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Yangsi. A very playable chess variant with 12 different pieces on a 10x10 board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Jan 9, 2019 07:27 PM UTC:

I don't see the "either side can move first" as being particularly noteworthy.  You've eliminated the white/black advantage, but the first/second player advantage isn't changed.

Personally, this seems to just be a decimal subvariant of Fergus's Gross Chess; the rule adjustments seem to just be conforming to the smaller board.  The further piece reduction to your other game (in particular using the Leo in place of the Pao and Vao) seems a more separate variant (while still clearly inspired by Gross, with the compounds and Omega pieces and hopper[s]).


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Jan 10, 2019 02:20 AM UTC:

Deciding who moves first: In Chess and most chess-like games, the first move is always given to one side. In Chess, the side with the first move is always White. However, the side with the first move also has first-move advantage. In Chess, White has a slight statistical advantage over Black simply because White always has the first move. Because either side can move first in Yangsi, that slight statistical advantage is eliminated.

You make it sound like this is an advantage of this game, but it isn't. The first move advantage still exists. While it no longer belongs exclusively to one color, the new rule concerning who moves first doesn't change how frequently the actual players each have this advantage. I would recommend scrapping this rule, because it does not actually make the game any fairer. It is simpler and better to just follow Chess on this one and let White move first. How the players decide who will move first would then simply come down to how they decide who will move as White.

While I'm glad that Gross Chess has played a role in igniting your interest in Chess variants, I have my doubts that reducing the size of the board while keeping the same pieces will make for a better game. The opening setup in Gross Chess is designed to give most of the pieces a little bit of freedom of movement from the very beginning. That gets lost with all the pieces crammed together. Also, this game has 60% piece density at the beginning of the game, which is higher than the 50% in Chess or the 64/144 = 44.4% in Gross Chess. This might make the game more cramped. However, I haven't done any extensive study on how piece density affects game quality, and I'm only guessing that higher piece density could have a deliterious effect. Some actual gameplay is required before I can make a more considered judgement on this matter.


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jan 10, 2019 11:07 AM UTC:

Indeed, this first-move business is just the usual method for randomization of the right to move first, except that it now has a the side effects of renaming the colors and swapping King and Queen to play the game in mirror image. It adds nothing but confusion.


John Davis wrote on Thu, Jan 10, 2019 01:52 PM UTC:

Sac Chess has the same piece density and is a popular game. Play testing is always a good idea.


💡📝A. M. DeWitt wrote on Fri, Jan 11, 2019 05:48 PM UTC:

When I designed Yangsi, I did so with the principles in Fergus Duniho's On Designing Good Chess Variants in mind. I have actually playtested this game several times. The people I played the game with all thought it was fun and very playable. I remember one particularly enjoyable game I played where I had a bare King and my opponent had a king and two pawns. That game ended in a draw via stalemate.


💡📝A. M. DeWitt wrote on Fri, Jan 11, 2019 10:14 PM UTC:

The rules for deciding who moves first after deciding who controls which pieces is no longer effective in Yangsi or Hectochess.


💡📝A. M. DeWitt wrote on Fri, Jan 11, 2019 10:54 PM UTC:

Increasing the board size does give the pieces more freedom of movement, Mr. Duniho, but it also does another thing - it makes it harder to keep track of everything. You yourself have stated this in your article "On Designing Good Chess Variants" in the section "Don't make your game too small or too large."

"Small games can finish too quickly, and large games can last too long. Note that the three classics are on moderate sized boards, ranging in size from 8x8 for Chess to 9x10 for Xiang Qi. 10x10 has proven a good size for many games, though 12x12 and up might be too large. I have recently (November 2009) created a 12x12 variant called Gross Chess. To some extent, this is an experiment with a board of this size. The only pieces it adds have been tried and tested in other variants, which allows the game to be a test mainly of the increased board size. Games against Zillions of Games suggest that the game is enjoyable but the larger size makes it harder to keep track of everything. I haven't yet won a game against Zillions without taking back moves. I have played a couple games on Game Courier, drawing one game and losing the other."

As for your comments on piece density, I don't think that cramming the pieces together within a 10x10 space will create too many problems. Kevin Pacey's Sac Chess also has a piece density of 60% at the start of the game, and is one of the top 50 games on Game Courier.


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