Ratings & Comments

It is just a variant of the Xiangqi King-staring rule. In this case it is illegal to have the royals see each other throug a W or N move, rather than an R move. In XBetza I would configure it as a kWkR move on both King and Fool. The Fool is an (extinction) royal. (And since there will never be more than one King, the latter could be considered an extinction royal too.) The white majors are subject to a baring rule (and the Diagram's AI would allow you to specify which piece types participate in the baring). I guess the Diagram could give an almost perfect implementation of this variant with the aid of a user-supplied JavaScript routine BadZone() to outlaw Fool capture by most piece types, and switching off the checking rule. The only imperfection then is that some stalemates would be seen as a win for black.

I am a bit worried about the promotion rule: can white promote only to Fool, or is this just an extra possibility? The Fool is practically useless as attacker, similar to an Elephant in Xiangqi. That they are uncapturable and that you can have many cannot compensate for this; N times zero is still zero. The possibility for white to win an end-game seems bleak if he can only promote to Fool.

This is an excellent chess variant, and is one of my favorites. I think it plays better than either of the games from which it is derived. The starting position is carefully considered, allowing a wide variety of different openings.

The rook should still be worth slightly more than the bishop on this board but it is very close. I performed the mobility calculation. With a 30% board occcupancy, the rook's average mobility is 9.8 whereas the bishop's is 9.2. And the mobility of the rook increases faster than that of the bishop as the board clears out.

I have made a first pass at cleaning up this page. Graphics have been added, formatting issues have been fixed, and some of the writing has been edited for clarity.

The cryptic part in the description of the Fool remains. That will need to be replaced with something, but I'm not sure what.

This game is difficult to understand.

Neutral piece - can be captured only by pawns and cats and queens and kings and bishops, but using their non-capturing powers of movement

What are the non-capturing powers of movement of a queen, king, or bishop?  Am I missing something?

I don't really understand this game.  This paragraph is particularly cryptic:

Fools are forbidden to step onto a square that means that the enemy king is on a square that the fool could have reached (had it been unoccupied). On the other hand, the enemy king is forbidden to step onto a square that the fool could have reached in just one move, so the fools can contribute to mating the enemy king. The king can take out the fool, but the fool can not take out the king.

Also, the statement that "Castling is free" isn't very descriptive.  Does this mean the historic free castling rule?

And there are other confusing things as well.  If the author is around to clarify, that would be great.  If not, and someone else understands what is meant here and can help clarify this text, that would be also be fine.  If this doesn't happen in 30 days, I will hide this page.

The image is a dead link and archive.org doesn't seem to have it. If you still have this image, please let me know. Otherwise, I will delete that part of the page. (It's a mate problem, not directly related to the description of the game itself.)

@HG, ... But it has introduced another problem. Now the shuffling of pieces is not simtrical anymore :(!

Wow. This page has so much on it that I'm not even going to attempt to read it. Suffice it to say that I doubt this site is the place for this. Game pages are for a concise description of how to play a game. Whatever this is, it isn't that.

Beyond that, it begins with a lot of potentially problematic legal stipulations. Unless this is totally reworked into something appropriate, I will delete it in 30 days.

This page needs significant work. For one thing, the images need to be replaced, given that the color of some of the text is so close to the cell color you can't even see it. The descriptions also desperately need rewriting (e.g., the Knight description.) I could do it but it would probably take over an hour to get it into shape. Does anyone feel this page is worth the effort?

I find this incomprehensible. Unless this can be drastically rewritten with explanatory images, I'm inclined to delete it.

@HG, Indeed that has solved it. Thanks!

Yes, that is what happened. I removed the rating. Thanks!

I suppose you need a symmetry=none line in the diagram definition. It is probably reflecting the other Joker now.

Also similar to Diamond Chess, from the 19th century, except for a radically different Knight move, different Pawn promotion rules, and a different setup.

@HG, Hello, The interactive diagram on this page puts in the initial position an extra black joker outside of those defined. Why is this happening?

@HG, Hello, The interactive diagram on this page puts in the initial position an extra black joker outside of those defined. Why is this happening?

Very similar to Wagner Chess: https://github.com/brianthetall/wagnerChess

Probable new variant rule: Castle in check, move like chess King.

After hundreds of Turnover matches I have done, I finally realize that something is missing in the context of game logic. Since in traditional chess, at least two pieces are needed to perform a checkmate, with few exceptions on stucked Kings, I realize that this kind of complexity on checkmates is needed on Turnover too. So, I found a way to let it works, featuring the rule where a Castle in check, move like a King from traditional chess. It can move and take one square all around it.

The results is incredible, games have grown in logical complexity and I dare to say that finally it is better than chess.

Now I am discussing it with my developer to bring us a version with this change, so we all can test it. See on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/turnoverchess/permalink/3357003974392091

Enjoy.

Can this be published please?

Although the rules don't state it, pawns on the first rank can move two spaces, subject to en passant capture. I determined this by looking at the Zillions implementation.