Comments by Ed
Hi David, thank you for your reponse. Then, this rule (10.10) may not involve any check's. I really thought it revolved around checking the King. I guess not... ...thanks again.
Thanks for clarifying. Can you castle using a rook which has been 'captured' but not left its original square and is now in a friendly stack?
This looks like a very interesting variant. I sure hope that someone can ZRFolate it! In the Mate-in-2 problem, is it not possible in response to both moves 1 and 2 that the king could mount the catapult? Or should one assume that there is a rule that forbids mounting a catapult to escape check?
Hello, As a boy back in the 60’s I owned Robert Abbott’s book and learned of Ultima from it. I was so impressed by the game, that I made my own physical board and pieces and have taught a few people the rules from memory. In fact, not more than 2 days ago, I taught the game to my new wife. However, I had run across a couple of sticky problems and did not remember if they were addressed in the rules. I told my friend about this game yesterday at work and to my surprise I found an email with a website with information on the actual game. It lives! I looked through everything and did not see the complete rules but it alluded that they were expounded on by Mark-Jason Dominus. I would appreciate any more info I could obtain, the more detail the better. I remember from memory that Abbott had even mentioned the historical sources for some of the pieces (Greece, Rome, Madagascar, etc.). I found this interesting because one of the things that appealed to me about chess was its historical aspect. Also, the site mentioned that Abbott had changed the rules, but that everyone liked the original version better and still plays that one. Was this rule change that he wanted to remove the distance limitation (if on the 1st row, you can move only 1 space, if on the 2nd row, you can move only 2 spaces, etc.)? Were there other changes also? Any info you can e-mail to me would be thankfully received. Looking forward to hearing from you, Ed Kennedy
I had not thought of the idea of a variant with a met having the move of the gold from shogi, as Mr. Gilman suggests, but my son compiled a ZRF for makruk-gi. The game was surprisingly more playable than chessgi. As to wooden sets, I wonder if Poompat knows a way to contact the Thai Department of Corrections who list a board and pieces on their website: http://www.thaicorrect.moi.go.th/sst93.html. I have tried writing to the site coordinator (although in English) and had no success. I have seen that there are books and websites in Thai on various aspects of play -- I found some endgame exercises with diagrammatic solutions very easy to read and quite instructive. I wish that there were more instructive literature available to English readers. Some of those endgames with a couple of mets look very complex.
I think promoting Tori Shogi is great and agree that the graphics on the site you mention are appealing. There is a do-it-yourself Tori Shogi set at http://www.hollandnumerics.demon.co.uk/pdf/TORI_SET.PDF with the traditional characters that readers may like. It is a pity that there is no venue for play of this wonderful variant in real-time on the internet. Games do not take long and the piece movements are distinct enough from shogi that it is a separate and quite worthwhile game. The fact that it has a handicap system like shogi is also appealing for play by opponents of disparate strengths. The Shocky II engine plays a tough game of Tori Shogi. I noticed the resemblance of board and some piece movements of Navia Dratp to Tori Shogi, although, ultimately, the resemblance seems slight.
Recently on the Shogi-L (http://www.shogi.net/shogi-l/Archive/2005/Naug05-00.txt) there has been discussion of a freeware Shogi program called Bonanza. It is quite strong on even play. An extension has been created that allows playing handicap games. Its handicap play is perhaps not as strong as its even game play (I suspect this is because it does not have book moves for the handicaps, but that is a guess), but it will prove challenging for most. It certainly is for me. The link for Bonanza is: http://www.geocities.jp/bonanza_shogi/bonanza1.1_csawin.zip and for the extension: http://homepage3.nifty.com/floatinghome/csa_xt122.zip The listing from Shogi-L describes how to use the extension. Non-Japanese shogi players should truly appreciate this gift from Messers Masumoto and RaumNaum; I sure do!
The reason I used Pink and White for the Prototype originally was to try and make it appealing to more women. Women tend generally to not play Chess to the extent men do. So that was the intention from a commercial marketing perspective. But it is a mute point now. It could I suppose be on an ordinary coloured board. I won't rate my game again here, maybe for fun I will in later months. Anyone interested can make their own test board. Just take a standard Chess board and draw in the rest of the squares on your coffee table around the Chess board. Then take 2 sets of chess pieces and paint one set pink and grey. Then go online to print out the rules in your language. Then make 4 more boards ( or buy some from me ) and have a Tourny. The ultimate final 2 players of the Tourney will be playing 'as Chess' , which is how Bishops the long game ends. Which is only fitting for an excellent Chess Variant, to end 'as Chess'. oops , sorry I rated my game excellent again. sorry. Any investors out there with $750,000 , kindly contact me and lets get making this game commercially in China and sell it at Walmart. Its the only way to go. It has to be in a white and pink box however to attract the lady consumer. Also it has to be quality looking for about 39.95 or 49.95 . Also it has to be storeable, like using a folding board like Trivial Pursuit, in a nice neat Box. Ok, maybe $650,000 will suffice. .. :) Any takers ? Contact me asap at [email protected] Ed
Holy cow, I hit the preview button after typing 5 @#$%^&* paragraphs and then came back here and its all gone. Can someone in the Engineering room fix that? I did not see the OR word. so I will try to remmember what I wrote. Well its all gone until another day, the main point I was making is I give on the board colour. It can be whatever the board colour committee decides. But I still want the pieces to be White, Grey, Black, Pink. I will post the things that were lost when I hit the preview button another day.
This sounds great! If possible, could you add some game scores, or at least some descriptions of what you think the best method for seeking checkmate is according to the handicaps? Is there a technique of play that they encourage a junior player to develop?
As to Mr. Gilman's question, doesn't a popular 4-player shogi variant with a reduced array of pieces on a standard shogi board (Yonin Shogi) already exist?
A house-rules version of 4-handed chaturanga and Chess of the Four Seasons that I know replaces the move of the ship/alfil with the move of the shogi elephant, a move that al-Beruni described as the movement of the piece in 10th-century chaturanga. Both games play much better that way.
My favourites are: 1. Shogi 2. Tori shogi 3. Yonin shogi 4. 4-handed chaturanga (without dice) 5. Chosen (i.e., Korean) shogi
I absolutely love when contributions to CV discuss how best to play chess variants. I thought that anyone who appreciated this article might like additional studies on Makruk endgame.
I found a very interesting site presenting 224 Makruk checkmate problems at http://www.tv5.co.th/service/mod/heritage/nation/thaichess/thaichess.htm The page is in Thai, but that should be no limitation on usefulness to anyone. The positions and their solutions are all diagramatic.
The checkmate problems begin at the sixth link down on the left on the main page. The pages are generally thematic and stress how to deliver checkmate efficiently with minimal material.
So, if one moves the river, can this cause pawns to demote when they are again situated on their own side of the river? If there is no game courier version likely, has the author tried playing this with a ZRF or over the board? I assume that the relative orientation of the palace is constant, i.e., the edge closest to the opponent always faces the same direction and that the palace cannot be reoriented, say, rotated through 90° as well as or in lieu of other movement. I assume from the description of the river's movement as one step towards oneself or towards the opponent at a time that the river maintains its orientation and does not rotate through 90° either. This looks like an interesting variant.
Recently I came across some shatar problem literature, a couple of collections of what seem to be checkmate problems, but they differ in some respects from international chess checkmate problems so that I wonder either if we have a complete understanding of Mongolian checkmate rules or of aesthetic conventions that may be dear to Mongolians in their chess play. In not a few of the examples in these collections the solutions proposed are not the most efficient (sometimes the diagram has an immediate checkmate by our conventions but that does not use all the material on the board), involve the pieces gaining the checkmate from the initial position moving only once, and seem all to end with checkmate being delivered by a pawn. I wonder if there is in addition to the prohibition of delivering immediate checkmate by pawn a superior win condition because checkmate is delivered finally by a pawn after a series of checks (maybe extra stakes if a bet had been placed on the game?). I wonder also if there is a prohibition on repeated or multiple checks by the same piece. I know of no authentic shatar game scores on which to conjecture an opinion. My inferences are based only on the diagrams and solutions to be read in these Mongolian texts; I am completely sure that a chess master composing a book of problems must not fail to see an immediate checkmate that someone like me could recognize. And yet, I cannot read Mongolian so as to understand the description of the conventions and goals of such problem literature as he may have seen fit to record. I hope that a Mongolian shatar player could enlighten me. As to identifying the historical source for chess among the Mongolians, I wonder if this inference about pawn-delivered checkmate as a flourish of good chess play would be another datum pointing to a Persian-Arab ancestor rather than one directly from India.
Dear Editor, I found an image of a Chinese chess variant (http://www.hudong.com/versionview/idl,pAUWBxBWVKVEd2U,kVZZA) that I don't recognize and wonder if you know what one it is. I have searched on your website but have found nothing similar. From what I can see, the board has been lengthened by two ranks on each side of the river, the extended range of the elephant inscribed on the board, and the governor used for both sides as the royal piece in the fortress; the generals (two per side) are positioned for a new function, it seems, outside the fortress. Thanks in advance for your help.
I found an image of a Chinese chess variant (http://www.hudong.com/versionview/idl,pAUWBxBWVKVEd2U,kVZZA) that I don't recognize and wonder if anyone knows what one it is. I have searched on the Chessvariants' website but have found nothing similar. From what I can see, the board has been lengthened by two ranks on each side of the river, the extended range of the elephant inscribed on the board, and the governor used for both sides as the royal piece in the fortress; the generals (two per side) are positioned for a new function, it seems, outside the fortress.
I see a new English-language work on Sittuyin has been made available on the internet: http://www.scribd.com/doc/79655591/How-to-Play-Myanmar-Traditional-Chess-EnG-BOOK-1 I thought that it was very helpful both for its diagrammatic presentation of 37 opening arrays, its practical summaries of endgame positions and move counting in endgame, and other helpful details for playing this worthy form of chess.
Dear Mr. Gabor: Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think that this is a local feature of chess play that once prevailed in a number of locales in central Europe eastward. I seem to recall Murray in his _History of Chess_ proposing such a feature as evidence of an 'undercurrent' of Mongolization in western chess that would date from the time of the Golden Horde. He also posited the sway of chess clubs, I think, as the most effective instrument for these local customs disappearing, but clearly they endure in Hungary.
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