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Comments by Ed

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Three Move Draw[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Ed wrote on Sun, Sep 29, 2002 06:12 AM UTC:
Hi,

Can someone state the rule regarding when the King is checked three
consecutive times and it moves to the same two squares back and forth? 
Does this result in a draw?  

Suppose the King had other squares that he could have moved to but chose
the same ones to force a draw. Is this valid? Would this be a draw?

Does it matter which of the opponent's pieces were involved in giving
check? 

If I am not being very clear in my question, I do apologize, but therein
lies the problem: I do not clearly understand this rule; though, I do know
that such a rule exists.  Would someone clarify?

Appreciatively,

Ed wrote on Sun, Sep 29, 2002 06:27 PM UTC:
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.

Russian Chess. Pieces are not removed when captured, but stacked. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Mon, Mar 31, 2003 06:56 AM UTC:
If the king is within a stack, can that stack cross a square that is under attack by the opponent?

Ed wrote on Tue, Apr 1, 2003 04:16 AM UTC:
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?

Deep Blue versus KasparovA Zillions-of-Games file
. White and Black each have their own way of winning.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Jul 5, 2003 02:14 PM UTC:
How does White win by getting a knight to e6? Must this be a capture? Must the knight be able to avoid immediate recapture?

Catapults of Troy. Large variant with a river, catapults, archers, and trojan horses! (8x11, Cells: 88) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sun, Dec 14, 2003 07:13 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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?

Ultima Pieces: Illustrated Guide. Illustrated guide to how Ultima Pieces capture.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Wed, Feb 4, 2004 06:52 PM UTC:
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

Makruk (Thai chess). Rules and information. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Apr 24, 2004 11:58 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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.

Homemade Tori Shogi Set. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Jul 3, 2004 02:35 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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.

Large Chess ZRF ZIP file. ZRF for Capablanca's Chess plus variants: Bird's, Aberg's, Grotesque, Univers, Embassy, Janus, Archbishop, New Chancellor + more.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Tue, Sep 28, 2004 01:49 AM UTC:
When I unzip this file, there is no ZRF. Will you update soon?

Sankaku Shogi. Small Shogi variant played on a board of 44 triangles with no drops and a teleporting Emperor. (7x8, Cells: 44) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Thu, Feb 3, 2005 05:39 PM UTC:
Maybe sankaku means three angles and, hence, triangle?

Yonin Shogi. 4-handed Shogi variant. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Jun 11, 2005 10:19 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I have played Yonin Shogi over the board and with the Super Famicom cartridge that Mr. McComb mentions. It is surprising how very much quicker than in shogi the pace is in Yonin Shogi. I think that of the four-player chess variants like four-handed chaturanga and chess of the four seasons, this is by far the most enjoyable, but that is personal opinion (I do like four-handed chaturanga quite a bit, though). <p>George Hodges produced a rules leaflet for this variant that included a sample game. The players were professionals at regular shogi. In that leaflet Mr. Hodges credits the invention of the game to Ota Mitsuyasu, the 1-dan mayor of Hirata City. <p>My usual opponents and I have speculated how one could handicap in this game: alternate piece arrangement, removal of pieces, or substitution of pieces that are out of play from normal shogi, like the knight, lance, or the bishop. <p>I wonder if anyone has ever attempted the three-player shogi that John Fairbairn described in _Shogi_ magazine. The game was presented in a version adapted to an hexagonal board, but the diagram also showed a board arrangement similar to what one sees for three-handed xiangqi. I seem to remember that the game featured a promoted king, a Sun-King, which had a special move: capture by 'illumination.' I seem to remember that this power was gained by reaching a special square at the juncture of three half-boards, or the center of the hexagonal board, the Pleasure Garden. I cannot say whether that game is more or less playable than Yonin Shogi.

Shogi. Missing description (9x9, Cells: 81) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sun, Aug 7, 2005 12:09 AM UTC:
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!

BishopsA game information page
. Commercial four-player game.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Mar 18, 2006 12:13 AM UTC:
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

Ed wrote on Sun, Mar 19, 2006 04:26 PM UTC:
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.

Chess Handicaps[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Ed wrote on Wed, May 24, 2006 11:42 PM UTC:
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?

Shatranji. A hybrid of Shatranj and Chessgi. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Wed, Jul 5, 2006 04:33 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I like shatranji (and also makruk-gi) much better than chessgi. I have wondered how shatranji would play with pawns assigned a promoted value corresponding to the master-piece of the file instead of the uniform promotion to general (but the king's pawn would have to be non-royal!).

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.


So what's YOUR favorite?. Yeah, we've got a list of recognized variants. But what games are YOUR personal favorites?[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Sep 9, 2006 08:52 PM UTC:
My favourites are:

1.  Shogi
2.  Tori shogi
3.  Yonin shogi
4.  4-handed chaturanga (without dice)
5.  Chosen (i.e., Korean) shogi

Siam Chess Game. How Many "Mets" Will Finish Off The Naked King Of Siam?[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Fri, Jun 15, 2007 08:48 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

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.


Xiang-qi moving palace and river. Missing description (9x10, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 02:38 AM UTC:
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.

Shatar. Mongolian chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Jun 25, 2011 03:44 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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.

Feedback to the Chess Variant Pages - How to contactus. Including information on editors and associate authors of the website.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Oct 15, 2011 10:39 PM UTC:
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.

Xiangqi: Chinese Chess. Links and rules for Chinese Chess (Xiangqi). (9x10, Cells: 90) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Tue, Jan 3, 2012 11:30 AM UTC:
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.

Burmese Traditional Chess. An article that discusses chess as it was played in Burma. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Sat, Feb 18, 2012 04:40 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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.

Chess. The rules of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ed wrote on Mon, Mar 19, 2012 02:50 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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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