Ratings & Comments

Abdication could be represented by putting [the prince] on top of 2 checkers

Or just replacing it with the king, since the latter gets removed from the board otherwise

I will Ben, when I will get back to working on this!

Fixed.

Aurelian, for this and the other two flavors, please add some links to the Piececlopedia where appropriate, or flesh out details of the pieces. (Notably, the joker and vulture need some explanation, while ferz, dabbabah, knightrider, cannons might not be obvious to a new reader.) It might be worth also linking to the other Apothecary series.

Also, and maybe this is just me, but the board colors hurt my eyes. And I removed the "Usual Equipment" category checks, because this does not use just the usual chess equipment.

ah 'can promote' -> 'may promote'

Only Pawns must be promoted on the 10th rank. All pieces except pawns can choose whether to promote on the 9th or 10th rank.

There is no 'paradox' here; just an ambiguity of the original rules, which can only be solved by more detailed specification on what constitutes a check. The same issue already occurs in orthodox Chess. In particular the question whether pieces that are pinned on their own King have there checking power subverted, or whether a King might step next to the opponent's King when he is protected. This is then solved through introduction of the concept 'pseudo-legal move', and stipulating that it is not allowed to expose your King to pseudo-legal capture. When one would have specified instead that a move is illegal when it exposes the player's own King to legal capture, this would be a circular definition. But that still doesn't make it meaningless; it just means it must be applied recursively. And fortunately that recursion always terminates, as there are only two Kings to capture. So the question really boils down to: in a contiguous sequence of questionable moves, will the first violation or the last violation be decisive.

Note that in Tai Shogi the opposit holds for the Emperor as in orthodox Chess for the King: Emperor's are allowed to move into each other's range, provided they are protected. (It must be, as the Emperor's range is the entire board!)

As to 'Yavalath Chess': note that the distinction between 'cannot' and 'loses if' is only relevant for determining whether stalemate is a draw or a loss, and has no bearing on the issue of what 'check' means.

Fun idea! Might I suggest the name ChiMPs?

You only need to checkmate/fork one King. In the standard-Rules version. Game play tends to be the same length as regular-chess.

Its one of the least complicated 3D-Games. Simply set-up 2-sets of chess-men.

The hardest part to explain is why its frowned upon to go on side-ways diagonals (in 3D) or that knights should not go in L-shapes without advancing or retreating from the opponent. I say frowned-upon, because of course you can change to non-standard rules. But you may find the game much longer, and knights to be as powerful as queens. Stalemates to be more attainable...

It seems that multi‐capturing two‌‐square leapers are oddly popular as knight enhancements: this game has the multi‐capture apparently mandatory for when going to Alibaba destinations, but still allows leaping otherwise; Larry Smith's Li Qi replaces knights with ‘Young’ Chu‐shogi lions, which cannot move back to the starting square, to match its planar linepieces; and ofc H. G.'s Mighty‐lion Chess replaces one knight with a full Lion.

I wonder why?

Thank you for the notice. It is corrected now

I have corrected the wrong description!

[Rook, Bishop, and Knight have additional King's move when promoted. Marshal and Cardinal become the same as Queen when promoted. King and Queen are pieces that are not promoted.]

->

[Rook, Bishop, and Knight have additional King's move when promoted. Pawn, Marshal and Cardinal become the same as Queen when promoted. King and Queen are pieces that are not promoted.]

[deleted]

I deleted the tags on this page, because they were all too vague, and each was just a single word in the name of the game. Please see the new guidelines for tagging on the Tags page.

@Uli:

Re Duke's variant and patent: whilst it was, indeed, probably an exercise in extending the patent's scope, I'd argue that technically he did describe this variant first (and strictly speaking patents are a different thing from copyright, and I'm not convinced that someone patenting a new set of chords (perhaps in some unusual tuning?) that wasn't in prior use coudn't in fact claim a breach of patent on anything using them, though ofc IANAL) — however you rightly point out that he came to different conclusions, and that merely having described it as part of a set of possibilities doesn't mean that he should be credited for it (H. G. Muller's analogy with integers is apt here). My main point was that it's more interesting (at least for me ☺︎) to acknowledge the commonalities (as you have now, indeed, done) and explore the differences within that than to insist that everything is unique and special in itself.

Also I agree, naming things is hard (which is partly why it was uncanny that you ended up with the same name as Duke did).

@Jörg:

Strictly speaking Kestrel has been used (by Gilman, predictably enough) for a piece — just not in any games. It's the compound of (stepping) Falcon and Kite (the latter moving as falcon but replacing orthogonal steps with ‘nonstandard’ (i.e. √3) diagonal ones) according to M&B13.