Bulldog chess (theory, comments, etc.)

Lol let them be redundant. Transparent+Transparent=Solid. LOGIC!!! OHHH!!!

New rule dispute here:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/bulldog-chess-with-witch-josephyossi-evert823

#12

Wow, that's pretty interesting (theoretical play conceived by evert823). En passant is a somewhat unusual rule, and you found where in bulldog with witch, an en passant move can make a double capture!

I agree with all the opinions expressed so far (Martin0, Fly-Eagles-Fly, HorusTheThird, and hitthepin). The capturing pawn makes an en passant capture as if the opponent moved a pawn a single square. But the witch (or another piece) can be on the square too, so the capturing pawn makes a double capture. Very cool!

...g5
hxg6 e.p.

1 little problem. Rank chopping in 4-player.

If you'll notice, the left rook pawn is already invisible by the witch. Imagine: 1. i3 ... d9.

Next turn, Red "Rank chops" By frying the 9-pawn straight off the grill. This limits opening options and gives red and yellow a considerable advantage, as rank chopping sometimes comes with check, so blue and purple must react instead of counter "Rank chopping".

Oh boy. Who can solve all the problems with 4-player chess?😟 My only comment at this point is I like the term "rank chopping".😊

Also "frying"😛

Hot off the grill. What if we just placed all the witches in the middle at the start of the game?

@HorribleTomato, yes, but the problem is not that easy. Purple can protect the pawn with Wn10. After 1.h3 d9 h14 Wn10 though, then red can win a bishop with 2.Bxa10. Blue can't recapture since his queen would be hanging with checkmate, so blue continues 2..Qxi16 Kxi16. Then purple sees that red wants to retreat his bishop to safety, so purple plays 2....Bxi3 to interfere, even though it leaves his o11 pawn undefended.

I'm not sure if that is the most accurate line (especially purples last move might not even be good), but at least I can say it is a lot of tactics and far from easy. These are the sort of tactics I am talking about when I say that 4-player teams chess is a very tactical variant. In regular 4-player chess moving the kings pawn 1 step forward for red and blue is considered a winning opening for red and yellow, so blues first move then is a blunder.

I don't think there is any problem with the starting position though. No reason for blue to make a blunder like that. People have to be more careful with pawn moves in the opening.

I notice that most people, including me, tend to give the complete rules on top of a thread which is opened for a particular game. This has the advantage that the rules for that paricular game are fixed while the rules for future games can be developed.

But the disadvantage is that opening a thread and go about mentioning all the rules is a very time-consuming (and boring) task.

After opening quite some threads, I tend to be first of all annoyed by that disadvantage. Is there any clever way to deal with this?

I agree it shouldn't be necessary to re-post the rules at the start of every game if they're already posted elsewhere. Maybe some of the games can have the rules defined at the (bulldog-chess-players) club. Then just show a link there. I'll try to post the rules for "bulldog with witch", and maybe one or two others in the club.

I don't mind re-posting the rules every time. All I have to do is copy paste. It doesn't take much more time compared to posting a link to the rules (when I still would need to copy the link).

I agree it is not necessary to post the rules every time, but I will keep doing it.

Images and text formats make it harder. 

This is just a copy/paste for me in chrome. No edits, only copied once:

Game rules:
Board: 10 x 8 (see image below).
The pieces:
Guard (G) - Moves and captures like a king.

Witch (W) - The witch is transparent to friendly pieces, and she also makes all adjacent pieces (friend and foe) transparent to friendly pieces (but pieces are not transparent for the witch). The witch does not capture other pieces, but she can be captured. Although pieces are not transparent to the witch, she is very agile; she combines the movement of queen, knight, and can jump orthogonally and diagonally two squares. Transparency of a piece means that other pieces can move, attack, and capture right through the piece.

Board Setup:

Note the position of Black's king and queen are switched compared to classical chess. This is so the guard and witch are equal distance to each player's king and queen.

Castling:
The rules of castling are similar as in classical chess, however, with the board 10 squares wide, the king travels three squares rather than two. The rook finishes adjacent to the king. All squares between the king and the involved rook must be unoccupied, with the exception of the witch and pieces made transparent by the witch.

Misc: Pawns play the same as in classical chess. Pawns can promote to queen, rook, bishop, knight in addition to guard and witch. Promotions are unlimited (not restricted to pieces that have been captured).

Other rules of this game are identical with rules of classical chess.

I get where your coming from though, sometimes there can be slight problems, such as when you use @ someone, then the pasted format does not look perfect.

In this position, if white played Ze4 or Ze5, then the Time Thief is frozen and cannot turn back time and capture the Zombie. I think this is self-explaining. Does anybody disagree?

I agree

How did you get this "basic knowledge"?

I'm not sure if these endgames have theoretical endings as you say for every position. I think I remember K+G vs. K being discussed on another thread, and the ending depended on the position of the pieces. Unfortunately I can't remember where is was discussed. If anyone knows please remind me.