Rated Comments

I just stumbled on this page, and it's quite interesting.  (Very old, but still good.)  I am, however, very surprised to see the Lion listed as the most powerful piece.  If I needed a snap decition between Amazon/Lion I would have said Amazon on reflex....very interesting.

The historicity of this variant vastly increases it's importance....it's possible this is the beginning of pawn's double move, and the first appearance of a diagonal slider.  Very important.

This has some very interesting ideas, but the end result feels a little much.  I'm not sure I completely understand the moving over full squares rule.

I just have to say, this is a clever idea.  Very nice.

I rather like the idea.  Assuming fairly normal piece moves.

  I would expand the piece set to start some fairy pieces on the empty faces, myself.

INTERESTING.

Wow.  I like. 

Bishop moves are darn tricky.  They have an abundance of paths to take, I'm guessing they are valued approxamently the same as a rook.
Also, don't rooks tend to be more dangerous on a circuar board?
Consequently, the queen might be overly powerful.

I honestly think that there could be more peices to play with the different angles.

I think this has a germ of brilliance, but incomplete.  This definitly has some unrealized potential.

Very interesting.  I like the different moves on each board and how they relate to each other.  Nice job!

This is absolutely the best out-there/crazy idea I have ever seen for a chess variant.
I've spent hours lurking on  this site and have never seen anything else quite like it.

I have not actually tried it yet, so I only gave it a 'good' rating, but it looks awesome.  I have plans to make a physical copy...

Two thumbs up!

I like this cool variant even better than the somewhat similar Pocket Shogi Plus, owing to each side having a Copper General at the outset.

This is something of a ground-breaking variant, when it comes to Shogi-like ones.

An interesting variant, albeit a slightly complex one. The kings' recruiting power is a ground-breaking idea.

An interesting variant that reminds me of Chinese Chess a little bit, in that the pieces are all fairly weak compared to that of orthodox chess. It's also less complicated to understand than at least some of Gary's other variants.

This variant is another nifty-looking one by Gary Gifford, albeit with a certain degree of complexity to the play.

This cool chess variant is at least to some extent ground-breaking. Though I initially had trouble grasping the large number of rules (which almost makes this variant more like a wargame), the effort was worth it now that I have at least some inkling of how the game's strategies might work in practice.

I'm not all that sure I agree with (as I noticed elsewhere) Greg's usual dislike of variants having lots of 'power' (in terms to having several very powerful pieces, on a board of relatively modest size dimensions in particular, I assume), but this variant's very powerful armies on an 8x8 board strikes me as very over-powered, at least at first. Still, if Ralph Betza has given his name to a variant he invented, it suggests the idea may not be so bad at all... It's been played lots on Game Courier, so far, so that alone means its had some pretty good testing.

I'd like to nominate Seirawan Chess for the Popular category (I'm hoping we can squeeze at least this one entry onto the list of Recognized Variants, after something of a long lull).

I think the wiki on this variant gives the idea here and there that it has become rather popular since its invention over 10 years ago. Notably, mentioned are a number of websites devoted to it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seirawan_chess

I find this variant to be worth rating as Excellent, if only since it seems to me to be at least as good as Capablanca Chess, while remaining on an 8x8 board as used for chess.

I've played a few games of this and I think you've hit on a winner.  It's a very exciting game.  Congratulations!

There were two different pages for this, so I've moved the comments over from the other page and deleted it.  We should get a Game Courier Preset page for it published also.

Jumping Chess originates the edge squares that Rococo uses two years later. Bishop captures like International Draughts diagonally and Rook like Turkish/Israeli draughts orthogonally. Except no plural captures, and in JC the line pieces slide any distance beforehand. But no displacement capture at all here. Jumping concepts are bandied about in 'ECV' a few times, but credit this improvement for the rim accessible only capturing.

JC may create too many defensive positions for most aesthetics.

JC year-2000 date of invention harkens to V. R. Parton's booklet 'My Games for 2000 a.d. and After' published 1972. There the CV "2000 AD" sources pieces for 30 years later great Rococo. Firsthand, Rococo is basically a derivative Ultima (1962).

( Contrariwise, Robert Abbott himself weighed in early Rococo comment that no need for border squares, just get rid of them. ) See next how Rococo draws on both Abbott and Parton. 20th century the chief variantists were Boyer, Parton, Betza and Dawson, but Dawson didn't bother with designing actual CVs.

The Rococo pieces straight out of Abbott's Ultima are Withdrawer, Immobilizer, Long Leaper, Chameleon. And the Rococo pieces straight out of 2000 A. D. are Ximaera and Swapper. Ximaera gets re-named Advancer. Finally, Rococo takes its own inventor's border squares from JC and adds that great novelty Cannon Pawn.

Perimeter-squared JC has little play, but Rococo, when adding its subvariants Push-Pull and Mirror, has the same number 10 rank approximately of near-form Ultima at Game Courier. And several ahead of them are a standard Chess form around hundred(s) years. Or combine play numbers of Ultima and Rococo and they are number 3. So arguably derived-form Rococo is a topmost world-class CV. Thanks to contribution of porous out-migration squares from selfsame JC.

My rating is specific to the Davidson Variation of Chaturanga.

If Davidson was correct (about Kings being able to move into check and to be captured), this would make an interesting alternative evolution story from Chaturanga to Shatranj, which makes a nicer transition story from Chaturanga to Shatranj to Chess.

Chaturanga - Davidson Variation (Rule Enforcing) Presets:

• Original ashtapada Indian board.
• Alternate uncheckered plain Persian board (without ashtapada markings).

@Dr Muller: You had mentioned that you had analyzed the D document of historic chu shogi problems in MSM, had reserved the results of your analysis, and had concluded that 18 were proven flawed.  I wonder if you had reached a conclusion about the 18 like one that Mr Hodges proposed about the D document generally, that necessary pieces possibly had been omitted or erroneous pieces introduced into the diagram to act as a security device against plagiarism.  I read your suggested corrections to problems in the other 3 collections; I do not ask you to divulge more than you want about D, only to ask if your research suggested that the flawed problems might be fixed by the removal, change, or addition of pieces to the diagram.  Kind regards!

Another cool idea i like this comments in this post

there is another very interesting in

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and in addition he offers a very good chess guide...

(The first couple of remarks below reference Fergus's old comment here.)

The errors are indeed quite troubling.  Perhaps you can reach out to John Beasley; he has a list of errata/omissions included as "Toward ECV3" on his site.

As for brevity, I've found many of the game descriptions lacking; I suspect that was mostly to keep the overall length short.  (I'll also note, though I don't think this applies to any of your games, that some games seem to be included light-heartedly, and incomplete descriptions of these do not bother me.)

Evidently, Beasley cut out some examples of play from the first edition, assuming the reader would already own the first edition (not true of me, nor I suspect of most readers who have access only to the freely shared version now on Beasley's website), which would be nicer to have.

But overall, I find the CECV to be an excellent resource.  Pritchard (and occasionally Beasley) go into detail on games he (they) find particularly interesting, and list references for most of the games (though many of those have since become difficult to obtain).  Many games appear in both CVP and CECV, while many reside only in one or the other; but I doubt many "serious" variants lie in neither.

J. C. Hallman in 2004 'The Chess Artist' interviews Kirsan Ilyumzhinov at his multi-million Chess City, Kalmykia.  Then the f.i.d.e. President says to the effect:  whatever happens, or even thought of, in the mundane "real world," Chess has already been there, having visited every eventuality.   So this Orwell '1984'  by Overby.

As in '1984', three  players Eurasia, East Asia. and Oceania.  Everyone reviewing loved it except Charles Gilman.  Maybe he is right one or two of the 7 piece-types could be tweaked.  But this is perfectly symmetrical solution to three-player CV.  

Three teams ebb and flow constrained from unfair alliance by cylindrical downwards and up, and by Shifting Alliances rule, and by Perpetual Powers rule.  Variant pieces go back to year 1283 in Gryphon.  King may move into check because the dice may free him.  The '3x1's give where the Berolina pawns promote, and the seventh piece is promotee royal Maharajah.  

This is very similar to a game that I have conceptualized, but never published. My own game starts with the usual 8x8 square board and the pieces arranged as usual, with all the usual rules of play, except that in lieu of moving a piece, either player may move an unoccupied square. A square may only be removed from the edge of the board (an edge cell being one with less than four orthogonally adjacent cells) and placed orthogonally adjacent to another cell.

I have a (general) rule of not publishing things here until I have programmed them for Zillions. I'm a mediocre programmer at the best of times, and when it comes to creating cells that may be moved by either player, I'm stuck. I've worked out how to make cells that only one player can move, but making them neutral and moveable for both sides is something I've had no success with. 

I've thought of a similar game based on moveable hexagons.

Anyway, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to have thought of a game with a "dynamic" board.

How to compute piece values here?  It's pointless to bother.  Regulator move one forward or backward is determined by play on the small board of 35 squares.  Too bad no one has experimented with the Regulator band on 8x8 with 7-square streak to the side for neat 71 square Chess Variant, a first for the size.

84-square Fourriere's Jacks and Witches lessens Bishop value to Knight by the 16-square hole in the center -- more detrimental to the Bishop now worth 2.5.   Any different board size must affect piece values somewhat.  A Fischer Random Chess array NBKRRQBN should benefit Rook to relative downgrading of Knight, maybe 5.3-2.7.  But adherents to FRC have not gotten that far yet.  So the starting line-up alone affects piece-values.  Also do the Rules in and of themselves, such as obvious thing like Bishop one-time Wazir step conversion in some CVs. 

Take the simple Regulator embodiment here.  Level 6 of regulator makes Knight into Marshall, and Level 3 makes Bishop into Cardinal.  If the board were 8x8, it's not definite which in a given game benefits more, Bishop or Knight,  because there are going to be enough move- and capture-triggers to jockey the calibration up towards level 7 tactically pretty easily, and keep it there.  Over the long haul however, Bishop value is going to show relative increase, on any rectangle 35 to 100.  That is because of its compound to BN being in effect 5/7 of the time and the other to NR only 2/7 the time.

Next, there is room for subvariants, that either side can alter the calibration, let's say forward by agreed-on even number of steps across 7 and back to 1 and onward, in lieu of a move. That can include in the Regulator Band not just moving the Regulator but either of the two trigger levels the same way, as not overcomplicated move addition.