Chess Variant Contest

I should announce the winners now.

First place is...

drumroll.avi plays

Chaos Chess!

Second is...

silence.avi

Team-mate Chess!

Third is...erm...

Defend the Castle?

Somehow, Team-mate Chess is slightly incomplete...

By the unicorn on a1-a8 squares, Do they move as R+N or W*+N?

*One square orthogonally

For Unicorn it said "one step as a Rook". That is the same as "One square orthogonally", i.e. W+N.

No, that is how the Cobra moves (with the caveat that the (1,3) move can be blocked on the neighboring (1,2) square).

It is rather unusual (and thus interesting) that such a strong piece that attacks two orthogonally neighboring squares cannot force checkmate on a bare King. It turns out to be due to an unlucky collision with its own King. To checkmate, the bare King has to be in a corner (take a1 for definiteness), the Cobra on d2 (to attack a1 and b1) and its King on a3 or b3 (to cover a2 and b2). The Cobra can reach d2 from a3, b3, c4, c5, e5, e4, f3, g3, g1 and f1. But on the move before it has to cover c1, or the bare King would step there from b1 rather than to a1. And c1 can only be covered by a Cobra from a2, b3, b4, d4, d3, e2 and f2. The only square from which you can both cover c1 and reach d2 is b3. But this is where the attacking King has to be, because if he is at a3 (the only other square where it would be checkmate with the Cobra on d2), then neither Ka3 nor Cobra b3 would cover c2, and the bare King would move there instead of a2. So it all depends on the Cobra and King both having to be on b3 in the mated-in-2 position.

my head hurts

Indeed, the when one Werewolf captures another, the game would go on with one Werewolf. But this would either mean a devastating loss of material for one side, which he would of course do his best to avoid, or be a quite rare trade of multiple pieces, e.g. 2R vs W, when the opponent W was overloaded, protecting two Rooks, and you lure it away from Rook #1 by sacrificing your W for Rook #2, and after he recaptures with W, take the now unprotected Rook #1. That should be as rare as Q vs 2R trades, probably even rarer, because the W is worth somewhat more than Q, so 2R for W is not a good trade, and it is the side that captures 2 pieces that has to initiate the exchange.

That K is 'immune' on the one hand was done because otherwise a King could not capture a Werewolf at all, as you would have no King left. And then the Werewolf would be too strog in the late end-game, as it could contact-check the enemy King with impunity, checkmating it all on his own.

The idea was to make it possible to trade both Werewolfs out of the game by trading WxW when the latter was protected by King, so a KxW recapture follows. No one would of course willingly step an unprotected W next to an enemy King, but for capturing a W there is no harm in this. Indirect trades (white X attacks black W, black Y counter-attacks white W, XxW, YxW) are not possible when X and Y are Kings, as Kings cannot attack Werewolfs. And when X and Y are not Kings, they would both turn into W, and only X would have been traded for Y.

Well, I feel honored, but honesty compells me to confess that this idea of conserving a piece in the game by making it contageous is already more than 400 years old: the historic Japanese variant 'Maka Dai Dai Shogi' used it to conserve the two strongest pieces (Buddhist Spirit and Teaching King) on each side. The game itself is unwieldly large, however (19 x 19 board, with 96 pieces on each side), making it very tedious to play. (Although the conservation of the strong pieces so they can quickly slaughter the many weak pieces definitely helps to speed things up.)

I just thought this idea was so nice and original that it deserved to be exhibited in a more accessible Chess variant.

I regret that I never had any contact with Ralph Betza. He already left the scene when I appeared. I am sure we would have gotten along very well.

= 4 points

= 3 points

= 2 points

= 1 point

= 1 point

Interesting stuff