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Comment I must say I am intrigued by what appears a very workable, easily grasped variant with differing forces. One of better ideas in some time that I have seen. The idea of differing forces is a natural given the war-background of chess, the key will be in the balance achieved.
You can follow the lively discussion of Spartan Chess at: Spartan Chess Discussion. Here play balance, development and methodology, piece values and even Spartan poetry are discussed.
About to re-summarize history of Chess Different Armiesl in follow-up, here are two other comments CDA one by myself, one by Muller: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24856, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24874.
Concerning Mr. David Cannon’s comment about claims that cannont be substatiated…
I see your point and have removed these claims. Just so any future readers will not wonder just what claims were remove here they are: • No opening book • No end game studies I keeping with the spirit of this point I offer the following. |
What is the quickest checkmate possible in Spartan Chess?
I believe this is it.
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Black has two possible moves: Kg1-f1 and g2-f1. Since either move will expose both Spartan Kings to attack they are illegal. Therefore the situation is a draw due to stalemate. |
Actually, I see now that I was wrong on the stalemate: Kxf2 would be legal, because it captures the Knight that was checking Kh1. Initially I hd that Knight on g3, but then it was not possible to pin the Hoplite on f2, so I moved it. An old-style General (R+N) on g3 would have done both the check and pin, but with G=B+K that does not work anymore. I guess a position that does what I intended is:
8 . . . . . R . . 7 . . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . N 2 . . . K . h h h 1 . . . . . k k g a b c d e f g h
The fastest Spartan mate I could come up with, btw, it:
1. e4 Hfe6 2. Qf3 Cd6 3. Qxf8 Cb6 4. Qxe8# {White mates} 1-0
l g k . Q . w l h h h h h . h h . c . . h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P . . . . . . . . . . . P P P P . P P P R N B . K B N R
The fastest duple mate:
1. e4 Wh6 2. Qh5 Kg8 3. Qh4 Cd6 4. Qxe7 Cb6 5. Qxe8# {White mates} 1-0
l g k . Q . k l h h h h . h h h . c . . . . . w . . . . . . . . . . . . P . . . . . . . . . . . P P P P . P P P R N B . K B N R
Haaa! :) The first end game study, made to clarify rules concerning check and duple-check, contained a flaw! Well, it did serve it purpose and it did clarify the point. This reminds me of the play testing we did. Because we placed “testing the game” as more important than “ruthlessly beating our opponent” we allowed liberal amounts of take-back-zies. It was not infrequent that we would make a move and then moments later say “Whoops, your piece can move like that, my move was dumb” and we would take the move back. Sometimes we would backtrack 3 or 4 moves because the error someone made was so glaring. We could easily do this recording the game in reversible long algebraic notation. Wow! Duple-check and mate and 5 moves. We have yet to have a duple-check and mate in an actual game.
> duple-check and mate in an actual game.
Actually I did witness two. By now I had Fairy-Max play many thousands of games, but of course I have been watching only a tiny fraction of that. Perhaps a hundred or so. Both duple-mates occurred in the end-game, though. Typical way for the Persians to finish off a defenseless opponent is to promote two Pawns to Queens, and checkmate with those. If the opponent at that point still has two Kings, duple-mate is sometimes the fastest way.
Two Kings can succesfully defend against a single Queen, btw: KQKK is draw when the Kings protect each other. In this respect the spare King is better than the Rook: in FIDE Chess KQKR is always won.
> Spartan Chess is different armies, of which there are examples only
> 1% or 2% of 4000 CVPage CVs. What about matching Spartan with instead
> of common F.i.d.e. army, the great Betza line-ups, Nutty Knights,
> Colourbound Clobberers, Remarkable Rookies?
This would be interesting, as testing all of the CDA armies would be interesting. With the latest release of WinBoard, I had promoted CDA (in particlar FIDE vs. Clobberers) to the standard choice in the variant that WinBoard knows as 'fairy', and implemented Fairy-Max to play it. (I had to extend Fary-Max' castling code for this, because of the non-standard castling done by the Clobberers, and Adapt WinBoard to allow castling with any corner piece, not just Rooks). Next release of Fairy-Max can switch the variant presented as 'fairy' at run time, and will use this to add some more cases of CDA. (All combinations of Nutty Knights, Color-bound Clobberers and FIDE.)
The Clobberers raise some interesting fundamental questions in the area of piece values, about pair bonuses. The Nutty Knights are not particularly interesting, and to my taste a quite irregular and awkward bunch (too much forwardness, to little retreating capacity). The Remarkable Rookies cannot yet be implemented in Fairy-Max, as it does not support the concept of restricted sliders like the Short Rook. I never looked at the other armies you mention.
IMO Spartan Chess is much more than just another CDA army. The dual Kings give it a very nice twst, and equiping both sides with different Pawn types gives the game a quite different and refreshing 'feel'. Furthermore, the high regularity of its pieces appeals to my sense for symmetry.
This is the first of four parts on Spartan Chess: 1. Spartan Chess – The Dream 2. What makes Spartan Chess Different? - Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop 3. Spartan Chess – The Process 4. Spartan Chess - The Business -------------------------------------------------------------- SPARTAN CHESS – THE DREAM Some people count sheep to get to sleep... Having played tournament chess when I was in college, back when Bobby Fisher was winning a World Championship, a few years ago I started thinking about creating a chess variant. The variant needed to have two completely different sides with different strategies while still being fun and balanced. Must already have been done I thought as I poked around the internet and “Zounds!” found the Chess Variants web site. Yahoo! There was the very fine Chess with Different Armies and others but not too terribly many such variants. And I found none at all that featured the pawns on one side moving differently from the pawns on the other. My conclusions were that making a play-balanced chess variant with different armies was difficult and that putting different types of pawns on both sides was perhaps impossible. Otherwise someone would have already done it. What to do, what to do? I would go to bed, think of chess, and would soon be asleep dreaming of chess pieces and chess variants. I dreamt of pieces called legionnaires, bodyguards, berserkers and the pawns, always different types of pawns, what to do about the pawns? The sleep was good but progress was slow. After having watched the highly entertaining although grossly ahistorical movie “300” and the Military Channel’s “Thermopylae, the Real Story of 300” I awoke one morning. A voice whispered to me “Two Kings. The Spartans had two Kings!' 'Would that even work; chess with two Kings on one side?” I asked myself. Well it would certainly be unusual, maybe even unique. Chess with different pieces, different pawns, two Kings on one side? After at least five years of dreaming it suddenly had become just too appealing to me. I had to try it. After some design, some research, several rules reworks and a lick of play testing a version of Spartan Chess was created that was playable. The dream was over and the period of rational analysis was well underway. Spartan Chess has been the stuff of dreams, a small labor of love, and it’s been fun. Hope its fun for you too. I am retired now and have the time for this sort of thing and I’m still not counting sheep to get to sleep.
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