Comments by JorgKnappen

When you can read German in Fraktur printing, this digitised book shows the variant under the title "Vom vermehrten und vergrößerten Schachspiele, genannt das Spanische":

https://books.google.de/books?id=dv1dAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=%22Bickelheringe%22&source=bl&ots=KlPjbEnTRs&sig=ACfU3U3_0lJIKKQ5eITSb4KYJPxccK0v7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7-taS1vTvAhXRgf0HHUEmCxAQ6AEwAXoECAMQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Bickelheringe%22&f=false

It gives interesting German translations of the piece names, the Bishop is a "Bickelhering" (a fool in commedy), the Ensign is a Fähnrich, and the Guard is a Trabant.

Despite the nice geometric move pattern this piece seems to be unemployed before Musketeer Chess. I can understand why: It creates triple forward forks into the rank behind the pawn line and is a very dangerous attacking piece. Creating a playable game with this piece is definitely a challenge (I haven't examined Musketeer Chess in this respect).

The Silly Sliders are one of the weirdest Chess experiences I have had. They are so strange: One attacks by retreating and unlocking the far range moves and one escapes from attack by approaching the figures. I'd suspect that the army is a bit weaker than the FIDEs because the ranging pieces can be stuffed. A blocking piece on the ski square doesn't even need protection. The rotated short range moves of the Onyx and the Duck have unusual interactions with the pawn formations.

All in all: A great design worth trying.

There is a typo in the German book title, it should read "seine" in place of "siene".

Also, I read the author's name as "Tressan" in accordance with Google OCR. There is a clear bridge between the two stems on the upper part of the last letter of his name. Google search finds the name on several pages where it seems to be removed from the pictures (Probably from bottom lines for the bookbinder, called Bogensignaturen in German language).

I have found the book on Google books here: https://books.google.de/books?id=n64UAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=Tressan&f=false

I cannot reproduce that problem, pressing CTRL-U in Firefox gives me a clean and readable source page.

Thanks Greg. Can you update the Emperor's Game as well?

Just a few days ago I created some diagrams with dots meaning plain and empty squares. I usually use numbers for fully empty lines, but dots for spaces in lines with pieces or decorations.

I suspect that there are more diagrams of this kind.

The new setup is mistaken, the Knights are between the Rooks and the Bishops, and the Bishops are on different colours, compare p. 77 in the book by L. Tressan here: https://books.google.de/books?id=n64UAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Castle is lacking the Alfil move in the diagram.

I am probably a bit late in commenting, but jAA has a meaning in Classic Betza notation (an Alfil-jumper-rider, i.e. a piece needing hurdles for each Alfil step it takes), and changing that meaning to something very ad-hoc is probably a bad idea. Either adding a new lowercase letter for slip-movement or attempting for a generic solution with different types of movement in the two legs of the move as in Betza's proposal t[FAA] would be better. Or new uppercase letters for the atoms slip-Rook and slip-Bishop.

Interestingly, my first draft from November 2001 had the fully lame Unicorns, and I am very interested how they fare in FairyMax. With Zillions of Games as an Oracle the original draft was considered too weak, and the the Unicorns were powered up with unconditional Knight's moves.

For the theme of the army, a colourbound piece is completely unsuitable although one can argue that a slip-Bishop still switches some bindings. But when it is too weak, what would be a good augmentation for it?

Thanks for featuring Quinquereme Chess with an interactive diagram! Unfortunately, there is a glitch in the implementation of the Quintessence and its compounds, it is lacking the lateral development like

f5 - d6 - c4 - a5

or

f5 - g7 - e8 - f10

I guess, the initial "hq" is too much and suppresses some moves. The Quintessence in Nachmahr without the initial two letters "hq" works fine.

Shouldn't the Rose have the move qN8 (including a zero move if the full circle is available) instead of just qN4? In the starting position after

1. k4-k5 ... it should be possible to play 2. Of2-f6.

Nice to see the Spotted Gryphon in this diagram, it is another difficult piece to describe!

The Beautiful Beasts are ready for publication.

It took me some searching on this site to find back the thread on 72 Capablanca Variants here: https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?itemid=72+Capa+variants

This variant was already proposed by David Paulowich before 1996 and it is mentioned in the preface on Ralph Betza's thoughts on Outrigger Chess here: https://www.chessvariants.com/d.betza/chessvar/outrig.html

Paulowich's variant has no page on this site (there is Victorian Chess https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/victorian-chess here which is similar but with the Archbishop in the Queen's position)