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Hi, Stephen. In our game against you, Eric and I were under the apparently mistaken assumption that we could confer with one another. Clearly didn't help us much but that's what we did. Now, I'm reading over these comments and I see that we weren't supposed to, otherwise you wouldn't have the admonition, 'never trust your partner.' Can I suggest that you allow partners to confer with one another as part of the rules of the world championship. This would increase game quality and allow for partners to feel that they are truly cooperating with one another. How will the tournament be structured? With what time parameters? To everyone else: 4-Way Chess is great fun and I encourage everyone to enter this tournament, either by themselves or with a partner. Is anyone interested in being my partner? (even though I've only played one game of 4-Way Chess and lost quickly?)
I like the concept of multi-player chess variants (or ones in which two players each control more than one army, which is how this game is currently played on Game Courier), and perhaps there ought to be more of these. The problem of how to handle the surviving pieces of an army whose king has been captured (if not mated) may be a bit tricky to do in a reasonable way (i.e. in order to make it worthwhile for good players continuing to play out such a game further, at least at times). I think this particular variant seems to solve that problem well enough - if nothing else the variant is well tested and continues to be played, I gather!
My tentative estimates for the piece values in this variant would be: P=1; N=2.5; B=3.25; R=5.75; Q=10 and the fighting value of a K=1.6 (if the first of one team's kings is captured, ostensibly winning an exchange value of 1.6, add to this exchange value a periodically recalculated bonus of [sum of the value of the pieces and pawns in the remainder of that king's army, for as long as any of it remains on the board]x0.8 for virtually immobilizing the remainder of that army, with full value awarded for any virtually immobilized pieces that are subsequently captured); note that naturally the second of a team's kings cannot be allowed to be captured without the loss of the game.
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