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Spartan Chess. A game with unequal armies. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 06:40 PM UTC:
> Wow! Duple-check and mate and 5 moves. We have yet to have a
> 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.


George Duke wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 04:27 PM UTC:
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? Muller nominated it provisionally #30 for Track I Next Chess evaluation. It will surely surpass last-ranked Seirawan Chess, which is just a drop-mechanism Mutator. Supporting material here and in the Spartan Chess separate thread compares to Trenholme's Schoolbook Chess(#10), the ''Carrera'' chosen to represent that cluster at the three-year-old NextChess project. Article, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24553, shows of 25 NextChesses ranked, 26-30 being provisional, Trenholme cares enough to develop opening ideas.

💡📝Steven Streetman wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 04:09 PM UTC:
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.

H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 12:47 PM UTC:

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

💡📝Steven Streetman wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 11:03 AM UTC:
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.

   
Persian Fools Mate
 No.    Persian     Spartan  
1. g2-g4 Wg8-f6
2. f2-f3 Wh4 #

This was prepared by H.G. Muller to clarify Spartan Chess rules concerning check and duple-check.

Black to play.
   



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.

David Cannon wrote on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 09:46 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
On the whole I like this game, but please refrain from making claims that cannot be substantiated. 'No opening book' and 'No end game strategies' are, in my judgement, subjective claims. FIDE chess - officially - has no opening book either. No does it have any official end game strategy. Just look up the rules of FIDE chess - you won't find anything about openings or end games. The popular openings (Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, etc.) are simply choices that have become popular because players have found them workable. Your game, Steven, isn't well known yet. But you can bet your life on it that if and when it does become well-known, people will be analyzing opening and closing strategies to find optimal advantages for each player.

George Duke wrote on Tue, Nov 9, 2010 04:08 PM UTC:
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.

💡📝Steven Streetman wrote on Tue, Nov 9, 2010 03:24 PM UTC:
All things Spartan Chess
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.

Calvin Daniels wrote on Mon, Nov 8, 2010 06:43 PM UTC:
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.

Jianying Ji wrote on Sat, Nov 6, 2010 03:43 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I have followed the development of spartan chess in the comments, and I must say I am deeply impressed, especially by the collaboration of H.G.Muller and Steven Streetman. The use of applied computational variantology (to coin a phrase) is a tour-de-force. This is how computers should be used in this field that we are in. I see a bright future in this approach.

I also look forward to a bright future for spartan chess!

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