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The Piececlopedia: Amazon

Historic remarks

The Amazon was invented (but not under this name) in the middle ages. At certain places in Europe, one experimented with this piece instead of the Queen, trying out how to replace the old slow Ferz by a more powerfull piece. Dickins mentions four names for this piece: Omnipotent Queen, Terror, General, or Amazon. He also mentions that it was used before 1500 A.D. It's most common name these days is Amazon.

This piece has been used in these games:

Year	Game	Piece Name	Game Inventor
Middle Ages	Amazon Chess	Amazon	Unknown
<= 17??	Great Chess - Indian / Turkish variant	Giraffe	Unknown
<= 18??	The Maharaja and the Sepoys	Maharaja	Unknown
1840	The Emperor's Game	General	L. Tressan
1978	Tutti-Frutti Chess	Amazon	Ralph Betza and Philip Cohen
1996	The Amazon Army (CDA)	Amazon	Ralph Betza
1996	Tiger Hunt	Tiger	David Paulowich
1999	Haynie's Great Chess	Amazon	Billy Haynie
1999	Fantasy Grand Chess	Elder	Peter S. Hatch
1999	Millennial Chess	Empress	John William Brown
2000	Beau Monde Chess	Empress	Sergey Sirotkin
2000	Cardmate	Ace	Ivan A Derzhanski
2000	Giant Chess	General	Köksal Karakus
2000	Perfect Chess	General	Köksal Karakus
2000	Terror Chess	Terror	Brian Wong
2000	Turkish Chess	General	Köksal Karakus

Movement rules

The Amazon is a compound piece that can moves as a Knight, Rook, or Bishop.

Movement diagram

Squares where the Amazon can move to without jumping are marked with a green circle; squares where the Amazon can jump to are marked with a blue circle.

Images

Click on an image to view the full piece set it belongs to.

References

Dickins, Anthony. A Guide to Fairy Chess, 1969.

This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of different (fairy) chess pieces.

Written by Hans Bodlaender and Fergus Duniho.

WWW page created: October 15, 1998.

For author and/or inventor information on this item see: this item's information page.
Created on: October 15, 1998. Last modified on: December 22, 2001.