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Other possible subvariant: Piece moved onto edge square may make another capturing move on the same turn (it is optional).
After seven years, I am ready to concede that JUMPING CHESS was the best idea presented in the 100 Squares Chess Variant Contest. Not comfortable with the 'capture the King' victory condition, so I finally did something about it. Also replaced Knights with Nightriders and added some short range leapers.
'JKL,LargeCV': The pieces tend to just clog in mass of defense. Rook and Queen are different from Xiangqi Cannon, as Bishop and Queen are different from 'Canon'. I.e., Cannon/Canon replace the one they capture after a leap, whereas Jumping.Q/R/B capture the one they leap and move on. T.R. Dawson's older Grasshopper has modified jump along radial lines, leaping one piece one step along the Queen-lines and staying put either in move or replacement capture. These examples show the trouble with hopping along B and R paths; there is no absolute saddle point as to the best modality. Extension to multiple captures turns this Queen into excellent Rococo's Long Leaper. These jumping pieces mimic in varying degree the other 64-sq.(and also 100-) game's one (convertible) piece-type's jump-captures, and must have been re-invented(and discarded) from time to time. Some primary school teacher surely has had occasion to say: 'Wrong game, Roger. That's Checkers. This year we learn Chess.'
Jumping Chess is not a bad game, the game play is very interesting, although it is undoubtely biased to defensive schemes if you want to have good chances of winning, but it is very strategic, perhaps much more than FIDE-Chess. If a player tries to play it using Michael Tal´s or Bobby Fischer´s styles, it is very possible it is going to be in disadvantage quickly. This game must be played a-la- Tigran Petrossian, for better possibilities.
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jan 24, 2005 05:30 PM UTC:You make a good point that because of the ring-board, the corners will still be vulnerable to capture. However, the opponent will have to move his pieces onto your side of the board to do it, and enter the ring-board, which brings its own (somewhat scarry) must-capture restrictions. I look at it like this: since two adjacent pieces can't be captured, adjacent friendly pieces are stronger than pieces which are split up. In order to attack, I have to split off pieces. Or, alternatively, I could just wait for my opponent to attack and then pick on those pieces of his which straggle onto my side of the board. As you point out, I can't ignore the attack entirely; I must respond. But I will surely wait for him to initiate it, because I believe any significant attack of his will give me the upper hand. Perhaps I'm wrong in this assumption; my first game is still ongoing (against Carlos Carlos.) Perhaps he will lash out in attack and prove me wrong ... If I am correct, however, than neither player should ever attack.
Since you can't jump over two adjacent pieces, all you need to do is make a mass of pieces in the middle, and they can't really be captured. In order to attack, you need to split up your mass of pieces, and I think that's a big mistake. Unless someone gets too aggressive, I think it's a sure stalemate.
Err, no. That's what the ringboard is for. If you form all of your pieces into a block, then the corners are vulnerable to capture, and since you can't enter the ringboard except by capture, you can't extend the block there.
Now, if you wanted to argue that Jumping Chess is more a defensive game than FIDE Chess, I'd say you're likely right, as leap capture is generally weaker than replacement capture, but simply blocking up isn't enough to prevent capture.
Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Jan 23, 2005 07:12 PM UTC:I think Jumping Chess is flawed in favor of defense. Since you can't jump over two adjacent pieces, all you need to do is make a mass of pieces in the middle, and they can't really be captured. In order to attack, you need to split up your mass of pieces, and I think that's a big mistake. Unless someone gets too aggressive, I think it's a sure stalemate.
Well, I can't agree with the 'poor' rating. I played a couple of
games of Jumping Chess with Peter. One of these is posted as a Game Courier Log and the other is posted as a Zillions Saved Game (See also). I enjoyed the games. I found that the jumping feature added an entirely new dimension to both capture and checkmate. The restricted outside ranks and files provided both opportunity and danger (which I found out the hard way).
<p>As far as uniqueness, that does not determine whether a game is good or
not. As far as the Knight's character being somehow degraded, I'm not sure
I understand the logic there: all the pieces have different capture
properties. As far as any 'veredict' from the number of Game Courier Logs, that does not say much, except for the most popular games, Shogi and Fisher Random Chess. Jumping Chess is No. 8 in the 2nd Game Courier Tournament Preference Poll -- not too bad; it'll probably enter.
<p>Jumping Chess also inspired me to invent Takeover Chess, which also won a contest. Again, I don't claim any special chess prowess, however, I did enjoy the game very much. Isn't that the point?
Jumping Chess is another contest winner (Aronson won several contests). This one is not recommended, mostly because generalized jumping eliminates the uniqueness Knight has. There are only two Game Courier log-scores the last one a year ago, indicating an apparent verdict. Besides, somewhere Aronson himself says jumping-chess concepts, or jumping pieces generally, were invented before. I did not bother to look that comment up, or jumping predecessors in Pritchard's 'Encyclopedia Chess Variants'. This set of rules is just one from a potentially infinite set of sets of game rules featuring jumping pieces. All that said, the board is important towards development of later Rococo. Also, jumping Pawn was a work-in-progress to its Cannon Pawn. With David Howe's contribution, they hit a home run with Rococo! Jumping Chess is a strike out.
I don't know Antoine -- toroidal capture could be rather confusing. Though it would deal with the edge problem somewhat.
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I'm wondering if using the jump capture rule from Amphibian Chess for
Knights would work in Jumping Chess: Knights make a Zebra's move to an
empty square to capture a piece a Knight's move away. They would probably
be weaker than the current Knights, and likely weaker than the game's
Bishops, if that matters.
Another idea might be to allow toroidal jump, that is, once a piece is jumped over, its overtaker could reappear at the other end of the board. (Thus a Bishop on b5 could overtake a piece on d7 by landing on e8, f1... and probably even b5 or c6 (d7?) if the 'toroidal' diagonal were empty. However, the game wouldn't be purely toroidal, because that same Bishop on b5 wouldn't be allowed to travel over c6, d7, e8... to capture a piece on, say, f1 and land on g2, h3 or a4. I have no idea whether a Pawn on the seventh line would promote before landing on the first line.)
A somewhat different, but related idea might be 'Amphibian Chess' (not previously published; name chosen in comparison to 'Mermaid Chess' and a tendency, in the problem lit, to use sea creature names for vault-to-capture pieces). Play is on an 8x8 board, and units must jump over to capture if there is a next square beyond the opposing unit, but capture by displacement if there is not.
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 28, 2003 07:52 AM UTC:Good ★★★★Sorry, I should have been clearer. Subject to my April comment I think that the game is a good one, for being close to both Chess (as you say) and Draughts. My later suggestions were for additional variants alongside it. A further example of this would be for pieces jumped over to change sides instead of being removed, which would lose a little of the Chess and Draughts character but add something of Shogi and just a touch (in terms of immediacy) of Othello/Reversi.
You must think well the initial setup if you use nightriders. The piece may add intensity to the game, but you must evaluate if idiosincracy of the game is lost with this piece, Jumping Chess is very near FIDE CHESS, with it´s own particularities, but the idea seems to be not too far from FIDE CHESS. The game is beautiful AS IS, but all idea that can add interest to the game should be considered and WELL evaluated (you can play-test the changes and alternative setups using Zillions. As you must have noted, Zillions plays Jumping Chess with a good level of play.
The Nightrider variant occured to me, too. In fact, I have a version of the ZRF that I'll post one of these days with both the modified Knight and the Nightrider. Multiple captures, while certainly possible, has the effect of increasing the relative power of the runner pieces vs the non-runners, which violates my attempt to keep some Chess-like character to the game.
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One thing about the Nightriders. If you have leaping Nighriders starting in the usual spot for Knights, the King's and Queen's Pawns are attacked on turn one, which is bad. The ZRF pushes the King's and Queen's Pawn forward a square to avoid this problem (they get no double-move from there).
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 14, 2003 08:01 AM UTC:Good ★★★★Two further variants occur to me. One is to have Nightriders instead of Knights, so that my preferred capture would be more in accord with the normal move of that piece. Another is to allow a capture of any number of pieces in a straight line, though not necessarily adjacent, like a Queen in French Draughts.
When I first designed this game, I thought a direct translation of the Knight's capturing move would be too weak, since pieces on the squares adjacent to ring squares couldn't be captured 1/2 the time, which was not true for any other piece. Since I wanted to avoid the edges being areas of safety, I defined a Knight that could capture pieces on the edge of the 8x8 center, unless blocked. Now, thinking about it, maybe I'll add the 'pure' Knight's move as a variant.
Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 07:10 AM UTC:There is one thing that seems not quite right in this game: the Knight's capture. Every other piece can capture only the pieces that it would be able to capture in standard Chess. For the King and Pawn this comes at the price of moving twice as far as would otherwise be possible, which is consistent with capturing moves in Draughts. No piece can capture using its shortest possible move: for example there is no question of capturing a piece on a2 or b1 by moving from a1 to b2. It would be better for the Knight's capture to be of a piece a normal Knight's move away by moving to the square a Knight's move beyond that.
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Jumping Chess originates the edge squares that Rococo uses two years later. Bishop captures like International Draughts diagonally and Rook like Turkish/Israeli draughts orthogonally. Except no plural captures, and in JC the line pieces slide any distance beforehand. But no displacement capture at all here. Jumping concepts are bandied about in 'ECV' a few times, but credit this improvement for the rim accessible only capturing.
JC may create too many defensive positions for most aesthetics.
JC year-2000 date of invention harkens to V. R. Parton's booklet 'My Games for 2000 a.d. and After' published 1972. There the CV "2000 AD" sources pieces for 30 years later great Rococo. Firsthand, Rococo is basically a derivative Ultima (1962).
( Contrariwise, Robert Abbott himself weighed in early Rococo comment that no need for border squares, just get rid of them. ) See next how Rococo draws on both Abbott and Parton. 20th century the chief variantists were Boyer, Parton, Betza and Dawson, but Dawson didn't bother with designing actual CVs.
The Rococo pieces straight out of Abbott's Ultima are Withdrawer, Immobilizer, Long Leaper, Chameleon. And the Rococo pieces straight out of 2000 A. D. are Ximaera and Swapper. Ximaera gets re-named Advancer. Finally, Rococo takes its own inventor's border squares from JC and adds that great novelty Cannon Pawn.
Perimeter-squared JC has little play, but Rococo, when adding its subvariants Push-Pull and Mirror, has the same number 10 rank approximately of near-form Ultima at Game Courier. And several ahead of them are a standard Chess form around hundred(s) years. Or combine play numbers of Ultima and Rococo and they are number 3. So arguably derived-form Rococo is a topmost world-class CV. Thanks to contribution of porous out-migration squares from selfsame JC.