[ List Latest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]
Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
I have to correct myself: The tower has the can-mate property in the corner on this board. The mate picture looks like White King d1 Tower c3; Black King a1 or a2. This mate can be enforced. Therefore I correct my previous rating to 'excellent' for a working chess variant on a trigonal board. --JKn
I do not like it when people view the Tower as the equivalent of a Rook. It is the equivalent of the Crooked Rook. (You'll see if you connect the cells' centres.) Thank you, Graeme, for including both pieces. In a subvariant, you could include the 'Elephant', the triangular equivalent of a Crooked Bishop. You could replace the Queen with the Elephant.
I have thought of trigonal variants with similar pieces for years, but did not ever publish a game. The reason is that even the advantage of a tower does not win the game, the endgame king + tower vs. king is only a draw. I turns out that the trigonal king is not as good as the square king in assisting a mate; the reason is the rounded envelope of the fields he covers. So winning by the FIDE rules makes the game 'poor'. It could be improved by allowing a win by bare king. --JKn
Hi Graeme! I'm delighted to see this variant. I've been mucking around with a few trigonal boards myself, so I'm glad to see you cut the trail for me. Just one comment: I notice that you've made the Queen a combination of Spire and Bishop. That makes the Queen scarcely more powerful than the Tower (a Rook-like piece). Have you considered a Spire-Tower combination for the Queen? That would make a much more powerful piece worthy of the name, in my opinion. You could still keep the present Queen, but perhaps change her name to something else. And by the way, could we get a Zillions program to play this game? Keep up the good work!
Interesting idea. I've often wondered what a triangular Chess might look like. Also: Oww, my brain!
I like seeing variants move beyond the usual square and hexagon boards. Another interesting board is the board used in the ParaChess variant. Not to forget the Crazy 38s board. Some other boards that may make for good chessvariants are some of these boards or these potential boards.
- Sam
'... should push the 2 piece values closer together here, no?'
Cheers Graeme
Joe, I've had a quick look at my calcs again -
- Q = 11.508
- T = 10.297
Cheers Graeme
Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Aug 27, 2007 01:01 AM UTC:Jeremy, I want to play it before actually rating it, but my general sentiments are quickly discovered in my comment. Graeme, okay, I went back and counted the 'forward' trigons for the Queen and the Tower, and came up with 18 for the Queen when it's just behind the midline as opposed to 15 for the Tower; 15/18 = 5/6 = 10/12, so there's a match to your values. I would like to play Devil's Advocate just a bit here, and ask why the Queen is not reduced somewhat for being moderately colorbound. Now it's true the Q can reach any of the 11 trigons in the back rank from a [actually, the corresponding] trigon in the front rank in one turn, and the T cannot. There is one trigon on the back rank [the King's location] that the T cannot reach in one move. But only one - the T can get to any point on the board in 2 moves, just as the Q. And the T has 1 more valuable attribute the Q no longer has, the T can interdict the King. The amount of colorboundness and the ability to interdict should push the 2 piece values closer together here, no? Hey Graeme, you thought about Penrose tiling? :-) Enjoy, and real nice game; I'm looking forward to playing triangular games.
Joe, the piece values were derived using my PERK method. This is still being developed and I have not checked the calcs thoroughly yet, hence the term guesstimate.
I think the downgrading of the Bishop is due, as you said, to it being colour-bound.
As for the Tower, in comparison with the Queen it suffers on 2 counts:
- It attacks in only 6 directions (Queen attacks in 12)
- It moves more 'slowly', taking 15 steps to cross the board (Both Spire and Bishop take only 7 steps)
Joe, did you mean to assign an actual rating along with your comments? It seems as though we can create a fully realized preset for this, but only with a custom board. Unfortunately, we can't use triangles as building blocks, not at this time, anyway, at least probably not unless Fergus Duniho decides to program triangles into Game Courier.
Joe Joyce wrote on Sun, Aug 26, 2007 03:43 AM UTC:Excellent concept game; very, very pretty, nicely evolved. I think the board is crying out for a larger piece set, though. [Amazingly, I have a few ideas! :-) ] Gotta see how it plays before I can rate it. The rooks, excuse me, towers, look a bit overwhelming. The pawns are excellent. Your 'queen' seems to be an absolutely necessary power piece [but I might change the name - certainly not the piece] as a counterbalance to the tower. Number of squares attacked from your movement diagrams; and then divided by 3 [and rounded], and then your values: Tower - 37; 12; 10 Queen - 36; 12; 12 Spire - 19; 6; 6 Bishop - 18; 6; 5 both kNights - 9; 3; 3 and the King - 12; 4; not rated by you Question: why are the Tower and Bishop apparently downgraded? Okay, the Bishop is colorbound, but the Tower isn't and the Queen almost is.
This game makes me excited to begin playing with triangles for the first time.
Can someone with the technical knowhow please add this type of triangle as one of the building blocks for Game Courier?
Who can help with this? Tony?
I'm very excited to play Graeme's game and also design a trigonal game with different types of tiling riders.
In a private note, I am critical of Graeme for choosing to call the queen spire + bishop since a queen is traditionally bishop + rook.
On a second read, I can see how that happened.
The rook already goes to all the squares the bishop goes to, but to retain its defining feature of colorboundness, the bishop can not behave like a spire. So the nomenclature is a bit odd at first, but ultimately it makes sense.
Kudos, Graeme, BRILLIANT job!
An imaginative use of an unorthodox board. This game has potential for intersting further developments, for example with other compound pieces.
14 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
Yes, tower is actually analogue of crooked rook, that's why bishop's moves overlaps with it (and part of Knight-Errant's moves also overlaps with it, analogue of normal knight). Real rook analogue would be weak piece, making circular moves on adjecent cells (here 'king' can leap to any square, where rook would be able to go, but is not blockable). Here is another natural piece for triangular board, it can be called unicorn (or rabbi? http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSanglojewishche ), also circular-moving: /\ / \ ---- /\ /\ / \/ \ -------- /\ /\ /\ / \/* \/ \ ------------ /\* /\ /\* /\ / \/ \/ \/ \ ---------------- /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ / \/* \/ \/* \/ \ -------------------- /\* /\ /\U /\ /\* /\ / \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \ ------------------------ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ / \/* \/ \/* \/ \/* \/ \ ---------------------------- /\ /\ /\* /\ /\* /\ /\ /\ / \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \ -------------------------------- It's restricted to board's quarter (look here to see it's bindings http://www.chessvariants.org/shape.dir/tc.html ). I'm now making game with these pieces, maybe, it will be ready several days later.