New chess variant. Looking for players to play with.

This has become a winboard mod thread. For me and Muller. As well as any one else who wants to chime in. All gaming info ha sbeen carried over to the following link provided.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/new-variants-using-common-pieces-amongst-them

This seems extremely complicated...

Very cool though.

Hhhhhmmm Yes yes very complicated indeed

Ah, Alpha-Omega chess. I stumbled across this variant when I was looking up my newly learned favorite variant, "Omega Chess" by Dan MacDonald.

The variant has been very intriguing to me since I've learned about it myself, but it will take too long for me to memorize all the various new piece's powers. (How many variant pieces are there, again??) And then, it will take 15 times even longer to develop positions and tactics for this variant.

I'm not dropping the idea of playing a live game with you or anyone on this variant however. I'm just not entertaining the idea too much at current, because it will take time and devotion, neither of which I availably have at themoment. =(

Way too complicated. Far more complicated than it really needs to be. Part of the beauty of standard chess, and a large part of its appeal, is in how simple the gameplay is.

"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes genius to make it simple." - Woody Guthrie

I'd try this variant, but online seems really wonky.
If it had an actual set, fine.
But it'd get really messy on a screen, especially with the new pieces.
Are there highlighted squares that tell you to which squares a piece can go to?

On a side note, this is exactly why I prefer the Shuuro variant.
It manages to be interesting and makes some epic battles, yet it's still uses the same pieces.
If one were to make it happen online, I would be all over the place.
 

GnrfFrtzl, I haven't been able to get it to work once since I've first downloaded the FairyMax zip files for it, which was at least 3 months ago.

You're meaning there was a playable Shuuro variant, or do you mean the variant in the first post?

I'm talking about Alpha-Omega Chess, the variant introduced in OP.

I see. Well, that's that, then.

Shuuro seems fun, although a bit unbalanced: it seems clear that you are a dead duck if you don't take as many Knights as possible in your army.

Of course WinBoard/XBoard and p2p could be used to play Shuroo over the internet too. It is just Chess on a 12x12 board with holdings, where all pieces start in the latter. The players would have to keep track of which squares are only accessible to Knights, and could use a board-texture image to indicate that.

The problem with all such variants is to find an oppoent that actually wants to play it. Not to have the software that can do it. It is not like chess.com that you can just go to a side, and find some 50 people waiting there for a game within a few minutes, from which you can pick one.

I've played Shuuro with a friend a few times, though we left those stupid blocks behind.
I really like the idea of making your own army.
More variants should prioritise that instead of introducing new pieces that no one bothers to learn anyway.

Very complex.

I couldn't agree more.

I luckily found one person to try out my own variant with me on chess.com recently, and even he/she flaked***. It lead me to wonder how one does successfully promote a variant, since variants like Omega Chess by Dan McDonald (different from Alpha-Omega here) are nicely promiment. Then again, I realized that I probably wasn't finding oponents and promoting the game in the best way.

Dan MacDonald did suggest to me in a telephone call to try to find oponents who might be interested in learning a new kind of chess at a public bookstore or library, or any other place where chess logic can flourish. I guess I can try that next. It's how he started with Omega Chess.

***(In the most humble manner I can, I asked the player to, in the future, please clarify any confusions with me in PM and not publicly in the forum because doing the latter while the variant is being promoted might make it (not me) look bad. I guess the other player immediately found me unplesantly condescending/arrogant and took me more personally than what I was truly intending; if I'm reading the situation correctly. Since then, he/she's been making his/her next move in PM but then post incomprehensible babble in the thread; perhaps out of spite or out of gradual boredom, or both.)

The question at hand, however, Darth_Algar, is that, is this complicated or ingeniously complex? How does one choose to see it?

The simplicity argument for chess was exactly the common opinion I received for my own chess variant, Magician's Deathmatch, and I'm using a whole less number of pieces for my own variant. (Really, I would think that switching a Bishop out for the Magician, a piece that moves two squares diagonally but captures two squares in all directions, to be put in his place would be simple enough, but nope....)

In my article of instructions on the Magician, I addressed this very opinion with a counter-response of my own: if you've been playing chess, you don't realize that you've already been playing a very "complicated" logics game; an unfortunate reality for those who don't like chess variants. The abstract moves of the Knight and pawn are simply "way too complicated": why doesn't the Knight move in a straight line like it's supposed to, since all of the other chess pieces do, and why baffle things by unnecessarily giving the pawn, the weakest piece (mind you), a different capturing power from its move one? (In fact, this silly pawn power wasn't even in the original Chaturanga! Not to mention that, it's not found in any current standard chess games, like the Chinese Xiangqi or the Japanese Shogi. Should we now call asian people "simple-minded" for not including a diagonal capture?)

One has multiple glimpse of beginning players fimble and fumble as they try to remember all of the moves of the new pieces. Watch as little Susie continues to try to capture a black d5 pawn with her own white pawn on d4. How many times does Instructor Smith have to remind her that that is an invalid move? Honestly, who were the idiots who took the ingenuious simplicity of chess away by complicating it in these ways? Guthrie's quote doesn't seem to apply anymore.

You don't realize that there's anything intricate and labyrinthine about regular chess since it's been the game that you're mind has long been exposed to, see? You've learned of chess in this way, and your mind has long built on it.

New variants merely involve new tactics and strategies with perhaps a new kind of mood required to play them, but I do say, their "complication" shouldn't discourage people from trying it. What to bear in mind: are we playing Chess or are we playing Alpha-Omega Chess? 

Now, having said all of this, I turn to the OP, if he's/she's still around; because, intriguing as this variant is, there are questions that weren't quite answered in the diagrams nor the instructions of powers that were listed.

1 - According to the instructions, the Gambit moves like a King, but in the diagram, there are four extra squares with "3s" assigned them. What does it mean? 

Also, in the rusty Fairy-Max program where the game is installed, the Gambit can move 5 squares horizontally, but not diagonally, on its first move. Is it supposed to be allowed to do that and was just simply mis-programmed? The instructions say 5 squares on first move, but nothing about 5 squares horizontally/orthogonally only.

2 - The Cardinal and Tower  can both move 3 squares in range. Now, the chart is showing something pretty unclear to me, since "x" denotes move/capture ability by leaping, not necessarily the end of a piece's range. (In the Knight's diagram, his movement/capture is denoted by "x". And then, in the Fool's diagram, the end of his range is denoted not by "x" but by"o", just as the rest of his moving/capturing power is.) So, does that mean that the Cardinal and Tower both can leap over 3 squares in order to capture a piece but can't do so over 2 squares?

3 - Since the Lion was not listed in the instructions, I can only rely on the diagram to understand how it behaves. (What I do get out of it is that it looks very similar to the movement and capture of the "High Priestess" in my own Magician's Deathmatch!) We see here a new set of symbols, empty diamonds and filled dimonds, that weren't used for the other diagrams. What are they supposed to mean?

4 - As the Jack is a piece similar to the pawn in movement and capture, does the Jack get promoted once it reaches the final 14th rank? Are there restrictions as to what it could and couldn't be promoted to (aside from not being allowed to promote to King)? 

Thing is, I'm actually gradually becoming more interested in finding an opponent to play this variant, but there are all these confusions that need to be understood first. If anything, I'd be willing to play a game with another member in a new thread, the way I attempted to do so with Magician's Deathmatch; I'd like to treat this game as an official variant that stands on its own without having to have permissible play limited to the domain of a program that doesn't function properly with it. (The Fool's restricted powers couldn't be properly programmed into the program??)

And for all that verbiage you didn't really say anything to refute my point. Perhaps the Guthrie quote applies double. And yes, chess can be a complex game, but it is a very simple one. The rules, the layout of the board, the pieces and their movement are all very simple. So simple a child can learn them in minutes. Yet from this simplicity arises the complex game we know, with it's miriad lines and strategies. That is the genius of chess. I see none of that simplicity in the game proposed by the OP. What I see in the OP is a game with needlessly complicated (not complex, but complicated) play.

I've to agree with Darth.
Simple =/= equal being easy.
Chess is simple, yet complex. That variant just looks messy, no offense.
It's like in music, where one can write beautiful songs out of the most simple chords and notes.

No, I think you simply chose to deny my point, deploring the recourse of my "overt verbiage",  in hopes that it didn't get to the core of your own. Who made it so that the "layout of the board" and all the moves of the standard pieces should be the standard of what is considered "simple"? 

You also obviously attempted to ignore my point about the Knight breaking the "line" rule.

The very problem with your argument is that there is no (edit- ) concrete and universal way of defining "simple" and "too complicated", because everyone sees chess differently. I bet had children grown up with Alpha-Omega, they wouldn't think of it as "too complicated"; they would just think of it as chess. As I was saying, perhaps chess is defined by its pleasant "simplicity" simply because it was what one's been long exposed to. Was the chicken hatched without an egg, or did it develop in the egg's yoke first?

I in fact agree with you that there are lots of pieces that I would personally considered more complex than what I'm accustomed to; perhaps my being an adult now makes it slightly harder for me to incorporate this newly abstract game. My end-all point, however, is that I wouldn't consider it something that is "too complicated to try" simply because it wasn't the "easier" game that we've known. In fact, I'm willing to give it a go for the very reason that it isn't so familiar.

(On a slight tangent, what would happen to chess once we've figured out all the puzzles included in it? Hey, a lot of the openings are so familiar and overplayed, we even have names in a "book"/"library" for them! That considered, where's the direction of chess going?

Perhaps it's natural that chess games, "complicated" as A-O, was born out of a "simple" game that's slowly but gradually becoming a cliche, see?)

And by the way, GnrfFrtzl, if you "agree wit Darth", I'm just wondering why you would take fascination to something as "complicated" as Shuuro; according to you; since, it "manages to make epic battles" like A-O. Surely, the sole difference lies in something of lesser significance as having familiar pieces?