58

Subject: shortest game

So far some 800 games ended in a mate, that is a blocked position. The shortest one I found is Massacre Chess (mangue vs. emelin) in 19 moves.

22. June 2009, 18:33:24

coan.net

Subject: Massacre Chess Tips & Suggestions

So after playing the game for awhile, does anyone have any tips or suggestions they would like to share about Massacre Chess?

Even though I'm no expert, here is what I try to do:

1. I try to do is take out many if not all of my opponents queens.

2. While doing #1, I will try to use knights or bishops to do that - trying to see if they have limited attack power from previous position and move them to a new position.

3. Check bishop on the long diagonal - if they are mine in the corners, if I can attack to get them out in the middle a little more, I try. If they are my opponents, I will then try to move my pieces from their attack line to make them unusable.

4. After that, I try to move on to the rest of the queens and then rooks & sometimes knights that are more in the middle with more attacking range.

22. June 2009, 18:55:54

Subject: Re: Massacre Chess Tips & Suggestions

coan.net: I stopped chasing queens ... there is plenty of opportunities to capture them later in the game ... what I am looking for is to save one or two of my own queens from attacks ... and keept them safe for later use ... thanks for your bishop tip ... general tactics should be to move your pieces to the center of the board to maximize their capturing power ... your bishop is an excellent example ...

Andy.

26. June 2009, 21:49:11

RGroszkiewicz

Subject: Cheshire Cat Chess - checkmate??

I am trying to play this crazy variant. I was looking at some archived games, and came across this one: Cheshire Cat Chess (bobowski74 vs. kleineme)

Can anyone explain to me why Black is checkmated? There appear to be two legal moves to escape from check: 9... Ka5 or 9... Kb4

Maybe there is something missing from the description of the Cheshire Cat Chess rules?

26. June 2009, 21:59:20

pedestrian

Subject: Re: Cheshire Cat Chess - checkmate??

RGroszkiewicz: It's because the white king hasn't moved yet. First time the king moves, it can move like a queen, so it's actually covering those two squares. It should be in the rules somewhere.

26. June 2009, 22:25:34

RGroszkiewicz

Subject: Re: Cheshire Cat Chess - checkmate??

pedestrian: AHA! I knew I was overlooking something obvious.

6. July 2009, 17:11:37

Chimera

Why won't the game allow me to move my white king to A4 or B5 what am I missing?

http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=4033056

6. July 2009, 17:14:05

Fencer

Subject: Re:

volant: "When a king moves for the first time, it can move as a queen (it also means that there is no castling in this game)." - from the rules.
Black king never moved, so it attacks both mentioned squares.

6. July 2009, 17:17:21

Chimera

Subject: Re:

Fencer:

thank you I knew I was missing something.

18. February 2010, 20:15:08

http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/index.htm

Subject: creativity

here is the link to chess variants inventor, among other games ... please check it, scroll down until you see chess variants:

18. February 2010, 22:56:24

http://www.chessvariants.org/multimove.dir/doublemove.html

Subject: Double Move Chess

there are several variants on this theme ... one of them is below ... what is interesting, it uses the same principle as Connect6 ... white moves once and the next moves are just double moves by both sides ... it would be nice to have this version here, at brainking ...

18. February 2010, 23:23:34

Subject: traditional chess is boring ...

I would like to invite you to discuss the future of traditional chess ... I am studying chess variants for years, inventing variants and came to a conclusion ... traditional chess is simply boring ... there is something repealing in this game ... over and over again the same openings and I wish every game started somewhere in the middle ... this is why I play mostly variants and the more crazy the better for me ... playing just one variant of chess (which is traditional form) is like playing the same music all the time ...who can stand it ? can you ? I cannot ... musical notes and chess pieces have many similarities and they can and should be used in a number of ways ... Fisher Random Chess is a step into right direction, but even this novelty is somewhat boring ... chess evolve all the time and not very long time ago there were no castling, en passant and even a queen didn't move the way we know it moves today ... so, let's look at chess as something ever changing and accept, that we play only a variant of cosmic chess idea ... I would appreciate your thoughts ...

Andy.

19. February 2010, 00:31:00

Subject: Re: traditional chess is boring ...

Herlock Sholmes: Not so long ago? Both the en passant and the castling rules date from the late Middle Ages. And the queen has moved as she does now since the late Middle Ages as well. Perhaps the only fundamental change in the rules of the game of chess in the last 500 years were the 50- and 100-move rules. I would call chess a game that's evolving all the time. In fact, I'd call chess a rock solid game when it comes to stability of the rules.

As for people playing the same kind of music - that seems to be more common than the other way around. There are more people who stick to Rock or Classical music or HipHop or Country than there are people that enjoy all of equally.

And you may find chess boring, it's still far more popular than any variant. There are no tournaments with hundreds of thousands of dollars of price money for chess variants. There are no players of chess variants known by the public at large. There's no regular mentioning of chess variants in newspapers.

And I bet that while the set of people who find chess boring is pretty large, I expect the set of people who find chess boring, but chess variants not to be pretty small. Most people who have no interest in chess have no interesting in variants either.

Personally, I find many chess variants interesting to play a few games in. But then the novelty wears off, and I never play the variant again. I keep playing regular chess though.

19. February 2010, 01:03:00

Subject: Re: traditional chess is boring ...

AbigailII: this is only convincing me that we are "indoctrinated" by official chess world ... traditional chess position and role in modern world reminds me of catholic church position within christian world ... the strongest, the wisest, and the more corrupted entity (?)... and most of believers do not even try to touch something different ... most chess players do not even know variants exist ... but luckily there are brilliant minds that want to go beyond traditional path ... we learn chess at very young age and that's good, but on the other hand it makes us prisoners of tradition ... and it's so hard to break the chains of it ... I am amazed by the wealth of ideas that variants bring and it will not take very long that the rules will be modified to make this game more dynamic, less mechanical ... Newton's world and understanding is gone, why chess is still in 17 century ? it puzzles me ... sure, it will be played and enjoyed forever but the crack is being made, bigger and bigger ... I am not the only one who cannot play e2-e4 without asking WHY not e-5 ?

19. February 2010, 16:30:09

wetware

Subject: Re: traditional chess is boring ...

Herlock Sholmes: Some people simply cannot conceive or speak of conventional Western chess as being a variant (admittedly, far and away the most popular chess variant).

To me, it seems similar to the way that many people adamantly refuse to categorize alcohol as drug, or to conceive of humans as primates. The list goes on and on...

People are funny that way!

19. February 2010, 16:41:57

Subject: Re: traditional chess is boring ...

wetware: because for most of us we are proud HUMANS playing the ONLY GAME THERE IS of chess and we taste WHISKEY (do not drink) ... and poor apes play chess variants and snore cocaine ... you are right, people are funny, not only that way ...

19. February 2010, 18:51:36

Bwild

lets keep things friendly

19. February 2010, 19:04:56

Pioneer54

Subject: Re: traditional chess is boring ...

Herlock Sholmes: Your comments and suggestions are curious. Much of this ground has been covered before (that is, attempting to lure more chess players to get interested in variants), and the results (most sadly) have been mediocre at best, dismal at worst.

Chess variants is a fascinating field. I've been delving into it for some 25 years. Still, I don't think chess is boring, but it is definitely overmechanized. One could easily spend an entire lifetime just studying to keep up with the ever-increasing volume of "opening theory". Well, that is rather mundane, and I don't know who would want to do that, except GMs and IMs. Anyhow, chess remains widely popular, but (as you hint) also has become somewhat rigid, and this very condition is what has inspired chess variants!

There are two main problems with chess variants:
1. Many are half-baked ideas that are introduced with little or no play testing, and really not worthy of much consideration, and this tends to drown out the small percentage of really good concepts;
2.Many of those who play only chess (where the potential field of new variants players would naturally derive) ignorantly dismiss the entire collection of variants as "fairy chess" or some other derogatory term. Call it "human nature" if you will, but I find this lack of open-mindedness pointedly unintelligent, which is ironic considering that most chess players think of themselves as "smart". Some have been actually known to express verbatim that just trying a variant would be "beneath their dignity"!!?

Another factor to consider is that CV is relatively young. Chess has been around for many centuries, whereas CV is but a few decades old. There are a few CV dating back farther, but I mainly refer to the explosion of new CV ideas, which is much more recent. How popular was chess after such a short time?

And, for general information, there are descriptions and details of hundreds of variants at the Chess Variant Pages: http://www.chessvariants.com/

19. February 2010, 19:26:37

Subject: Re: traditional chess is boring ...

Pioneer54: and I agree with you for the most part ... I am familiar with chess variants web site, I am registered inventor there ... it's a matter of some psychological portrait we have ... I would rather play everyday something new than dig into the same game day after day ... to the point that I would remove my own piece to make it more exiting and new. On the other hand if traditional chess would be such a perfect game, there would't be so many thousands of variants ... there would be no need for it. And because there are different kind of pieces in chess set it calls for playing variety ... there a only few versions or form of GO ... why ? Is it a perfect game or GO pieces are limited in what can be done with them ?

21. February 2010, 19:08:23

Beren the 32nd