Ratings & Comments

I had computer trouble, so I had no opportunity to check it out yet.

Fairy-Max does ignore game names that start with a capital. I forgot what was the reason for that (but originally there was one). But when you change the T to t the variant will appear in WinBoard's New Variant menu, from where you can select it. (If you did not put the definition too far down in the fmax.ini file; WinBoard can only display a limited number of engine-defined variants.

You did not specify what piece should be used for K/k in the pieceToChar string. Change it to

PNBRQ.EA.........G......MKpnbrq.ea.........g......mk

Someone might want to add paragraphs in a smaller-than-standard font.

If you want small text, you can enclose your text in <small>small tags</small>.

I tidied up this page, replacing non-Unicode characters, and replacing the low effort ASCII diagram with one generated by Game Courier. It's still an ASCII diagram, because I wasn't sure what images to use for some of the pieces.

This page has a broken image link.

HG,

You have explained to me here :

https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=33121

how to set up a machine match to test something. Is this still the way to do it or are there different things now?

I was thinking at bent riders that take 2 steps and then bend and keep going to that direction. This would be called very plastically Rook2 then bishop and Bishop2 then Rook. Would 2.Manticore and 2.Griffon be good names for them?

Thanks for your feedback.

I have reinvented this chess variant into Kingsmen. The pawns are on the third rank like in Shogi, and cannot double advance on the first move (and hence no en passant).

Also like Shogi, all non-royal pieces in Kingsmen promote on the last three ranks. A promoted piece can move like a King (one square in any direction) in addition to its original moves.

I changed some H2 tags to H3 tags, and I moved one section from Rules to Notes. The script for displaying member-submitted content normally adds the appropriate H1 and H2 tags, and tags entered by the author should begin with H3.

I wish this game were more popular. It seems like an excellent design. The piece selection seems strange at first but after thinking about it I can see the beauty of it.

I imagine the aanca could have originated as an enhanced ferz, to go with the bigger board. Then the knights could have become unicorns by gaining a diagonal slide after their leap to complement the aanca. The crocodile is a fairly obvious addition. The giraffe and Lion both make knight-like leaps, suitable for the large board, and the Lion includes and extra 3,0 leap which removes it's color binding and forms a nice looking pattern.

The result of all that is eight pieces with a nice range of power and an aesthetically consistent set of moves. There are all of the 2,1 3,1 and 3,2 leaping moves, the rook and bishop moves, and bent rook and bishop moves (unicorn and aanca). The leaping pieces are differentiated in power by some of them having additional movements, but they don't ever feel like arbitrary combinations.

The initial setup is also elegant. The Pawns start as far apart as they do on the 8x8 board, and the pieces are all on the back rank. The promotion rule fits well with this setup and is another great innovation.

I think the main weak points, if there are any, would be the pawns and the king's leap. It seems unlikely that the king would benefit much from a 2 square leap on such a big board with so much empty space; and perhaps modern pawns would be better. But overall this variant appears to be carefully designed.

I made some modificaions to the AI of the Interactive diagram. In particular, I simplified the Quiescence Search. This because it was prone to search explosion in variants with super-powerful pieces (such as hook movers and multi-capturers). The new QS only always searches capture of the last-moved piece when it is worth less than the attacker, or when it is unprotected. Other captures are only searched if there is enough remaining depth; new captures (i.e. those not possible 2 ply earlier) require a depth of 1/2 ply, other captures a full ply. This puts a limit to how long an exchange can continue.

This new QS is weaker then it was (but faster, and in complex situations far faster). To partly compensate that the default search depth is now 2.5 ply instead of 2 ply, and the depth can be adjusted in steps of 0.5 ply (from 2 to 4 ply).

I also slightly improved the positional bonuses for centralization; the bonus for that is now flatter in the horizontal directions, and pieces with a forward orthogonal slide but no distant other forward moves (such as Rooks and Lances) are exempt from the bonus. This avoids the annoying Rb1 after Nc3, then followed by Rc1 after Bd2, and prevents amassing all pieces on the central two files.

At the time I wrote that there was a problem with engine-defined variants running in a match that started from an externally set-up position, where the position sent by the engine overruled the position requested by the user. But I think this was fixed in the latest beta version of WinBoard. There it should be possible to run a tournament or match specifying a 'position file' in the Tournament Options dialog, which contains the FEN(s) of the desired start position(s). I hope.

Does anyone know if there is a digital implementation of this game, (not on a truly infinite board for obvious reasons), perhaps on Zillions of Games, or playable in a browser?

HG,

For fairy max the promotion zone of the games is still 1 or 3 deep (no 2)?

Later Edit: Is there a way to do castling if the king and rook start on the second to last rank (like in expanded chess say)?

Even Later Edit: How do I tell Winboard that the promotion zone is the last 3 ranks?

Are the rules described in this article correct?

This variant is ready to go through the editing process for publication.

@Fergus, Hello,

I had asked 3 questions on this thread 2 weeks ago. It seems that you have missed them. Can you find time to take a look?

Thank you Fergus. I am attempting to implement the changes you requested. The hardest one will be to rework the piece design/set. If I upload a missile piece image to go with a current set, would I be able to have the piece image that is associated with the letter M be the Missile (instead of the Marshall/Chancellor)? For Game Courier purposes, I really wanted all of the letters to correspond to the names of the pieces.

I can't figure it why but I have a green background and a blue highlight. Look here, please:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Default