Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Treating the Bishop conversion rule as a piece-type change in the Interactive Diagram through a custom function WeirdPromotion() embedded as JavaScript in the HTML page:

  function WeirdPromotion(x1, y1, x2, y2, promo) {
    var piece = board[y1][x1]; // moved piece
    var type = piece & 511;    // strip off color and virginity bits
    if(type == 6) {            // convertable Bishop
      promo = piece - 3;       // demotes to Bishop
      var partner_x = 8 - x1;  // start location of other
      if((board[y1][partner_x] - piece & 2047) == 0) // contains same piece (igore backround color flags)
        board[y1][partner_x] = ((x1 ^ x2 ^ y1 ^ y2) & 1 ? piece - 3 : piece + 1); // demote partner to B or W
    } else if(typ == 7) promo = piece - 4; // converting Bishop always promotes to Bishop
    return promo;
  }

Today, five years after having released this variant, it’s opportune to recapitulate what has happened and make a sort of balance.

There are 119 finished games recorded in the Game Courier database, of which 114 are games that I played with different opponents, while the remaining 5 were played by other people (although some of these 5 are plaged with illegal moves).

1 Сергей Бугаевский – per hommerberg [per31-cvgameroom-2018-230-424]

2 Сергей Бугаевский – per hommerberg [per31-cvgameroom-2018-230-425]

3 Play Tester – per hommerberg [per31-cvgameroom-2018-235-544]

4 per hommerberg – Play Tester [per31-cvgameroom-2018-247-532]

5 per hommerberg – Aurelian Florea [per31-cvgameroom-2018-342-417]

My performance against my various opponents is the following:

In view of the little interest that there is in chess variants, I would say that 119 games in 5 years is not so bad; they are almost 24 per year, that is, 1 every 15 days!

Anyway, in order to attract more fans I just created a channel on YouTube where I will regularly upload videos showing games that have been played here in Game Courier so that viewers can easily and conveniently see in a few minutes the full development of a game. For optimal viewing I recommend see them in full screen mode. I have started with the first two games of the long and endless match that I have with my dear friend Kevin Pacey.

Carlos Cetina vs Kevin Pacey (Game 1)

Kevin Pacey vs Carlos Cetina (Game 2)

The interesting bishop's conversion rule makes this variant tricky to handle in the opening stages. On a 9x8 board, bishops are only clearly slightly better than knights, the development of which can also be tricky to decide on. The extra queen per side make this a variant rich in possibilities.

My tentative estimates for the piece values of this variant would be: P=1; N=3.5 approx.; B=3.75; R=5.5; Q=10.25 and the fighting value of K=3.5 approximately (though naturally it cannot be traded). Note that a N has slightly less excellent central squares on an empty 9x8 board compared to on a 10x8 board (in Capablanca Chess I rate also rate a N as worth 3.5 approx., but actually a little less than on 9x8 when not rounding to the nearest 0.25), but the 9x8 board being somewhat smaller seems to at the least offset this IMHO, as a N can have a slightly easier time getting from one extreme flank to the other.

• Experiments in Symmetry

• Ultrachess
• Active Chess
• Ministers Chess