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Carlos Cetina wrote on Wed, Jul 1, 2009 07:29 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I cannot less than celebrate, Charles, your choice of including the sissa in one of your game designs. Excellent!

Certainly, this piece has not been adequately explored in other chess systems. I have had the oportunity of seeing some of its peculiarities on an 8x8 board starting from the randomly positions of my Cetina Random Chess and Cetran Chess 2 proposals.

'Instead of boring the player with arcane references to complex, convoluted, and contrived theoretical jargon,...', as you just say, I would like to show here some samples of THE SISSA IN ACTION!

At the following position White to move:

White moves Sc1+ [moving path: d1-c2-c1 or d1-d2-c1 / checking path: c1-h1-c6]:

At the same time the sissa is menacing the rook by c1-c2-b3 or c1-b2-b3. Obviously if Blue moves his king, would lose his rook. Fortunately Blue has salvation by moving Rf3 that obstructs the h1-c6 diagonal, interrupting, cutting the check:

At the following position Blue to move:

In the real game Blue moved Kd5, but what would happen if he moves c4?...

... White would make Sa5+...

... moving path: b3-a4-a5 / checking path: a5-b5-c6. Notice that the sissa covers both b5 (a5-a6-b5 or a5-a4-b5) and d5 (a5-a8-d5). Blue is losing his pawn on c4, so Kc5 is unique...

But now White makes the surprising and spectacular movement Se5+!

Moving path: a5-a1-e5 / Checking path: e5-c7-c5 or e5-e7-c5 or e5-e3-c5.

The sissa covers
b5 by e5-e8-b5;
c6 by e5-d5-c6 or e5-d6-c6 and
d5 by e5-d6-d5 or e5-d4-d5 or e5-e6-d5 or e5-e4-d5.

Blue has two options: Kd6 and Kd4. If makes Kd6, obviously would lose his pawn on c4. And if he makes Kd4? Let's see it:

Then White wins the rook by moving Sd7+...

...moving path: e5-e6-d7 or e5-d6-d7 / checking path: d7-g7-d4 or d7-g4-d4. The rook is captured by d7-c7-b6 or d7-c6-b6.

Viewing these examples of what the sissa can do on an 8x8 board, we can hope reasonably that on a 10x10 its powerful will be increased greatly, overall by acting in combination with the remain venomous pieces.


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