Single Comment

Amalgamated Chess. Incorporates some aspects of historical variants, but uses only usual equipment. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Cameron Miles wrote on Sun, Mar 9, 2014 10:03 PM UTC:

That's a good point about the resemblance to OTB play. That a game involving so many non-standard elements is still playable with a standard chess set is pretty impressive.

If it's up to me, I prefer the revised version, only because it seems a bit more logically consistent. Of course, the effect of those rule changes should be negligible in practice. A potentially more significant drawback to the current ruleset, which occurred to me recently, is the possibility of "drawn" positions being stretched out for hundreds of moves by the player with fewer points.
Such a situation highlights the difficulty of converting draws into decisive results via point-based tiebreakers: most draws in FIDE chess are by mutual agreement, which has no equivalent in a drawless variant. So in positions where a draw would "normally" be agreed, there are only two [realistic] winning conditions, both of which need some form of clarification/redefinition for A.C. :

(1) 50-move rule (since pawn movement and promotion work differently, how would moves be counted?) and

(2) insufficient material (if one or both princes have promoted to King, then what, exactly, would constitute insufficient material for mate?).

The above winning conditions may or may not be enough to avoid having games that go on for 300-400 moves after they have been decided. Of course, in a friendly game the player on the losing end could just resign, resolving this altogether. However, it would not be so simple in a more competitive scenario where the 1st priority of both players is to win the game.

... OK, that's definitely enough over-analysis for one post. Actual playtesting may well prove all these small details to be completely irrelevant - send the invite whenever you're ready!