[ Help | Earliest Comments | Latest Comments ]

[ List All Subjects of Discussion | Create New Subject of Discussion ]

[ List Latest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]

Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

⇩Latest ⇩Later ⇩Reverse Order⇧ ~~Earlier~~

Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Chess on a board made out of hexagons. (Cells: 91) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Peter wrote on Thu, May 6, 2010 10:11 AM UTC:

Live hexagonal chess competition will be in Hungary on
8-11 July 2010. More details at 
http://5mp.eu/fajlok/hexasakk/2010_tamasi_k_angol_www.5mp.eu_.htm
All are welcome!
Peter

Peter wrote on Tue, Feb 2, 2010 09:08 AM UTC:

The next live hexagonal chess competition will take place in Hungary on
12-15 March 2010. More details at 
http://5mp.eu/fajlok/hexasakk/versenykiiras_angol_www.5mp.eu_.htm
All are welcome!
Peter

Richmond Mathewson wrote on Tue, Apr 7, 2009 02:30 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I have been playing Hexagonal chess with this layout:

http://mail.maclaunch.com/richmond/hexchess.html

for years. I believe it is better than Glinski's because there is greater
space between opposing pawns.

David Paulowich wrote on Thu, Jan 31, 2008 02:46 PM UTC:

Carlos, the preset is listed under Hexagonal Chess (Glinski).

carlos carlos wrote on Thu, Jan 31, 2008 11:30 AM UTC:

where is the preset for this game?

Ian Hudson wrote on Thu, May 3, 2007 10:08 PM UTC:

Does anyone know where I might buy a Glinski Hexagonal chess board? If so, please email me at [email protected]. Thanks.

Sergej Korchitskij wrote on Thu, Apr 20, 2006 08:59 PM UTC:

It is no hard to win in hexachess! I never had such problem!

Tord Romstad wrote on Thu, Mar 23, 2006 09:49 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Hexagonal chess is no more drawish than normal chess, and it is no more
difficult to deliver mate than in normal chess.  It is true that the king
has greater mobility, but so does most of the other pieces.  The reason
why some beginners believe that it's difficult to deliver mate is
probably that spotting mating patterns can be a bit tricky for beginners;
partly because the game is unfamiliar, and partly because there is a
bigger number of potential flight squares to inspect in order to mentally
verify that it is indeed a mate.

I am the author of Scatha, which is probably the strongest hexagonal
chess
program available today.  Unfortunately, it only runs on Mac OS X.  If
someone is interested in giving the game a try against a strong opponent,
I would be happy to play a few informal e-mail games with Scatha.  I
would
be very impressed if someone manages a draw.

Gary Gifford wrote on Thu, Mar 16, 2006 01:59 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

In regard to Sam's comments about Glinski's great game.... I see no need to complain about it. It's been around since about 1936 or 1938 and little research shows that there were over 500,000 players of this game at one point... quite commendable. Also, it remains the most popular of hexagonal chess variants and even has world championship playoffs.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Thu, Mar 16, 2006 12:23 AM UTC:

I agree that six games is not an exhaustive sample. However, it's the best data I have available. Now, I don't have enough of a background in statistics to give you a error percentage with these figures; however, it may be telling that we have played 31 FIDE Chess games on Game Courier and not one of them ended in a draw.

Then again, according to this Russian page (translated via the fish here) King + Rook vs. King (and King + Queen vs. King) is a mate against a bare King.

I wish I had more game results to look at to see just how drawish this game is; the results over at Game Courier don't make this game look very good.

Perhaps Glinski's Hex Chess with Shogi drops?

- Sam

Editors: The last comment is a duplicate of this comment and may be safely deleted

Anonymous wrote on Thu, Mar 16, 2006 12:22 AM UTC:

Then again, according to this Russian page (translated via the fish here) King + Rook vs. King (and King + Queen vs. King) is a mate against a bare King.

I wish I had more game results to look at to see just how drawish this game is; the results over at Game Courier don't make this game look very good.

Perhaps Glinski's Hex Chess with Shogi drops?

- Sam

Roberto Lavieri wrote on Wed, Mar 15, 2006 11:57 PM UTC:

I have not confident data available, but I have seen a few results in high-level tournaments, by curiosity. I can´t conclude, but it seems, more or less, as drawish as Chess. It means: very drawish, as FIDE-Chess is, when played at very high level of play.

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Mar 15, 2006 11:28 PM UTC:

Six games is too small of a sample to draw any generalizations from. Another factor to consider is whether some of the players have any tendency toward drawing games. For example, Roberto Lavieri, who drew one of these games, has drawn about one quarter of all his games on Game Courier. In the game he played against Ben Good, the game ended while each side still had two Rooks, a Bishop, a Knight and several Pawns. Roberto was actually ahead by two Pawns and probably could have won, but he concluded that the game was drawish and offered Ben a draw, which, being behind, he was wise to take. If the game is drawish, your arguments for this will have to depend, at this point, on a priori analysis of the game mechanics or data on more games than those played on Game Courier.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Wed, Mar 15, 2006 08:47 PM UTC:

Looks like you're right.

Here is how I got to see all six games:

I went to this page
I typed in 'Glinski's Hexagonal Chess' in the 'Game Filter' box
I put down 'Anytime' as the age filter.
I put in 'Any games' as the status filter.
I got the six games you mentioned.

As an aside, I still consider a draw rate of 33% too high. Basically, if a game is getting over 10% draws, it is probably time to revise the game's rules.

- Sam

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Mar 15, 2006 08:37 PM UTC:

Six games have been played on Game Courier, and only two have ended in draws.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Wed, Mar 15, 2006 07:43 PM UTC:

Over three years ago, I pointed out that this game is probably too drawish, based on looking at the game mechanics (the king is too hard to checkmate). I'm not surprised that both games of Glinski's Hexagonal Chess played on the game courier server ended in draws.

My Russian isn't good enough to look at all of the games played in tournaments on the Russian page, so I can't get a sense of the draw percentage there, but I will bet you it's a lot bigger than the corresponding FIDE Chess draw percentage.

Here are three ways to make this game less drawish:

The king can only move to one of the six hexes that fully touch the hex the king is on. I proposed this over three years ago. As an aside, a rule like this will also make many 3d Chess games less drawish.
Bare king is a win for the other player; Mr. Gilman suggested this.
Add Shogi-style drops to the game

- Sam

Andreas Kaufmann wrote on Sat, Feb 4, 2006 11:14 AM UTC:

By the way, Alfred Pfeiffer found a nice way how to implement Glinski's standard notation in ZRF. One can simply use 'translate' command to give the cells desired coordinates: (translate ('g2' 'g1') ('g3' 'g2') ... ). I updated ZRF on my homepage (see my previous comment) with these changes.

Andreas Kaufmann wrote on Sun, Jan 29, 2006 10:05 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

ZRF with a nice graphics can be downloaded from my homepage. ZRF is by J. Mark Thompson and Ivan A Derzhanski, graphics created by me.

Olya Chichkina wrote on Sat, Apr 2, 2005 05:29 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Creative! It will probably take hours and hours, or days, or months to reach checkmate (if it's reachable at all!) since there's so much space on the board and I'm not sure if I'd want to play this more than once, but I'd love to have something like Hexagonal Chess as a decoration! Love the idea!

Bill wrote on Sun, Dec 19, 2004 02:48 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I had no idea.  Great page and very informative.

I think I will try this variant of the month.

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Sun, Mar 7, 2004 04:36 AM UTC:

Sergei Korchitsky, Byelorussian International Grand Master and vice-president of the IHCF, has a <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/'>site</A> with 20 <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/exercises.php'>problems</A>, more than 200 <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/debut.php'>games</A> played in four tournaments between 1994 and 1998, nearly half of which start with 1. Ndf4 (the moves are in English), and a few other pages in Russian covering <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/rules.php'>rules</A> (stating that a Bishop is worth 3 Pawns, a Knight 4, a Rook 8 and a Queen 16), <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/strateg.php'>strategy</A> (3 images), <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/taktik.php'>tactics</A> (28 images) and <A href='http://www.loktev.h1.ru/hexachess/Theory/ends.php'>endgames</A> (10 images).

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Apr 13, 2003 08:58 AM UTC:

This is not the only variant with a hard-to-checkmate king; the problem is widespread in 3d games as well. One solution that preserves the move extensions is to make baring the king a victory in itself, as was the case before the Queen and Bishop were introduced to square chess.

Sam Trenholme wrote on Tue, Dec 24, 2002 12:44 AM UTC:

I think this version of hexagonal chess has one fatal flaw: The kind has too much mobility and is too difficult to checkmate. In FIDE chess, it is possible for force a checkmate with a king + rook against a bare king; in hexagonal chess, one needs considerably more material to checkmate a bare king. <p> I think the easiest and best way to compensate for this is to have the king only able to move to a fully adjacent hex, reducing its move to that of a rook going one square. This way, the bare king can be captured by an opponent's rook and king, just like in FIDE chess. <p> - Sam

Ben wrote on Fri, Aug 16, 2002 04:11 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Wow, this is definatly one for the logisticly inclined ;) It may make your head hurt, but it's a lot of fun.

Anonymous wrote on Wed, May 16, 2001 12:00 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I searched all over the internet for basic information on Hexagonal chess and this one website gives me more information than all other websites combined!

25 comments displayed

⇩Latest ⇩Later ⇩Reverse Order⇧ ~~Earlier~~

Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.