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IO Chess. Variant on 16 by 16 board with many pieces. (16x16, Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Tue, Oct 4, 2016 08:33 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

Here are Griffin and Aanca as Spider of recent talking points.

IO Chess is complicated like Betza's Captain Spalding but at least C.S. is on simple 8x8 whilst IO is the largest acceptable size of 16x16. Computer promotes to Quantum Computer. Around 2000 it was the style to include a sample game with every worthwhile write-up, and sure enough Hedden puts a plausible first 13 moves for IO Chess. Is this the first recorded move order for 256 squares?

Pawns have initial 5-step option. Rook promotes to Castle upon Castling, and then that piece Castle, already Queen value, further promotes to Fortress upon reaching the last rank, attaining value comparable to Amazon. Also appearing are two-square-occupancy Wall and Crooked Knight, named a little differently by Knappen in Nachtmahr article on the many Knight riders. There are several other piece as opposed to pawn promotions besides the Rook -> Castle -> Fortress told above.

Tamerspiel and Pocket Mutation and this IO Chess were three of those having double promotion for some pieces around and after year 2000. Check of dates of invention could show which ones were duplicating that general idea from the earliest one. This IO may be the first to use it.


George Duke wrote on Sat, Mar 12, 2005 07:21 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
'GHI,LargeCV': Normally the line is drawn at 12x12 for working coherence. Contrariwise Europan(14x14) and IO(16x16), having lower piece-type density, are superior to Ganymede(12x12). Pawn initial five-step at option. There is the sense to pair the following pieces: Gryphon; Spider as diagonal equivalent of Gryphon; Supercomputer(Trebuchet + Alfil + Camel); two-square-occupancy Wall; and Crooked Knight. The latter is called Straight Narrow Crooked Nightrider by Jorg Knappen in 2002 Nachtmahr. Pieces promote as they do in more recent 2003 Pocket Mutation Chess(hey it's all about promotion, isn't it?). Promotees include Gnu(N+Camel); Fortress(R+N+A); Hippogriff(G+R); Tarantula(Spider + B); Moonrider(NN + Zebra); Quantum Computer(Supercomputer + K + N). A further innovation is that the act of castling itself creates an alternate promoted form of the Rook then and there.

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