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Game Reviews by JohnAyer

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Courier-Spiel. 19th century variant of Courier Chess. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
John Ayer wrote on Sun, Jun 1, 2003 12:46 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Of course the printable board and pieces for the Courier Game will also serve for this one.

Turkish Great Chess II. Gollon's large historical variant. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
📝John Ayer wrote on Wed, Aug 6, 2003 04:26 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
If we call the armed female attendants Qalmaqini, and the bishop-knight a Bukhshi, then the king is called Shah instead of Padshah (emperor), and they are arranged Bukhshi, Wazir, Shah, Shahzadeh from left to right across each player's four central squares on the home-row. Murray says the version shown in the diagram above is the corrected version, but this other arrangement has its own internal logic. Probably there was some experimenting.

Courier-Spiel. 19th century variant of Courier Chess. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
John Ayer wrote on Tue, Sep 2, 2003 11:34 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
My son and I dislike the pawn promotion rules in this game, and have our own: A pawn reaching the last rank is immediately promoted to the rank of the master-piece of that file, except that a pawn promoting on the king-file is made a prince, moving as the squirrel. Thereafter, if the king is checkmated, he is removed from the board, the prince succeeds, and the game continues. This is idle speculation, though; neither of us has ever allowed the other to promote a pawn.

John Ayer wrote on Wed, Jun 30, 2004 07:07 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
On reviewing Murray and Gollon, I find that the pawn promotion rule for this game is unknown. The rule given is from another game, and its application to this one is a conjecture by Murray. Promotion determined by file is therefore as valid as any other rule agreed on by two players.

Two Large Shatranj Variants. Missing description (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
John Ayer wrote on Thu, Aug 27, 2009 03:05 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
I am also an annoying pedant (though I didn't write that remark). I should not have said that the Atlanteans would not know what an elephant is; they probably would have known. I am playing Great Shatranj D at the moment, and enjoying it. I consider it Good, subject to possible upgrade later.

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