Variants Q&A

The acknowledgment is way too late!

Make Berolina chess and Cylider chess, Pre-chess,960-4PC;Pre-4PC.

Hi,
I love playing Shatranj. You have it here but it is called Chaturanga, which is a different game (e.g. non-symmetric positioning of Kings, different Elephant moves, different bare King rule). Please rename your Chaturanga to Shatranj!

it’s true that we will only get new fairy chess pieces if it’s for a historical and/or popular variant?

@Lucas1009991 yes, at least to my knowledge, if not it's by and large true.

Self-partnering bughouse: why not to introduce "Self-Partnering" for "Doubles (Bughouse)" too?Please read my proposal for self-partnering bughouse, in the forum thread www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/adding-new-variants (2024-05-22). The exact URL is
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/adding-new-variants?page=15&newCommentCount=1#comment-102858835

(I know crazyhouse and like it, but it's a very different game -- with only one board and one clock.)

Emanuele
https://sites.google.com/site/emanuelesaiu/chess

I know we will only get new fairy chess pieces if it’s for a popular/historical variant, but what about new rules for variants?

Why are people still posting on this Q/A that was aimed towards the variants merge? Y’all do know that the developers aren’t gonna respond here anymore, right?

Yet keep reading everything posted.

There is some work in progress to make it easy to implement new variant rules and pieces. Once it's done we'll add a few really cool ones. Bughouse included.

Hi, qilp! Thanks for your reply. 
"keep reading everything posted": what about my bug report "Seirawan Chess: a very serious bug (eighth piece problem)"?
It's here, https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/bug-reports-10?page=52#comment-102519435
There was actually no feedback in the forum, but I guess it's been read and taken into consideration.
I can add this new detail: there is the same problem (ruleset mistake) in Seirawan-based custom variants.
Thank you again,

Emanuele

Who are the anonymous spectators in your games? Are they chess.com staff or just people watching your game?

You can set yourself to anonymous while spectating in settings, so it's more likely than not just some random person watching

Yes. Also it was a known bug (should've been fixed earlier tbh)

Thank you!!

Another question:
Would it be possible for Chess Dot Com to add a fully randomized subvariant of Paradigm Chess30? A lot of Paradigm enthusiasts (including myself) would find it great!
See section §5 "Paradigm Chess30 and fischerandomization" in my web page https://sites.google.com/site/emanuelesaiu/chess-paradigm(The usual 960 would be ok for Paradigm Chess too, but the colour-bound constraint makes no sense for Paradigm: so, the exact number is 1320.)

-- POSTSCRIPTUM

Paradigm Chess1320 (that is fischerandomized Paradigm Chess30) is now available, on another platform. Interested people write to me for details.

Emanuele

https://sites.google.com/site/emanuelesaiu/chess

I don't think so

If this requires implementing a new rule, it is unlikely to be worth it. Obviously, compared to other rules we can implement.

Among other things, I think that www.chess.com/variants/custom needs many corrections and improvements. The 960 option doesn't work properly if combined with other changes, does it? I think it should be fixed.
And I think it would be great that other randomizing options could be added: we should have 18 and 960 at least, but maybe other kinds of "shuffle chess" as well (no-castling variants without Fischer's rook-king-rook constraint: 2880 etc.), even without mirroring...
But, living aside the extreme "shuffle chess / no mirroring" options, the alternative fischerandomizing without the colour-bound constraint (that is 30 -- as in Paradigm Chess30 -- and 1320) would be simple and useful. A lot of stimulating variants without the colour-bound constraint (that is, without standard bishops) could be created and played: see some examples in section §2 of https://sites.google.com/site/emanuelesaiu/chess-ownvariants ("Put off the dragon wings and crown your bishops" and "Peaceful crowning subvariants"...).
- - -
Another chess dot com problem/bug, probably already known for a long time: when you play variants, you should always disable "Always Promote to Queen": otherwise, you'll probably happen to promote to a knight, or other absurd choices, against your will! That happened both to me and to my opponents, playing Paradigm or Seirawan. It's a very bad bug. Those were rated games... (It's NOT correlated with pre-moves.)
Thank you again.

Emanuele Saiu (Italy)

On Variants, when premoving a promotion, the promotion piece is always prompted before a premove is even registered. The only exception is when there is only one legal promotion option. There is no setting related to this, nor any bug that could technically exists. So those cases are likely just misclicks or accidental double clicks.

Oh, so it was not a known problem.
The last time it happened to me (in a game of Seirawan), I was well aware of the possible bug. I made no pre-move, no misclick, no double click, but it happened (I was just thinking "I need a queen and I hope there's no technical problem"!).
After that, I disabled "Always Promote to Queen", and I hope the problem is solved -- but I'm not sure! I'll inform you, if it happens again.

E.Saiu

Absurd knight/bishop promotion against the user's will, when playing some variants on Chess Dot Com:

Yes, it happened again (to me, and possibly to a lot of people).
Disabling "Always Promote to Queen" was absolutely irrelevant and useless.

It happened to me a few hours ago, in this game, which was a rated Paradigm Chess30 game, against another user:
https://www.chess.com/variants/paradigm-chess30/game/66796290/155/1You can see that on move 60 I promoted to queen ("=Q"): in that case, the promotion options were displayed correctly, and I chose the queen. On move 64, instead, you see "=N"! That was NOT my choice. No promotion options were displayed. I didn't know how or why. It was not my fault: no misclick, no double click, etc. I was playing slowly and carefully, and was just thinking of this technical problem (btw, I had a great advantage and won the game)

Now, I have tested and checked some parameters (with "analysis mode"), and have a clearer view of the problem.

Click/tap move, or drag move? That is the question.
Playing on a computer (clicking and dragging), or on a touchscreen smartphone (tapping and dragging)? That is the other question.

Click/tap move, or drag move: both possibilities are allowed, in my settings. I use both.
(A click/tap move requires a click and then another click, or a tap and then another tap, of course.)

On my Android smartphone (browser Chrome or browser Internet Samsung, with absolutely the same results):
Paradigm Chess30 -- drag OK (promotion options displayed correctly); tap-tap PROMOTES TO KNIGHT, always, whether with white or black.
Seirawan -- drag OK (promotion options displayed correctly); tap-tap PROMOTES TO BISHOP, always.

On a Windows 10 computer: it's always alright (promotion options displayed): click-click or drag, both Chrome and Edge browser, both Paradigm and Seirawan.

(Then I tried with a 960 game, and there is exactly the same problem -- but the default promotion piece is a queen, not a knight or a bishop! So, it's much less evident.)

Solution: ALWAYS DRAG WHEN YOU MAKE A PROMOTION MOVE, IF YOU ARE PLAYING ON A TOUCHSCREEN SMARTPHONE.

Anyway, it's a Chess Dot Com bug, isn't it? Probably it could be fixed.

Thank you.

Emanuele

https://sites.google.com/site/emanuelesaiu/chess