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Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

George Duke wrote on Fri, Oct 19, 2012 03:23 PM UTC:

Add a full-rim border to 64 squares and you get 100-square 10x10. In turn, 64 squares come from 36 squares surrounded and 36 from 16 of the 4x4 smallest useful board. Well, here's a 2x2: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSdavesexamplega. The brilliance of Rococo is precisely the *Border Square*. The border squares make Rococo's play like a large Chess yet requiring the master precision most decimal Chesses lack.
Now piece/Pawn can move off a border space, but not onto one except in capturing. For design analysis a decade ago, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=5613, border squares were counted as 0.5 making Rococo as if 82 squares, right on the cusp of regular/to/large categories. Withdrawer can capture ending on a border square only from the 28 squares comprising the 8x8 perimeter, and border squares are more important the Withdrawer than LL, as Abbott implication mis-leads, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=5123.

Abbott and Betza, for that matter Dawson and Parton -- unable to imagine let alone cope with the ensuing chaos brought about by 80, 84, 90 and 100 -- were unapologetic adherents to strict 64 squares, outsized and outmoded.

Breaking the rule, Cannon Pawn gets established as 2.0 points above, instead of orthodox 1.0 to Pawn of every other design analysis, to keep comfortable, familiar values Advancer and Long Leaper. Important to Cannon Pawn, Border Square secures its value as 2.0, piece-comparable. For instance, Rococo Pawn captures there where Long Leaper cannot unless already in the perimeter.

Jeremy Lennert wrote on Fri, Oct 19, 2012 01:13 AM UTC:

Cannon pawns are hoppers, not locusts.  They capture by displacement.  They would not be hindered in ANY way by the absence of border squares.

George Duke wrote on Thu, Oct 18, 2012 11:41 PM UTC:

Fugue -- of course Fugue has a sort of two-range Archer. Robert Abbott is wrong about the border squares being for Long Leaper especially since they are at least as important in original Rococo for Cannon Pawn and the Withdrawer.

Johnny Luken wrote on Sat, Oct 13, 2012 10:25 PM UTC:

Replacing the spare long leaper with a 2 range archer seems a logical step forward. Merging the advancer and withdrawer takes a weak piece off the board, but the new piece is possibly too strong in an already offensive game.

I like the idea of keeping the withdrawer, but allowing it to capture king and officer pieces from up to 2 squares away, but perhaps only 1 square still for pawns.

Johnny Luken wrote on Sat, Oct 13, 2012 09:50 PM UTC:

Robert Abbotts idea for 2 cooperating triangulators would work better if one of the pieces was made "royal", and the other piece could be brought back, either as a circe piece, or brought into the game by its "royal" counterpart, which is the piece that would have to be captured in order to take both off the board permanently.

This idea could be used for other tandem pieces, which are an interesting concept by themselves, and throw up all kinds of new possibilities...

Carlos Cetina wrote on Sat, Aug 11, 2012 09:28 PM UTC:

Thanks Antoine.

Unfortunately I deleted accidentally the game in which was the position object of discussion, so we have no more any base to follow commenting the issue. 

However, by means of the "MOVE pieces by yourself" resource, I'll try to reproduce a similar situation.

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Sat, Aug 11, 2012 08:02 AM UTC:

In 1), both moves are legal, so Game Courier accepts them, just like it would accept h2-h3;h3-h4;h4-h5. But the second part of 2) isn't legal as a single move either.

Carlos Cetina wrote on Mon, Jun 25, 2012 06:16 AM UTC:

Thanks Peter.

I will follow your statement as the right viewpoint in this issue. However I wonder why the preset's program did not prohibit that double capture if it has reinforced the rules.

I made these two moves to test the preset:

1) C h5-f7;f7-h7 by capturing two pawns (f7 and h7)

2) C h5-f7;f7-h9 trying to capture the g8-advancer after capturing the f7-pawn

The preset's program allowed the first and banned the second.

Perhaps Antoine FourriÃ¨re may have something to say since he was who reinforced the rules.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Mon, Jun 25, 2012 02:56 AM UTC:

The first capture, C hf-f7, is legal.  However, pieces in Rococo don't get to make multiple capturing moves like in Checkers/Draughts, so the second capture, f7-f9, is not legal.  Rococo Chameleons can make multiple captures with a single move (when the move fulfills the requirements of multiple attacked pieces capturing moves), but not multiple moves.

Carlos Cetina wrote on Mon, Jun 25, 2012 02:14 AM UTC:

Peter, David:

On turn 7 in a game I'm playing with Yeinzon I made a double capture with the chameleon which he estimates it is illegal while I don't think so.

Could you please tell us your viewpoint?

Thanks beforehand!

George Duke wrote on Wed, Sep 21, 2011 01:18 AM UTC:

By the way, in a great game well worth playing, as most cvs are not, or rather better stated impossible to play much since there are so many thousands, Nelson's values and mine correspond very closely at the last Rococo comment before Aronson's in that I normalize Rococo Pawn to 2.0 as stated, and obviously Michael is using 1.0. If some half-line of OrthoPawns appeared, Nelson would call them 0.5. The first is mine and second Nelson's adjusted: Immobilizer 10,8; Advancer 8,6; Long Leaper 7,6; Swapper 5,4; Chameleon 4,4; Withdrawer 3,2; all same directionality anyway.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, Sep 20, 2011 06:46 PM UTC:

From the first paragraph of the section of the Rococo page titled 'Rules', third sentence:

Also, a player unable to move or who causes three time repetition loses as well.

Yeah, the Immobilizer is awfully powerful. I am beginning to think that the variant where the Withdrawer is immune to immobilization may be the way to go.

George Duke wrote on Tue, Sep 20, 2011 05:40 PM UTC:

Rococo is win by capture and implied is necessary inability to move as loss, that ought to be added in perfect rules write-up.  For example, down to King versus King and Immobilizer loses for the White King usually before the capture.  Both Mike Nelson and I find Immobilizer the strongest p-t, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=5219 and http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=5128. (Mine was immediate response to Robert Abbott who invented the sister cv 50 years ago this fall, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=5123.) In the way-out universe of cvs Immobilizer has the single highest value among all quite strong piece-types, yet I. can capture nobody. Immobilizer never really delivers the mate only ultimately assists.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Dec 9, 2009 04:39 PM UTC:

I really should update the rules one of these days. I would need to get my head back into Chess variants a bit more before I could do that -- at the moment family and RPGs have been absorbing my mental energies.

George Duke wrote on Tue, Dec 8, 2009 07:18 PM UTC:

The rules are well written but just need to be updated for clarifications from the 97 comments over the years. Here are several Rococo puzzles without stress on board positions as in mates-in-three:
(1) Can a piece ever legally move from border corner to border corner, X00 to Z0 or X0 to Z00? What piece or pieces under what circumstance(s)?
(2) What is the maximum number of pieces that may be captured on one move? 
(3) Is there any piece that may never move horizontally or vertically along border squares?
(4) What is the theoretical minimum number of moves for a Rococo Pawn to promote?
(5) Describe the quickest possible Rococo Fool's Mate.***  
***[Fool's Mate is just problemists' Helpmates from the start of the game. Helpmates were popularized by T.R. Dawson in the 1930s. This would be a good exercise for anyone who has not yet read every rules-set write-up. Namely -- expanding on that theme -- as you read them all, for each of the 4500 CVs of the Chess Variant Page: (a) figure its genuine Fool's-Mate equivalent, and please determine (b) does any of the 4500 CVs require a Fool's Mate of greater than 8 moves? Or 10 moves? Some CVs actually take quite a few, but so many as 10? Hint: think short-range-piece CVs.]

George Duke wrote on Sat, Dec 5, 2009 04:30 PM UTC:

Why is every different opening set-up of Carrera-Capablanca on 8x10 or 10x10 considered a different CV? It's the *ONLY* CV we allow umpteen CVs just for shifting to better array. Each designer's silly happy scream that hey he's got one, a new Carrera-Capablanca. Rococo starts Immobilizer-Withdrawer-LongLeaper-King-Chameleon-LongLeaper-Advancer-Swapper, that is, IWLKCLAS. If someone suggests Rococo as IWCKLLAS, bingo, is that a new CV? Of course not. That would be juvenile, and unfair to Aronson and Howe. Otherwise then like there are 40 or 100 Carrera-Capablancas, there can be 50 Rococos just by shopping around the starting array. The illogic and bad manners are self-evident, but the hard-core personalized CVers hopelessly will never stop it for Carrera's, because Capa is still a remembered Ortho-GM or something, though he died during World War II 65 years ago.

George Duke wrote on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 04:17 PM UTC:

Bent Riders going back to 700 year old Gryphon need to be organized better than Betza's article. Betza's article is a little self-serving. Another important category of piece-types may never have been defined clearly yet. Namely, Queens. Queens that differ. Face it, Queen is perfect for OrthoChess 64, and Carrera's Champion stinks. I mention that because Pritchard in Intro of 'ECV' says they would have made no difference there. Ridiculous. Now Queens don't have to capture by displacement. Here in Rococo are several other Queens with differing modes of capture. They move like Queens but Withdrawer, Advancer, Long Leaper, Chameleon, and Swapper act differently. Another example for this group is Betza's Medusa, or Gorgon, at Chess Variants with Inverse Capture. There are, or would be 50 or 100 piece-types we can throw in here that are fundamentally Queens with a twist or a tweak or a twirl, that have never rightly been grouped before.

Jeremy Good wrote on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 10:00 PM UTC:

'...it's hard to exaggerate the brilliance and effectiveness of wonderful Cannon Pawn.' Agreed. ;-)

George Duke wrote on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 06:17 PM UTC:

Thanks, Peter. Right, I was thinking only of Fugue(2004) that used Cannon Pawn before. They're brilliant and clearly at the high-power end for Pawns, Pawns of near Knight value on 10x10. That'a why they perfect the high power density of Rococo units, that all travel all the way down the line. (Barbara Stanwyck in 'Double Indemnity' 1943: ''All the way straight down the line'')

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 04:29 PM UTC:

Actually, Cannon Pawns did show up in an unpublished game that Ben Good suggested -- Cannon Pawn Chess. It was FIDE chess with the Pawns replaced by Cannon Pawns. I don't remember if promotion was only to captured pieces or not. I made a Zillions rule file for it for Ben, and we may have played a bit of it by e-mail. If I recall correctly, in that environment, Cannon Pawns were awfully strong as compared to the Knight and Bishop.

George Duke wrote on Mon, Aug 24, 2009 10:43 PM UTC:

pallab basu writes last year about going on 8-year-old Rococo, ''Rococo is one of the best non-chess like chess variants. All the problems of Ultima have been successfully dealt with.'' I agree. We have been omitting by accident *Rococo* and *Tetrahedral* Chess from our list of 20-50 CVs for emerging, not entirely hypothetical entities to develop. I would constructively add: (1) Forget the variants Aronson added later. They worsen it, except mirror array doesn't matter. (2) The fact that Cannon Pawns are only used one other time and that anything like border squares are rare before or after D.O.I. show respect recorded for this old classic. (3) Ambiguities are more easily resolved in cases involving Long Leaper and Chameleon pieces on the main board than for border squares themselves for pieces generally. I am pretty sure I could set up some positions involving borders that Zillions or some other thing would respond to differently from what we intend. Some of the border aspect needs further resolution. (5) Repeating somewhat, it's hard to exaggerate the brilliance and effectiveness of wonderful Cannon Pawn. (not to sound like Jeremy Good in hyperbole)

pallab basu wrote on Fri, Dec 26, 2008 03:18 PM UTC:

One can not move into check although the rules states that the goal of the game is to capture the opponent king, not to checkmate it.

Anonymous wrote on Wed, Dec 10, 2008 01:04 AM UTC:

Sorry I have got it.

pallab basu wrote on Wed, Dec 10, 2008 12:56 AM UTC:

How to use the self destruction of Swapper in game courier? I am playing a game and my opponent is unable to use this feature.

pallab basu wrote on Mon, Nov 17, 2008 04:13 PM UTC:

Rococo is an excellent game. In fact it is one of the best non-chess like chess variant. All the problems with Ultima (which it self was an nice game) has been successfully dealt with.

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