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Grasshopper Chess. Each player has eight additional grasshoppers.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Wed, Oct 15, 2008 04:34 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I notice this is first comment on Grasshopper Chess in all its 13 years posted. Here is double-Pawn-type Grasshopper Chess from 1950's by Joseph Boyer of France. As the first sentences note, Grasshopper has appeared more in Problems than CVs, and GC here is one exception. That was characteristic style of T.R. Dawson, who invented Grasshopper, and his followers in first half of 20th Century. Then Boyer and V.R. Parton mark the advent of early ''prolificism'' after Dawson's death, when designing lots of new Rules-sets was still constructive activity, before the growing pointlessness of its practice today. Under Boyer, Parton, and then Ralph Betza, being prolific was still reliably connected to proficiency and high quality. These would be the top four all-time CVers, Dawson, Parton, Boyer, Betza; and only Dawson had full wits about him with thoroughgoing respect for his audience to stay mostly within domain of challenging Problems always popular in Chess journals. (Previously including Sam Loyd with the four neglects that Loyd's specialty was highly-unusual OrthoChess problems and puzzles rarely employing fairy-types at all.)