[Chess] New Chess Rules

[Deleted]

I can't be the only Chess enthusiast here. Gary was also a player and loved variants (and partciularly enjoyed Shogi or Japanese Chess, if memory serves).

At any rate, if you enjoy Chess, what do you think of this article? I find the proposed rules and the reasoning behind them rather interesting.

[jakdethe]

The link doesn't lead to an article unfortunately, it just leads to the homepage.

Though if you don't mind me sharing, my friend and I played an interesting variant in high school, wherein you could move your piece twice on your turn. That was the only addition, and it made for a very interesting game, save one move IIRC (involving knights). You had to calculate several moves ahead, and account for the strangest of movement directions.

[krusader74]

Nov 11, 2013 0:59:47 GMT -6 jakdethe said:

The link doesn't lead to an article unfortunately, it just leads to the homepage.

I use Google Chrome and had the same issue: "Oops! Google Chrome could not find http".

Manually copying-and-pasting the following URL worked for me:

www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-03-chess-2-the-sequel-how-a-street-fightin-man-fixed-the-worlds-most-famous-game

[Deleted]

Sorry, the link had the "http" I inserted and the "http" supplied by the "insert link" button. I fixed the original post. Krusader posted the correct link also. Oops! :-)

[Deleted]

Nov 11, 2013 0:59:47 GMT -6 jakdethe said:

Though if you don't mind me sharing ...

I don't mind at all. Thanks for posting that.

[krusader74]

Thanks for the article link! It made perfect sense to me.

The best chess player I knew had an eidetic memory. The guy simply memorized all the opening books, all solved end-games, and every famous historical game ever played. You would just mention a game to him, say Fischer vs Reshevsky 1961, and he'd replay it for you, step-by-step, lightning fast.

One of the things I've noticed about Bobby Fischer's games is that he often takes his opponents out of their comfort zones by employing unusual openings. That's one way to deal with Chess's over-reliance on memorization.

In this article, David Sirlin's uses a three-pronged solution to Chess's problem of over-reliance on memorization:

• Pick 1-of-6 opening armies: This deals with the problem of memorized opening books.
• Mid-line invasion: You win if your King crosses the mid-line of the board. This new victory condition deals with the problem of memorized end-games.
• Dueling: Instead of simply capturing a piece, players use a double-blind bidding mechanic with a scarce resource called "stones" to decide the victor. This makes a good memory even less advantageous.

WRT dueling, it's noteworthy that Ken St. Andre, the inventor of Tunnels and Trolls, invented a chess variant called "Combat Chess" that also uses a form of dueling. He described it in his own words in a 1997 article called The Origins of Tunnels and Trolls:

Combat Chess plays just like regular chess except that the attacking piece gets to roll 3 six-sided dice (3D6) and the defender rolls two six-sided dice whenever one piece tries to take another. The high total wins, and the loser is removed from the board. Special rules: doubles and triples add and roll over. In order to checkmate the King, you have to actually take him--there's always a chance that he may fight his way out of the trap. Try it--it's fun, and it changes chess strategy a good deal.

Ken said that "Combat Chess" was inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Chessmen of Mars, and the "exploding dice" mechanic was inspired by the board-game Monopoly. According to Monopoly's rules:

If you throw doubles, you move your token as usual, the sum of the two dice, and are subject to any privileges or penalties pertaining to the space on which you land. Retaining the dice, throw again and move your token as before. If you throw doubles three times in succession, move your token immediately to the space marked "In Jail."

Ken retained Combat Chess's exploding dice mechanic in Tunnels and Trolls, which calls it "DARO" (doubles add and roll-over) and "TARO" (triples add and roll-over).

Getting back to the article on David Sirlin's chess variant, there is a brief write-up of it on the Chess Variants website: Chess 2. The complete rules to "Chess 2: The Sequel" are here. And there is also a discussion of it on Board Game Geek.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that Gary Gygax invented his own chess variant, called Dragonchess, published in Dragon #100/August 1985. It uses 3 boards: Air, Land and Underworld. And it adds new pieces like the Thief, the Cleric, the Mage, and the Hero. There is a very detailed write-up for it on the Chess Variant webpage: Dragonchess. There's also a Wikipedia page devoted to it. Has anyone here played Dragonchess before?