Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Jun 12, 2002 05:58 PM UTC:
<h4 align=center>What's the Value of a White Elephant?</h4> Here are some thoughts on a variant I've played around with, but never finished as I was uncertain about the balance. I thought they might be of minor general interest, so here they are. <P> Sometime back, after reading the Piececlopedia article on the <a href='../piececlopedia.dir/alfil.html'>Alfil</a>, I started thinking about the other sort of Elephant piece, the one that moves like a Ferz or one step forward (fWF), found in <A HREF='../oriental.dir/burmese.html'>Sittuyin</A> (Burmese Chess) as the Elephant, in <A HREF='../oriental.dir/thai.html'>Makruk</A> (Thai Chess) as the Thon, and in <A HREF='../shogi.html'>Shogi</A> (Japanese Chess) as the Silver General. <P> It's a simple piece, but what is it worth? A <A HREF='../piececlopedia.dir/ferz.html'>Ferz</A> is generally accepted to be worth about 1/2 a Knight (balancing colorboundness with a good forward move), but how much more does that single forward move add? I'm not as scientific about these sorts of things like Ralph Betza is, but it does add a lot. First, an Elephant is not colorbound like a Ferz is, and second, its forward moves are the same as a <A HREF='../piececlopedia.dir/man.html'>Commoner's</A>. In fact, you could look at an Elephant as 5/8's of a Commoner, which is generally considered a Knight-valued piece and about which Ralph Betza says: <BLOCKQUOTE> This is a very short-range and very flexible piece that is much weaker than a Knight in the opening, very strong in the middlegame if it can occupy the center, and almost always wins against a Knight or Bishop in the endgame. </BLOCKQUOTE> Of course, an Elephant is less flexible in the endgame where the opposing pieces very well might not be in front of it. But on the other hand, it has the three most useful moves of the Commoner for the opening. So we'll assume 5/8's of a Knight is about right; roughly two Pawns. <P> The next thought I had on the subject was what if I were to combine the Alfil and the Elephant? This produced a piece that moved one or two (jumping) diagonally or one square forward. Looking at this, I realized that if I added a two square jump forward (yielding fWFfDA) , I would repeat the shape of the Elephant's move (supposedly four legs and a trunk) on a slightly larger scale. Thus was born the 'Great Elephant'. <P> Now, what's the Great Elephant's value? It attacks 10 squares on an empty board, and it is neither colorbound nor colorchanging. The simplest calculation would be a Knight and a quarter -- 3.75 Pawns. The lack of colorchanging might kick it up to as much as 4 Pawns. <P> OK, the actual variant. Thinking about Ralph Betza's game of <A HREF='../d.betza/chessvar/ghost.html'>Black Ghost</A>, where black is given a piece worth less than a Pawn to balance white's first turn advantage, I decided to give white an Elephant-based army worth a tiny bit less than black's in order to balance white's first turn advantage. <h4 align=center>White Elephant Chess</h4> The rules for <B>White Elephant Chess</B> are as for <A HREF='../ichess.html'>FIDE Chess</A>, except where stated otherwise. <P> White's Bishops are replaced by Elephants (fWF), and Knight's by Great Elephant's (fWFfDA). Black's array is the usual FIDE array. <P> Pawns may promote to any non-Pawn, non-King piece that started the game on either side (Elephant, Knight, Bishop, Great Elephant, Rook or Queen). <hr> My suspicion (backed up unreliably by Zillions) is that white might be a tad <STRONG>too</STRONG> weak. I tried adding the Alfil's move to the white Queen's to produce the Queen Elephant, but that didn't seem right, either.

Edit Form
Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.