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Something very odd is going on. Last night, I spent a while pushing my rating to get #1 on the Racing Kings leaderboard. As soon as I did so, the leaderboard went down on my end and the variants server said I was disconnected. And then, just a few minutes ago, it started working just fine again. At this point, I was back down to #2 on the leaderboard and I played 1 game and got enough rating to be ranked #1 again. Now, the same exact bug is occurring. I don't want to jump to conclusions yet, but this odd correlation seems a bit fishy and it appears no one else is experiencing this.

This thread is intended to find some ideas how to play chaturanga. This game has no manuals, at least I did not manage to find much information in the net, so the best I can do is to write down some ideas and hypotheses, and let the stronger players to correct them. Note: square coordinates are for the older setup, with the king on e1; this will be fixed soon, but remember that in the meantime. 0) Take a knight with anything else than a rook Perhaps later on I'll create some tips for beginners as well, but this one alone is worth at least 200 rating points. Relative values of pawn, alfil and ferz may be a subject to discussion, but getting them wrong will lose you an equvalent of a pawn. Meanwhile, all of them are much weaker than a knight. Alfil is not a bishop, ferz is not a queen, knight is a strong piece. 1) Developement is mainly about connecting rooks Two connected rooks on an uncontested open file seem like almost-winning positional advantage, sometimes worth sacrificing some material for (https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturanga/game/10559786). To reach this goal, or to prevent opponent from doing so, you need to connect rooks before position opens up. One simple way of reaching this goal is to move several pawns to the 3rd rank, and playing a rook to the 2nd rank, alfils staying on their initial squares. The other is what I call "flat developement" - knights on e2 and d2, ferz on c2, king of f2. 2) Pawns should move together and you should not obstruct their movement In chaturanga pawns cannot move two squares. This means that a pawn on the 5th rank should be treated as semi-isolated, even if it has neighbours on the adjacent files. I have captured many such pawns. Also playing Alfil to d3/e3 when there is a pawn on d2/e2 is a positional mistake. Knight before pawn might be situationally good, especially if it can reach a good square afterwards, but I also tend to avoid that. In general "pieces behind pawns" works evn better than in normal chess. 3) Pawns should capture towards the center Old Arabic theoreticians assigned different values to pawns, depending on their file, and treated central pawns as much more valuable. The corollary to this rule is that central pawns ought to be defended by other pawns. Strong c4/d4/e4/f4 white pawns and c5/d5/e5/f5 black pawns are especially important, and it is good to defend them twice. 4) You start with a color weakness and a color strength This is indicated by the color of Your ferz. At the beginning, this piece is especially useful to defend squares not covered by pawns. It might be wise to place pawns on the color different than your ferz. Also, nothing short of placing a pawn there can prevent a f4-f5 break for white or f5-f4 break for black, due to possible alfil/ferz support. Color weakness often calls for a ferz raid. Color of promoted ferz is also important in the endgame. It is better to promote ferz of the color you don't have. 5) The king is a strong piece Players stronger than me often manage to form an impenetrable defensive position with just a king, a ferz, two pawns and some situational support. Side with material advantage often can use king as an attacking piece, more often than in chess. Since king is strong, it is not necessary to create a position ressembling a castle from normal chess, at least not right in the opening. A king on the 2nd rank, sheltered by pawns and defending them, is good enough. Early artificial castling just loses time, and is prone to "castling into attack" (https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturanga/game/10606305) 6) g3/b3 pawns are important defenders They immobilize enemy alfils after their first move. They are probably at least as valuable as these alfils, and sacrificing an alfil for them requires much finer positional judgement than I have. They control important squares in extended center. They are either defended or unattackable by enemy pieces, because alfils cannot reach them. 7) Important squares should be defended by a pawn, a ferz or an alfil Most of my losses were caused by failing to follow this principle. Strong opponents used such squares for their knights. So... 8) Please care for knight outposts Outpost in context of chaturanga is a square safe from attacks by enemy pawns, ferzes and alfils (that is, of by all the pieces weaker than the knight), preferably defended by a pawn or by a weak piece. Also, it is possible to have an outpost square safe for the time being, if enemy ferz would have to make several moves to attack a knight or if it is busy elsewhere.

3|2 FFA Crazy Custom Positionhttps://www.chess.com/variants/custom/lobbyAnyone want to join?

Yeah the knight cannot jump over pieces and the king cannot move one square diagonally.

WHY

The button used to randomly appear and disappear after each server restart, but I haven't seen it in the last couple of days. There was another link next to my rating, but it's gone too. Going to the URL directly shows an empty list. So, are the leaderboards gone for good?

This thread is intended to find some ideas how to design hexagonal chess variants. The information I could find on these games in the net is limited to descriptions of their rules, so I am writing down some ideas and deductions in advance of a potential chess.com hexagonal chess server. 0) The hexagonal grid does not invalidate any existing advice on designing good chess variants https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/good-custom-position-bad-custom-position-dos-and-donts-for-ncps-1 https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/variant-design-patterns https://www.chessvariants.com/opinions.dir/fergus/design.html 1) The hexagonal grid has 12 natural directions This is a source of much unintentional confusion surrounding the terminology of the rules. Orthogonal pairs of directions running through the edges or corners of the cells do not actually exist unless you use Strozewski’s board with distorted cells in spite of the convention of calling the directions running through the edges of the cells “orthogonal“. 2) Diagonals run through the edges and corners of the cells This is the reason for coloring the cells three ways. It also clears up the unintentional confusion due to the convention of calling both sets “root-3” diagonals. 3) A royal piece should have moves through all sides of the cells and balanced moves through vertices of the cells if it has any This undermines the valid possibilities where all root-4 diagonals are this royal piece‘s moves and any edgewise directions used are the Knight analog’s moves.

I think an option for presented boards in the board editor should be a 14 by 14 by 14 cube board for 3d chess variants. On this cube board I'm thinking the king would move one cube in any direction, and the queen would move any number of cubes in any direction. The amazon would be able to move like a queen, move like a (2,1,0), (2,1,1), or (2,2,1) leaper, and the general would be able to move like a king, move like a (2,1,0), (2,1,1), or (2,2,1) leaper. The grasshopper would hop over a hurdle, moving one cell beyond the hurdle, and could move in any direction. All the other existing pieces would have movements that could be described using only two dimensions, or in other words have (m,n,0) movement. Some 3d pieces I think could be added to the board could be 1. The Jedi which would be a (1,1,1) rider. 2. The Sith which would combine the movement of the Bishop and Jedi or in other words move as a combination of a (1,1,1) rider and (1,1,0) rider. 3. The Kanselier which would combine the movement of the Jedi and Rook or in other words be a combination of a (1,1,1) rider and a (1,0,0) rider. 4. The Lord which would combine the movement of the Bishop and Rook or in other words be a combination of a (1,1,0) rider and a (1,0,0) rider. 5. The Falcon which would be a (2,1,1) leaper. 6. The Eagle which would be a (2,2,1) leaper. 7. The Bat which would combine the movement of the Falcon and the Eagle. 8. The Wasp which would combine the movement of the Knight and the Falcon. 9. The Unicorn which would combine the movement of the Knight and the Eagle. 10. The Pterosaur which would combine the movement of the Knight, Falcon, and Eagle. I think on a 3d board the Bishops would be move valuable than Rooks as Bishops can move in 12 different directions while rooks can only move in 6. Also Siths would probably be much more powerful than a Bishop and Jedi as a Bishop could only reach 1/2 of the board, and an Jdi could reach 1/4 of the board, while a Sith could reach the entire board.

I'm not able to play anything and am just stuck at Connecting...

One of the most straight-forward chess variants out there (or curvy actually). So simple that it´s a child´s game. Does warping chess like this really add something to the game, really enriches the game, or is it just superfluous complication and thus basically pointless? This plays like a regular chess game in principle, but if the struggling reaches a dead end on one half of the board the fight can move on to the other half of the board and try again. Exactly the same tactics, deeper strategy. Many chess variants enlarge the board for no meaningful reason, here it feels totally natural and organic. Many chess variants shoehorn new pieces in, here the 8 extra pawns per side feel in place, not out of place.

Is there any mate in this position?

Is there a place where previous games are saved? I had a game of duck chess last week that made me feel real smart and I wanted to find it again.

two groups play four player chess. Captured pieces go to random players

For some reason, 4PC is being awkward when looking for games. I'm being added to games when I didn't even press the join buttons. It is like games are forcing me to join when I am not.

Is anyone annoyed about the constant connection errors/lag/busy servers during any game or the variant game mode in general?I've been having constant lags during a game in which the game freezes for me and I can't do a single move, and the game aborts or I forfeit on time. I've been banned a couple of times because I aborted too much when I just wanted to play normally.

I think that it would be interesting to have a variant or collection of variants in which the board is divided up into hexagons instead of squares, and that has three players.

En Passant Chess, where any piece can enpassant any other piece

If pawn can move two space on its first move If there a piece in front of it How about pawn can jump over any piece on its first move ??

This forum topic is strictly for Three Check Chess comments. Thanks!