Chess on 16x16 boards

What if Chess is played on 16x16 board instead of current 8x8 boards, keeping all the existing rules same and doubling all the pieces except the King, and taking 3 queens. Tell me your opinions about how the game play will change, and maybe new openings will be discovered. Here is a schematic diagram of a 16x16 board.

r r  n n b b q q  k q b b n n r r
p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p

.  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  .

.  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  .

.  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  . .  .
 
P P P P P P P P  P P P P  P P P P 
R R N N B B Q Q K Q B B N N R R

What is the fastest (fool's) mate for White in this schematic?

there's 8 rows, for your information, not 16....

Yes, i know, but this question is about a hypothetical chess board, with certain assumptions. Read carefully !!

How did you came to the conclusion that pawn can move 6 moves?? The rules of 8x8 boards exists, so pawn can move only 2 squares. Moreover, i don't think this will lead to a draw. Theoritically, fool's mate can be achieved in 8 moves ;)

This will be more like a defensive game. It's all about mutual understanding between the fighting parties. Strategic relationship is more important than positional relationship here. If you want to be aggressive, better watch the pawns.

Mmm.   An 8/15 would probably be a lot more interesting.  As for this varient... I'd say pawns are still worth 1, and knights drop to about 1.2.  All the other pieces jump massively though.   Queens are probably worth about 30, rooks somewhere around 13-14, and bishops are around 10.   With 3 queens a bishop pair really doesn't seem nearly as important either....

Honestly this version of chess sounds *incredibly* lame.  

On the 16 x 16 board as described above, the ratio of pawns&pieces to the number of squares is halved; opening play will be endless with 12 squares between the enemy lines.

How about a 7x7 board, ditching the queens?

i suggest omega chess. dont think this will be that great.

And we need new pieces like knights 2.0 that jump 6 squares forward, 3 squares sideways.

How can there be a Fool's Mate? Your King is guarded directly by 2 Queens! Fool's Mate only works because the Kingside is weaker in the opening than the Queenside. But it is not the case here.

Would you castle with the first Rook or the second Rook? I would think the castled position would be very strong with a Rook on both sides of the King.

Playing Black probably wouldn't be much of a disadvantage, since there is so much time for you to set up a defense. White has no ability to put early pressure on Black's position.

The easiest way to play would probably be fianchettoing a bunch of Bishops, castling, and slowly advance some Knights and pawns across the board, guarded by a horde of Queens, Rooks, and Bishops.

The game would be very slow though. If you try for an early attack, your lone Bishops and Knights will be forced to retreat or else be crushed by a WALL of pieces!

 I agree that the extra space on the board.The extra bishop on the same color will reduce mobility. I think it would be dumb because having 256 squares on the board would be a waste of time since there are too many positions and would almost always end in a draw.

Duh! That's why there's no Fool's Mate!

But there is still a Queenside (with one Queen) and a Super Queenside (with two Queens) so the latter is still the stronger half of the board.

There would almost be no such things as Openings, as that phase of the game will not matter much. You will simply develop pieces rapidly and freely, since neither player can really hurt the other in the Opening, and transition into a positional and strategical middle game.

Try out Tai Shogi (25x25), against the A.I. first - it will give you some ideas about piece balance on huge boards.  I believe there's an English version of it floating around the 'net somewhere...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_shogi 

http://www.shogi.net/shogi.html

Man the boards are too big!  Think about how far the king will have to go to get to the other side.  Oh yeah, the pawns too.

 Strategy vastly outweighs tactics on a huge board like this (mostly because of attrition; loss of important pieces even when gaining material advantage), but if you can get a decent combo of pieces moving together, you can gain a little bit of a real advantage tactically.

Very few of my Tai Shogi games have ever ended in a draw.  You just keep throwing pieces at each other until someone figures out a way to mate.

 Games like this usually take a very long time to complete.  I've read accounts of large-format Chess games typically being played for an hour or two, each day, around 50 moves each day, and still lasting a week.

You can play 'Big Chess' at FICGS. The start position is shown below. All the pieces move the same as in standard Chess except there is no castling.

The problem with that piece is that it would only be able to reach 1/9 of the chessboard. I have a youtube series on chess variant pieces, which goes over the laws of colorboundness. My latest video explains the endgames involving checkmates with 2 pieces that move analagously to a knight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP9_ICHK4m0