Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Larry Smith feels in his own words ''projectile vomiting and extreme
migraines'' about the first of the four fundamental chess units, RNBF, that he calls the ''piece that shall not be named'' in two comments 7. and
8.November.2008. That once-in-a-half-millennium Chessic new departure by obvious consensus -- since no one now contradicts my claims -- called phoenix, falcon, spider, scorpion, horus, whatever, all considered on and off and used informally. The relevance is that Smith considers here a so-called planar
version of three-path Falcon, one that would be grossly restricted in its ability. Earlier Betza tried to fit Falcon into
Crooked Bishop and Crooked Rook schema, and in each case of Smith and Betza there are legitimate similarities worth considering of their counter-examples to normal Falcon. Although I had participated in votes (Bodlaender used to email ''you were the first to vote'') and read every page since 1996, I skipped entirely the first comment system, and my very first comment 1.August.2003 was somehow oddly a day or two after Betza's very last. So I never could challenge his compounding of those two Crooked ones to reach Camel and Zebra squares. Betza just flat-out disappeared altogether suddenly, saying he was going to watch baseball the rest of the summer. Adios said Betza, after a thousand comments of his and 200 articles and 35 years of CVing, and he meant it. Smith adds: ''I took a sledgehammer to my computer, burned it, stirred the ashes and burned it again.   I've also made an appointment with my neurologist to have excised those brain cells which continue to store data about the game. I will now go bang my head against the wall.'' Fine dilution of quality of commenting still remaining verbatim by standards of only last fall.

Oh, darn! Did I recreate this topic as the name was being changed?

How about the Anti-Cannon, which reverses the Xiang Qi Cannon's capturing
and non-capturing moves?

How about this Lion: moves without capturing as Squirrel, but captures by
igui as King?

Could you rename it to Piece Ideas?

Should be fixed now. There is currently no way for users to rename a
thread. If you want one renamed, let me know and I can make the change.

By the way, to the editors: I cannot go past the last few items in
comments. When I click Next 25 Items, it goes to different threads, like
Zhou Xia. Can you fix this so I can see the earlier discussion? And is
there any way of renaming a thread?

It's earlier in the thread. Here's how it moves: Moves a forward Bishop,
then backward Rook, then forward Bishop, moving the same distance each
step, without jumping. Can also move bR bR fB and all other combinations of two fB moves
and 1 bR move, or two bR moves and 1 fB move, just like George Duke's
Falcon, but moving unlimited and having the step directions restricted to
the fB and bR moves. Also, it does not have to land on a piece to capture
it. It simply has to step on it at the end of a fB or bR step. Note that
this mimics the hunting style of a real falcon. There is a restriction,
however, that it may only capture 1 piece in a turn. The alternative form
can also move without being restricted by other pieces. If you can, implement in on the Falcon Chess board with one side having George Duke's Falcons, and one side having my Falcons replace his. An optional second test if my Falcons lose is to use the unrestricted version instead.

Here is an example of when it moves 2 bR fB X bR.

Starting position with lines showing how the Falcon will move.
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . p . F . . . .
. . | \ | . . . .
. . | . | . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .


Step by step:

. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . 2 . F . . . .
. . 3 2 1 . . . .
. . 3 . 1 . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .

Ending position.
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . F . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .

About R vs C=(RN) and A=(BN) you are again correct. KQKR is generally won
(99.4% wtm, 46% btm), but KCKR is in general a draw (84% won with wtm,
1.6% btm), and so is KAKR (63% won wtm, 3% btm). It might sound strange to
descibe an endgame where 84% of the positions wins with wtm as generally
drawn, but the won positions are almost all positions where you either
immediately capture the black King (36%) and a very similar number of
positions where you capture an undefended Rook. That leaves only about 15%
of the positions (there is some double counting), and most of those are
positions where white can give an immediate fork or skewer. Normally, you
would not consider any of those positions as KCKR, as it is obvious that
the Rook is tactically doomed from the very start. If you can't gain the
Rook in on or 2 moves, it is almost always draw.

A Bison loses against any of Q, C and A. KAKBi is 98.3% won with wtm, and
52% with btm. The others do even better.

All this on 8x8.

pallab basu writes: 'I would like to see what happens in a endgame of R vs NB (cardinal) and R vs RN (chancellor). Also do NB+pawn win against a lone R?'

In order to fork the enemy pieces in a four piece endgame, the Chancellor needs to be only a Knight-leap away from the Rook, which suggests to me that the Chancellor is much less likely to win than the (true) Queen. I suspect that the Cardinal is much stronger than the Rook in endgames with one (or more) Pawn(s) on the board.

H. G. Muller writes: '... in end-games with only King and Pawns as other pieces, it seemed the Mastodon was very close to being exactly halfway between R and Q.'

Some thoughts on large variants: when I posted the first comment on Cataclysm, I valued the [N+F+W+A+D] piece halfway between a Rook and a Queen on a 12x12 board,, so I must have had a low opinion of the [F+W+A+D] piece in that setting. See my [2007-03-28] comment on Typhoon for some of the theory behind my calculations. Note that I hold the Knight constant at 300 points, while increasing the values of Rooks and Bishops on larger boards. Also I once wrote that 5 Rooks = 8 Bishops on all boards, which gives the exact values I am using on 12x12 boards.

I could not find a description of your Falcons anywhere, so I am not sure
if they could be implemented in Fairy-Max. If they could be, it would be
easy to evaluate them by self-play of Fairy-Max from positions with
material imbalance.

With my new evaluation of George Duke's Falcon, I admit that my own (the
multipath non-bifurcating one) is almost as weak, or even weaker. I am
considering tweaking it to be able to 'fly' , i.e. pass any amount of
pieces, so to make the board less cramped. Can anyone tell me if this would make it too powerful? I know
that the Bison has a very high tactical value through forking and jumping
over the enemy's Pawns in the opening. I would much appreciate it if
someone could playtest my new Falcon, and my original Falcon (the
multipath bifurcating one).

David Paulowich:
| When the King and Rook are widely separated, the winning move in this
| endgame involves moving the Queen 'x' squares, checking the King ('y'
| squares away) and attacking the Rook ('z' squares away). Usually at
| least one of x, y, z is greater than four, which suggests that the
| Short Queen would not win against the Rook in an endgame with only 
| four pieces on the board.

Your conclusion is correct: King + halfling Queen vs King + Rook is in
general a draw. Only 3.8% of the btm positions are won to white, and 40% of
those because black is already checkmated. There are a few lengthy mates,
though (where the black King starts trapped in a corner), the longest
taking 44 moves to mate or Rook capture.

I am not sure if this suppresses the value of the halfling Queen as much
as you think, though. KQKR end games are not that common. I play-tested
the 'Quareter Queen' (FWAD, which I believe is also known as Mastodon),
and in end-games with only King and Pawns as other pieces, it seemed te
Mastodon  was very close to being exactly halfway between R and Q. I would
expect the halfling Q to be better than halfway between Mastodon and
Queen.

Commoner was only slightly stronger than Knight, perhaps a quarter Pawn,
in endgames of two Knights against two Commoners in the presence of King
and (many) Pawns. So I got the end-game values

Knight   = 325 (Kaufman)
Commoner = 350
Rook     = 500 (Kaufman)
Mastodon = 750
Queen    = 975 (Kaufman)

and, based on this, would estimate the Halfling Queen somewhere around
875-900.

This post has been removed for excessive foul language.

Betza calls them 'anti-Halflings':
http://www.chessvariants.org/dpieces.dir/halflings3.html
Sorry.

Mein gott! I just got an idea! The 'OTHER HALF'ling! It does the moves
that a regular piece can do that a Halfling cannot!

Ralph Betza called a Short Queen a Halfling, and wrote a couple articles on
such pieces here:
http://www.chessvariants.org/dpieces.dir/halflings.html#HALFLINGCHESS

Short queen vs Rook endgame will be very interesting. I would like to see
what happens in a endgame of R vs NB (cardinal) and R vs RN (chancellor).
Also do NB+pawn win against a lone R?,

John Smith, good thought about Halloween themed chess.

Click here for Next 25 items. Regarding H. G. Muller's 2008-11-02 Comment, I am restricting my investigations to the more limited subject of endgame values on the 8x8 board:

Define a Commoner to move like a Queen (one square only) and a Short Queen to move up to four squares like a Queen. I value the Commoner halfway between a Rook and a Knight and the Short Queen halfway between a Rook and a (true) Queen. Note that King and Commoner can trap and mate a lone King. I decided to value the Short Queen well below the (true) Queen after examining some King and Queen versus King and Rook engames in a chess database. When the King and Rook are widely separated, the winning move in this endgame involves moving the Queen 'x' squares, checking the King ('y' squares away) and attacking the Rook ('z' squares away). Usually at least one of x, y, z is greater than four, which suggests that the Short Queen would not win against the Rook in an endgame with only four pieces on the board.

What I meant was moving without leaping in one kind of move N squares, then
moving without leaping in another kind of move N squares. I don't think
most of them count, because they simply repeat a short multipath move, and
the others are leapers, which I view as moving one square at a time,
'hippogonally', 'dromegonally', etc. I'm sorry if I sound conceited.
I am not trying to make my definition so narrow that I had to have an
original piece.

Yeah, I guess my old Falcon is more creative. I've never seen any piece
other than a Sissa that is a multipath that can move an unlimited amount
of spaces. You seem to have misunderstood my piece, which can only capture
on the square it finishes its move on, but your version is great because
then it can swoop like a real Falcon. Well, that leaves at one more piece
for my next variant. I think it could be an Elephant (any ideas?) , and I
could rename the Falcon as the Hawk, so to fit in nicely with a Seirawan
chess set. ;) (And no, I'm not H. G. Muller.)

John Smith finds  there are more possibilities for bifurcation pieces. Jeliss and 20th
Century problemists must have had nearly ten. Winther has added 40 or 50.
Like most piece-type categories, there are almost unlimited imaginative
possibilities. Only bland long-range leapers seem restricted by the board size.  That is definitely bifurcation, but it would be better with
three-path Falcon. Then sometimes player would have choice of direction of
continuation after the capture, depending on the pathway chosen to
indicate. The Falcon-Hunter version instead, as described by John Smith,  would overlap with some of Winther's already
conceived, differing only in the reverse direction.