Weakest and Strongest Pieces

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vickalan

Jan 16, 2017

I know Musketeerchess2015 and Brainking2016 like to play with strong pieces.

The Gryphon ("Griffin") is Archbishop + Hawk and can leap to 20 squares! Also, Brainking talks about the Rokh - an enormous Eagle able to catch and fly away with animals like an elephant!

For me, I like a chessboard mixed with some weaker pieces too. Here is the bulldog next to a chancellor:

He's like a pawn, but he doesn't promote on the 8th rank so I think he is even weaker than a pawn! If you have any games or stories about very weak or very strong pieces let us know!

vickalan

Jan 18, 2017

brainking2016 wrote:

I think it's going to be challenging to use this piece and see how much wrath it's going to blow.

OK, that sounds really good. How about we play on 10 x 8 board like you say. The R,N,B are pulled out to the corners to give us two new spaces next to the king and queen. In those spaces, we add one griffin and one guard. I'll switch black's K and Q so that both kings are between a queen and guard, and both queens are next to a griffin.

We can also add some "corporeal" pawns, or change all of them?

If that's OK, I'll post a new thread with the starting position soon. We just need the griffon icon. If it's not ready yet, we can temporarily use the leopard symbol for the griffon. Is all OK?

vickalan

Jan 18, 2017

OK, sounds good. I agree to look at the board before we start. I'll set it up by tomorrow and show it before we start.

Adding one griffin will give the game some more power, and using corporeals will add more strength too I think. They have better defense so might be able to promote more easily?

Btw, in English, I think spelling like "corporal" is better. It is above a commoner and above a private, but below a sergeant. Corporeal is something different not related to armies or war.

vickalan

Jan 19, 2017

Ok, here's the board set-up. All the pawns are corporals (but I didn't change the design of the pawns). The leopard icon is used for the griffon.

If you'd like we can also add two more "minor" pieces. For example two knights or two guards on the 2nd and 7th ranks. Let me know what you think.

vickalan

Jan 22, 2017

Hi brainking2016,
I'm glad you are feeling better from the flue. I hope you have recovered completely.

I inverted the king and queen because the board pieces aren't mirror-symmetric (as in classical chess). White has the gryphon on d1, black on g8. Also guards are on g1 and d8. If white has king next to guard (a good piece for defending, then black should have the same thing). And if white has a gryphon next to the queen, black should have the same thing.

I think this makes the starting position more fair. With the setup I showed, the board has diagonal symmetry so there is equal positioning between the pieces for both sides.

I do like the hawk + leopard image you made. Reminds me of the Janus in another game (a face looking both ways). I touched it up a little, and we can use that.

Let me know what you think.

vickalan

Jan 22, 2017

I think for variant chess there can be two kinds of symmetry: mirror symmetry (classical chess) and diagonal symmetry (or might be better to call it rotational symmetry).

With rotational symmetry, the board can be rotated 180 degrees, and all the pieces are back in their original positions (except B&W reversed). Here is a diagram:

This symmetry is also used in Waterloo chess. If a board has only one new strong or unusual piece for each side (like one gryphon, or one angel) I think this type of symmetry is better to keep the board fair. Stronger pieces start a little farther apart from each other.

I haven't seen any discussion about this anywhere else on these forums. If anyone else has an opinion I would like to hear it.

If it's OK let me know. If not I can move pieces around to mirror symmetry and see how it looks.

vickalan

Jan 23, 2017

OK, this should be a good game.

All the pawns are corporals, right? I changed the appearance of them just a little to remind us it's a new type of piece. I hope it's OK with you.

vickalan

Jan 23, 2017

brainking2016 wrote:

Griffin (Gryphon) is going to be a hell of a piece to try. I think it's going to be challenging to use this piece and see how much wrath it's going to blow.

...this is going to be Griffin Chess.

Hi brainking2016. I started a thread for our game (here).

vickalan

Jan 24, 2017

Hi Zied,
Is there any chance you would like to try two gryphons on the "Infinite Plane" chessboard?

I think that is where I want to put more of my effort in future games (very big board with a sense of freedom)! I would even like to try it with two other powerful pieces. For example 2 gryphons and 2 dragons for each color. Your new tool helps a lot, and I plan to keep using it

Let me know what you think of that idea. But anyway, I have to wait until I finish one or two games before I start anymore. My game with Brainking is getting close to the end I think. I'm trying to see how many moves I can survive (or get a draw?).

evert823

Aug 26, 2017

#10

Inventing more weak pieces is interesting. See also this topic:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/team-mate-chess

I was thinking about the compound of the Shogi Lance and the reversed Shogi Keima:

Initially it moves rook-wise but only forward, or backwards like a reversed Shogi Knight as shown in te picture.

But it depends on orientation, so we could allow that the orientation can be rotated by 90 degrees, but this would take one turn and the arrow would remain on the same square.

Obviously much weaker than the Superchess Empress, which has Rook- and Knight moves in all directions.

evert823

Aug 26, 2017

#11

King, Arrow and Bishop versus King is forced mate, and so is King and 2 arrows versus King.

evert823

Aug 26, 2017

#12

Complete information dice:

Initially, the one dot face is on top.

The dice moves orthogonally exactly as many squares as the number of dots on top. The dice can be turned at will (not rolled - this is why I'm calling it a complete information dice) but this takes one turn, and then the dice remains on its square.

Very weak. I don't know how to mate KBN vs K, but taking an extra complete information dice won't help me either.

HGMuller

Aug 27, 2017

#13

My tablebase generator confirms that KBAK (A=Arrow) is generally won. Even without rotating the Arrow. (Which is just as well, as it cannot handle identity-changing pieces.) Even in combination with Wazir or Ferz the Arrow can force checkmate on a bare King (except that there is always a significant percentage of initial positions with F or W where these can be chased by the bare King towards their doom, and the Arrow cannot quickly protect them from a distance). Knight + Arrow is also generally won.

Complete-info dice (singular: Die, btw) are indeed excessively weak, because the options they can choose from are already all very weak 4-leapers. Yet it should be helpful in KBNK, as you could keep it permanently on 1 to make it a Wazir, and both KBWK and KNWK are generally won (again, when the Wazir is not cut off from its friends, which isn't so much of a problem with a Bishop). The crux is that the Wazir cannot only switch its attack from c1 to b1 in a single move (i.e. reach b1 from c1 in 3 moves: an uncapture, move and capture), but while attacking b1 can attack c2 at the same time. (So that you can afford to have the King on a3 rather than b3, making room for the Knight to cover a1 & c1; with Knights this is generally a problem not met with other forking pieces such as Camel.)

The Bishop can switch its attack from c1 to a1 in one move, which is sufficient in combination with almost any piece. (Except of course color-bound pieces on the same shade.) In fact there is a conjecture that a Bishop is able to force mate in combination with a weak leaper on boards of any size, as together with a King it can confine the bare King dynamically to a corner, with one move to spare each time the bare King has to change direction because it hits the edge.