Ratings & Comments

Anyone know who can help me create a new UserID for this account?  Not just name change...

Strange anomaly

I have started an attempt to determine piece values on a 12x12 board, about which very little is known. I use Fairy-Max self-play for this. To not make the games too long, the basic start position I use consists of a FIDE army augmented with 4 Pawns (to close the Pawn rank). So the board is pretty thinly popuated. The 4 central Pawns start on 4th rank, to speed up engagement, but the 3 Pawns in each wing start on 2nd rank, to provide some King shelter. The Knights also start in a somewhat advanced position, on 3rd rank behind the central Pawns, as does the Queen (to not have too many unprotected Pawns in the start position.

To determine piece values I delete some pieces from this setup, or sometimes replace them by fairy pieces. The side with the weaker piece can be compensated by giving the opponent Pawn odds, for which I always delete the same Pawn (on the h-file). Such Pawn odds alone results in a 68-70% win of the side with the extra Pawn. I only trust results when the total advantage is closer to equality than Pawn odds.

I don't want to delete more than a single Pawn, because Pawns are highly cooperative pieces, and I cannot be sure that deleting two Pawns gives twice the advantage of deleting a single one. By always granting the same simple Pawn advantage (or none at all), I can get a reliable 'measuring stick' on which the values of other pieces can be mapped. This poses a problem if there is a gap of more than 2 Pawns in the 'piece-value spectrum', though: I cannot play those 1-on-1 without getting an imbalance that is too extreme. I solve that by also introducing fairy pieces with values in the gap, and also determine their value.

I try to avoid Bishops, (and color-bound pieces in general) because of the pair-bonus problem, which would introduce yet another unknown. Which, if not handled properly by the engine, might invalidate the results. So I tried to find a very 'Bishop-like' piece that is not color bound. My first choice was this: to break the color binding of a Bishop, I gave it Wazir moves. To compensate for that (and prevent mating potential), I take away the Ferz moves. But to not affect the more distant B moves, they can still be blocked on the F squares. (So basically this is a Tamerlane 'Picket' + Wazir.)

Such a modified Bishops beats a Knight on 12x12 (as ordinary Bishops also do). The strange thing is that when I then handicap them with Pawn odds, they still beat the Knight, by about the same score. The extra Pawn doesn't seem to help the Knight at all! I have never seen that before; normally deleting a Pawn lowers the score by about as much as the pure Pawn-odds advantage. I watched a few games, and often they end in Knight + Pawns vs modified Bishop + Pawns, where the Knights are still judged by the engine to be ahead (because there are more Pawns on their side). But the Knight then almost always loses. The 'WazirPicket' can easily prevent advance of many isolated Pawns, by guarding a diagonal. And by just stepping in front of a Pawn it attacks as well as blocks it, so that the Pawn easily falls. Even connected passers are easily destroyed this way, if they still have far to go. (And on 12x12 they usually have; I use promotion on last rank only.)

I guess the WazirPicket is just unrepresentatively dangerous to Pawns, in the absence of pieces that can protect those. (And Knights are pitifully slow on 12x12...) So that the value of opposing Pawns shrinks to almost nothing in the late end-game.

My next attempt at a non-color-bound substitute for a Bishop will only change the mF moves of a Bishop to mW, but leaves the captures in place. This will also have the advantage that it cannot be blocked on a square that it doesn't attack, so that it cannot be blocked with impunity (as lame leapers can). Such a piece cannot do more damage to Pawns than ordinary Bishops can, but the mW move does allow it to switch color on non-captures. (Hence I dubbed it Swishop.)

If that address won't receive the email for changing your email, then it won't receive other emails from us. If that's important to you, then I recommend using another address.

I came up with these changes. Yes, this is Zanny. Ten Cubed already has chess pieces from Capoblanca and Omega chess, and I think that 2 pieces from 100-cell chess by Vsevolod Dubrovsky will not interfere with it. And you can call Ten Cubed extended. 

That's correct. Thanks for saving me the trouble, Greg.

Thanks, Greg!

if match old r b n m a c v s w:
setelem reserve old inc elem old reserve;
endif;

reserve is an associative array that is keeping track of the number of pieces of each type that is in reserve.  When a piece of one of these types is captured, the number associated with that type in the associative array is incremented.  This is for implementing the promotion rules where you are allowed to promote by replacement to pieces of yours that have been captured.

An interesting in-development single-player game:
https://j4nw.itch.io/pawnbarian

"A quick-playing roguelike puzzler" incorporating minor deck-building components, a small-board one-v-rest similar to Maharajah, and (new and old(?)) fairy pieces.  Pretty entertaining already, I'll be interested to see how it develops.

I'm not sure if anyone helped, but things seem ok now. I am sorry for any false alarm. Have fun everybody!

If possible, it might be good to know if a game is going to be rated, too (unless I'm missing something that indicates that), and maybe also if a game is going to be publicly viewable or not, in the case of personal invitations.

Last time it was just because there were no published submissions in the time period.  It's probably the same this time, but I'll check (and I'll check the pending-approval queue).

I found something that Fergus has written here:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/movement.html

No worry, then!...

Once again, at the moment I cannot see any newly approved submissions between 0 and 60 days old displayed on the What's New page (as accessed from the CVP home page).

Thanks. That must be it then!... Pardon my confusion!...