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Jeremy Good wrote on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 05:02 PM UTC:

Nicholas, I was a little surprised by your reaction to my comment about the Wuss. I was trying to say that it would be an overly weakening piece that would foreshorten the game unless it were allowed to be captured.

If I understand you correctly, you are looking at an exception to that.

I want to examine that for a moment.

It is true that allowing the Wuss to be captured might somewhat compromise the thrill of the Wuss chase.

Let's suppose that we were allowed to introduce new pawns every so often with our pieces. An ideal game of Universal Chess would be one which was dynamically balanced and allowed play up to the last piece on the last file of the last row.

If we want to preserve the character of the Wuss and introduce it to Universal Chess under ideal circumstances, the Wuss should probably be that piece, the piece that waits to be dropped last! (Unless there is an even more weakening piece!)

Even so, the Wuss still creates another issue which is the question of balance. On a board as small as 8 x 8, the first person to drop the Wuss could be at a severe disadvantage (as I believe the black pieces are at in Mamra Chess with Wuss). So I suggest that after the Wuss is dropped, we switch to a more balanced form of playing, something like Balanced Marseillais or Extra Move Chess. It's worth thinking about because the last thing you want to do is go through a long game of Universal Chess, in which you play very competitively, only to be undone by the sad happenstance of having to put your wuss on the board first!

If we want to randomize the Wuss in with the other pieces, and if the point is to play with all the pieces so well that we actually get to use all those on stand-by, then we should allow the Wuss to be captured and not just checkmated.

I know it's terrible of me, but I just can't seem to leave that poor little Wuss alone!


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