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Turkish Great Chess variation V. Large variant with three new pieces. (13x13, Cells: 169) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Mar 16, 2003 09:52 AM UTC:
This makes for a big imbalance between square colours. All the colourbound pieces are confined to the same colour!

Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sat, May 12, 2007 11:43 AM UTC:Poor ★
I regret the chosen options to represent the pieces:
The Gazelle (that's the original name) moves like what we call a Camel. Why chosing a Giraffe to represent it?
The Great Ferz moves like the Giraffe in Tamerlane Chess. Why chosing a Chancellor, represented by Rook+Knight, to represent it?
These are unfortunate choices, adding confusion. I'd like to see them changed  one day.

By the way, this is the only variation which can be considered as Turkish. It appeared in 1805-06 in a Turkish Encyclopedia authored by Muhammad Hafid.
All other variants are not Turkish but Indians. See Murray for details.
(Gollon copied Murray but did a big mistake here. Pritchard pointed Gollon's mistake as well.). Too bad that those mistakes are continued here.

David Paulowich wrote on Sat, May 12, 2007 03:24 PM UTC:
The Great Ferz sounds like the Hippogriff, which has a movement diagram on the Gryphon page. For another web page on this chess variant, go to CWRU Medieval Society click on 'Arts & Science pages' and then click on 'Shatrank al-Kabir'.

Georgi Markov wrote on Wed, Oct 20, 2021 04:08 PM UTC:

The rules above seem to be seriously flawed due to a series of errors in the literature. Please check our paper with Stefan Härtel in Board Game Studies Journal 14, pp. 43-60: https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/bgs-2020-0003


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Wed, Nov 17, 2021 08:07 PM UTC in reply to Georgi Markov from Wed Oct 20 04:08 PM:

Interesting paper. Errors in describing chess variants are not uncommon in literature (see Grant Acedrex for example). However, not everything are errors as this paper says. There are always obscure points in the old and original descriptions, and they are rendered with some interpretation by more modern authors. This is also what the authors of this paper are doing themselves. In my opinion their reconstruction is speculating as much as Murray or others have done, but their speculation make sense and I think their proposed reconstruction is the best for this game, indeed.

If Markov contacts me I will be glad to discuss that with him.


Georgi Markov wrote on Sun, Dec 5, 2021 12:54 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Wed Nov 17 08:07 PM:

Thank you for your comment and the discussion.


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