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Thoughts on Chess with Different Pawns. The difficulties of composing Chess with Different Pawns.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Wed, Jun 3, 2009 01:03 AM UTC:
Even if they are the same type, different Pawns have inherently different values from the get-go. That makes sense just by imagining arrays of wild-eyed variantists. A Pawn in third rank has to be worth that noticeable fraction more than 2nd-ranker. Keying off some pages in Murray around 228, Betza says, ''King's Pawn in estimated values in Shatranj is worth twice the value [!] of a Rook's Pawn, and in Modern Chess, the same as in Shatranj....'' Does this come up in 20th Century Chess literature? Less so than you would expect since they do not even give odds like in 18th Century Philidor's time, where a good player might omit one Knight, and so on. I meant to mention at Fourriere's Pocket Polypiece Chess that Russians have periodically banned or shunned blindfold chess, because of supposed damage it does to mental faculties, and the same can be said of ''Polypiece-ing,'' moving any piece changing the piece-types of 33% of the pieces on board until the next move of piece flips some 1/3 of them again; and again.