Has anyone tried Seirawan Chess? I’ve never tried it, but it looks like fun. Kind of a nice diversion like Bughouse.
Here’s a link to the uschess page:
I think combining Seirawan Chess with FischerRandom would be a hoot.
Have not really tried it but I do own a set of pieces.
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In the context of Ed Trice’s ‘Gothic Chess’, I have puttered around with the two new piece types that so many people naturally suggest as interesting; namely the N+B and N+R pieces (traditional queen is B+R of course).
Ed’s now defunct website, GothicChess.com, used to have numerous puzzles and actual game examples of combinations that involved the two imagined pieces; especially the N+R piece.
Many of those combinations were clever and aesthetically pleasing.
The two imagined pieces could have felt right for chess had the rules of chess evolved differently hundreds of years ago. But to add even one of them to a variant that is otherwise standard chess would be to drastically change the game into one of all out attack.
Further, instead of positional advantages being sought, players would instead mostly look for favorable exchanges, such as Rook -captures- N+B piece: not desirable.
I saw a video wherein Yasser says that one goal of his Seirawan Chess is to reduce the influence of deep opening preparation. I agree that Seirawan Chess would achieve that goal. But there are better ways to achieve that goal.
Discard the ‘Random’ from Fischer Random Chess!
Today’s absurdly deep opening preparation is bad for elite chess. But a moderate depth of opening preparation is the right amount for chess; better than no preparation.
The moderate level of opening preparation can be achieved by selecting just one alternative start setup from FRC-chess960 as a second stable setup to be often reused. That way opening prep for the second setup would grow from infancy to a moderate level over a couple of decades.
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You might want to try a slightly different version of the N+B piece. Let’s call it a Knishop.
A Knishop moves NE or SW like a bishop, but NW or SE like a knight. For example, a Knishop on e4 can move to any square on the b1-h7 diagonal, or to any of the squares d6, c5, f2, g3.
Note that, on a tri-color board (say red, blue, yellow), a Knishop always stays on the same color, just like a bishop on a standard two-color board:
R B Y R B Y R B
B Y R B Y R B Y
Y R B Y R B Y R
R B Y R B Y R B
B Y R B Y R B Y
Y R B Y R B Y R
R B Y R B Y R B
B Y R B Y R B Y
Question: Can three Knishops, one on each color, and a king force checkmate against a lone king?
Bill Smythe
I don’t know who invented it first, but Edgar Rice Burroughs in one of his novels had a Martian chess game. 10 x 10 board with two new pieces, the Archbishop (B+N) and the Chancellor (R+N).
I have an Omega Chess Set.
As a variant, Gothic Chess has not shown enough popularity to allow it to applicably survive.
Is this correct? I do seriously doubt that. Positional and strategical aspects of the game would apparently remain. Yes, the possibility of tactics increases as the number of playing pieces increases, however it is wrong to say that positional considerations would no longer exist or even be significant. After all, there are literally no tactical opportunities on move one in any of these games.
I also have seen Seirawan and him describing his variant as well as the intent and motivation of varying the game. Yes, he did say that this is one goal of his variation, but not the only one.
That seems a bit extreme to call the deep opening preparation done at the higher levels of Chess as absurd and bad for elite chess.
Also, what is a moderate amount of opening preparation and how much is too much or too little? For a class player rated below 2100, I would say we are not qualified to say how much is too much and even how much is medium compared to deep.
This past weekend we had our January Tornado. A regular is a young man of 8 years that is now rated 1850. The important thing is his father that is obviously teaching/training his son. This man is rated at about 2400 and is a correspondence GM.
A young man that I have mentored for the last 6 years, played this boy and lost. He had played the boy before and this father and boy were friendly with the young man, Adam. The father even talked with Adam earlier in the tournament asking what he was studying and gave him some suggestions, specifically to study tactics. Anyway, after the game, the father came to the scene and asked his boy what happened in the game. He picked up the score sheet and looked at the score in less than 20 seconds. He immediately smiled and said to Adam that his son swindled Adam because Adam was winning the game.
The point of this story is that these higher players know a lot, a lot more than we class players and they are much more skilled at visualization and other aspects of playing all aspects of the game… I am sure that a medium amount of opening preparation for this 2400 player would look gargantuan to a 1200 rated player. So to him, a good amount of opening preparation is certainly not absurd or too much.
Bill, what’s the variant that pieces like the ‘longleaper’ and the ‘withdrawer’? I remember you showing that one to us years ago at the NU chess club.
I’ve seen this suggested in many places on the internet: google.com/search?q=%22disc … m+chess%22
No. Burroughs’ Martian chess variant had entirely new pieces, none with conventional rank/file/diagonal moves, but rather an assortment of short-range hops. It’s given in his 1921 novel, The Chessmen of Mars. One Barsoomian nation plays it with live pieces and duels to the death for posession of each square.
I’m told that it’s playable, though I never got very far in trying it. The rules are detailed, but leave lots of ambiguities. I’m content to enjoy the book for what it is – I must have first read it at age 11 or thereabout.
That’s called Ultimum or Ultima or something like that. Not sure of the exact rules, but it’s something like this:
Initially, both kings are placed on black squares (e1 and d8). Not sure what the point of that is. The queens are placed on the white squares.
The king’s rooks (h1 and a8) are turned upside down.
Otherwise, the initial setup is as in chess.
The pieces have different names (well, most of them).
King = king
Queen = withdrawer
Bishop = chameleon
Knight = long-leaper
Rook = coordinator
upside down Rook = immobilizer
Pawn = squeezer
The king moves like a chess king. Squeezers move like rooks. All other pieces move like queens.
Each piece has a different way of capturing. Only the king captures as in chess, by landing on the piece being captured.
The withdrawer captures by being within one square (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) of the piece about to be captured, then withdrawing directly away from it (any number of squares).
The long-leaper jumps over a piece, from any distance, to any distance beyond.
The coordinator captures by forming a rectangle with its own king, thus removing any enemy piece(s) on the remaining two corners of the rectangle. For example, if white king is at d2 and the white coordinator moves (from anywhere) to f6, then any black pieces at d6 and/or f2 are thereby removed from the board.
The squeezer captures by surrounding (in conjunction with another squeezer) the piece to be captured, one square away on the rank or file (not diagonal). For example, if white has a squeezer on g5, black has any piece on f5, and a white squeezer then moves to e5, the black piece is captured.
The immobilizer does not capture, but it immobilizes any enemy piece within one square of it, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
The chameleon captures as the captured piece would capture. For example, it leaps over a long-leaper, withdraws from a withdrawer, etc. It also (of course) immobilizes the immobilizer. Somewhere I heard that it also immobilizes another chameleon, but I’m not sure about that.
Rules regarding check, mate, etc are as in chess.
Bill Smythe
Yes, the knishop is an interesting idea. Could you have knishops of the opposite polarity? For example, one that moves as a bishop NW or SE would be the complementary knishop. Or you could have the polarity depend on if the knishop was on a light or dark square.
It looks like you would need three of them to cover every square.
Yes, each knishop can access only 21 or 22 squares (one-third of 64), even by moving multiple times, since each one stays on its own color on a tri-color board.
So two of them could not access the entire board, even if they were opposite polarity.
I suppose one question might be, if two knishops are one polarity and one is the other polarity, could all three access the entire board? My guess is no.
I think three knishops (same polarity), one on each tri-color square, and king can force mate easily against a lone king. I’m wondering whether two of them could. Might be easier if they are opposite polarity.
Another question would be, if the knishop changes polarity depending on the color square it is on (on a 2-color board), could two of them access the entire board?
Chomp on these questions for a while, all you variant fans.
Bill Smythe
You could allow the knishop to change polarity by allowing a wormhole hop when it’s reached the 7th or 8th rank. Otherwise, it’s not that interesting a piece, IMO: it’s even more restricted than the medieval firz.
We do it at the chess center as skittles games. Many players are scared of the idea where their opening preparation gets thrown out the window or is severely limited when new pieces are introduced. We also have done it in combination with bughouse which makes it quite entertaining.
We’re working on doing a simul like this with Yasser along with a small prize fund ($1500-2000) to get people interested and aware.
I have a 2300+ friend who posts in the fourms from time to time. As I understood him, he claimed that Fischer Random solves nothing as at the very highest levels from most (or all?) of the additional positions, the top players could forces the types of positions they understood anyway.
Perhaps he’ll drop by to offer his opinion as I may have not understood him correctly.
As for me, my opening prep is exhausted before move 10 (and often long before move 10) and my chess is very random as it is right now, Thank You Very Much!
In Seirawan bughouse, are the extra pieces immediately available for dropping anywhere, like captured pieces, or must they wait to be placed on the first rank initially, as in non-bughouse Seirawan?
Bill Smythe
They agree to that specific rule before the game.