Silver Elephant Chess

Silver Elephant Chess is a spin off variant of Mini Courier Chess Moderno. It has a main position (below left) but it also allows the players to select their choice between 4 different setups for the Silver Elephants and the Knights, a la Changgi (Korean Chess).

The main differences between Silver Elephant Chess and Mini Courier Chess is the movement of the Elephants and the initial Korean chess setup option.

Setup

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The setup on the left is the main Silver Elephant Chess setup. It has an Orthodox chess piece arrangement with Silver Elephants between Bishops and Knights in a 10x8 board. In the setup at right, the Silver Elephants and Knights are removed from their initial squares, and the players in the initial turn must place a Silver Elephant-Knight pair in his/her prefered order (or randomly if they wish, just flip a coin) at either sides of the King.

There is no requirement to keep any symmetry between the left Elephant-Knight combination, and the one on the right. There is no symmetry requirements between the White and Black arrangements, therefore there are 16 possibles initial setups (4 for a player X 4 by the second player)

Any Elephant-Knight combination is possible for each player:
1. Elephant-Knight Elephant-Knight
2. Elephant-Knight Knight-Elephant
3. Knight-Elephant Knight-Elephant
4. Knight-Elephant Elephant-Knight (Main arrangement)

Here are two sample setups:

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For the diagram on the left, the first move for White and Black would have been (in Game Courier format):

1. E c4-c1; N b4-b1; N i4-i1; E h4-h1 or -c4;-b4; -i4; -h4; E-c1; N-b1; N-i1; E-h1
1... e c5-c8; n b5-b8; n i5-h8; e h5-i8 or -c5; -b5; -i5; -h5; e-c5; n-b5; n-i5; e-h5

For the diagram on the right, the first move for White and Black would have been:

1. E c4-c1; N b4-b1; N i4-i1; E h4-h1 or -c4;-b4;-i4;-h4; E-c1; N-b1; N-i1; E-h1
1... e c5-b8; n b5-c8; n i5-h8; e h5-i8 or -c5; -b5; -i5; -h5; e-b8; n-c8; n-h8; e-i8

After 10-20 moves a game started from any of the alternate initial positions will look like a game started from the main position.

Pieces

All regular chess pieces (except for the elephants) in Silver Elephant Chess move as in Orthodox Chess. Pawns can play one or two squares in their initial move.

Silver Elephants (represented by an Elephant with a moon by the ear) move just like leaping Courier Elephants. The Silver Elephant moves one step like a Burmese Elephant (one step diagonal in any direction, or one step forward) and can also leap 2-squares in ANY of the same Burmese directions (two steps diagonal in any direction, or two steps forwards). The square being jumped may be vacant or occupied. See the diagram below on the left.

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The Courier Elephants cousins (i.e. Courier Chess Moderno diagram above at right) have the option of making a Silver Elephant leap only on their very first move. Afterwards, Courier Elephants are limited to a single-step Burmese Elephant movement.

Silver Elephants are leapers that can reach all squares on the board and can also be very nice and useful short-range attacking pieces. Their value is somewhere halfway between a Bishop and a Rook. A King and Silver Elephant are able to mate a lonely King.

Silver Elephants are known as Great Elephants in Peter Aronson's White Elephant Chess.

Rules

The goal of the game is to checkmate the opponent's King, as in Orthodox Chess.

Rules for en passant, check, checkmate, stalemate, 50-move draw and Threefold Repetition Draw are like in Orthodox Chess.

The "Bare King" condition (also found in Shatranj) applies. It occurs when a player has taken his opponent's last piece or pawn (i.e. only the opponent's King remains). This is a win for the first player unless the opponent's lonely King can then take the first player's last remaining piece or pawn on his next move (bearing the first player's King as well, i.e. King vs King), which is then a draw.

Pawns may promote to any piece (Queen, Rook, Silver Elephant, Bishop or Knight) upon reaching their last rank.

Castling is done by moving the King 3-steps in the direction of the Rook.

This table shows where the King and Rook end up and the notation for each type of castling.

White castles short	O-O	Ki1, Rh1
White castles long	O-O-O	Kc1, Rd1
Black castles short	O-O	Ki8, Rh8
Black castles long	O-O-O	Kc8, Rd8

Castling may only occur under the following conditions:

Unmoved: The King and the castling Rook must not have moved before in the game, including a previous castling.
Un-attacked: All of the squares between the king's initial and final squares (including the initial and final squares) must not be under attack by any opposing piece.
Vacant: All the squares between the king's initial and final squares (including the final square), and all of the squares between the rook's initial and final squares (including the final square), must be vacant except for the king and castling rook.

These rules have the following consequences:

Castling cannot capture any pieces.
The king and castling rook cannot "jump" over any pieces other than each other.
A player may castle at most once in a game.
If a player moves his king or both of his initial rooks without castling, he may not castle during the rest of the game.
The king may not be in check before or after castling.
The king cannot move through check.

Notes

Game Courier Presets

Silver Elephant Chess preset #1

Silver Elephant Chess preset #2 (with initial Korean setup option)

Game Courier Logs

Game Courier Logs for Games of Silver Elephant Chess

To see actual games that have been played on-line, follow the link above.

Silver Elephant Chess was proposed by Jose Manuel Carrillo-Muniz, from Puerto Rico in 2009.

Chess Variants by the Author:

Modern Random Chess (9x9)
Contemporary Random Chess (8x8)
Prime Ministers Chess (9x8)
Modern Capablanca Random Chess (10x8)
Modern English Random Chess (10x10)
Pseudo-Modern Random Chess (9x9)
Chess8400 (9x9)
Prime Ministers Contemporary Random Chess (8x8)
Prime Ministers Random Chess (9x8)
International Contemporary Random Chess (10x10)
International Fischer Random Chess (10x10)
Courier Chess Moderno (12x8)
Mini Courier Chess Moderno (10x8)
Silver Elephant Chess (10x8)
Modern Ministers Courier Chess (11x8)
Ajax Chess (10x10)
Partnership Chaturanga (8x8)

Other Pages by the Author:

This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.

By Jose Carrillo.
Web page created: 2009-06-17. Web page last updated: 2009-06-17

Comments

Silver Elephant Chess. Missing description (10x8, Cells: 80)

H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Oct 3, 2009 11:04 AM EDT:

I must agree with David. I did lots of empirical piece-value determinations on the computer, with setups like the array for this game (putting two exo-pieces in a context of orthodox pieces on a 10x8 board). I did not test the Silver Elephant, but the (FA) piece was already very close in value to a Knight. (In pairs, that is; being color bound there likely is a pair-bonus effect involved.)

My empirical formula for 8-fold symmetric short-range pieces was (5/8*N+30)*N centi-Pawn, where N is the number of target squares. For 10 squares this would give 362. (On a scale where N=280.) But in other tests forward moves turned out to contribute about twice as much to value as sideway or backward moves. If I count forward moves as 4/3 and backward moves as 2/3, I get N=32/3 and a value of 391. And this piece seems to have mating portential as well, which should probably be good for a bonus.

For comparison: a single Bishop on 10x8 is worth about 330 on the same scale, with a bonus of 50 for a pair.

💡📝Jose Carrillo wrote on Fri, Oct 2, 2009 06:59 PM EDT:

Thanks David.

I wasn't aware of White Elephant Chess or the Great Elephants.

I stand corrected I my evaluation of the strenght of the Silver Elephant.

I based my statement more on my short experience playing with the Silver Elephant and the Bishop on the same board, than empirically.

While the feeling from my short experience playing the Silver Elephant was that they were both similar in value.

Mathematically, these are my value estimates on a 10x10 board:

Bishop 3
Rook 10.5
Queen 16
Knight 5
Silver Elephant 4

What I was surpise to find out was that the Silver elephant was weaker to the Knight.

David Paulowich wrote on Fri, Oct 2, 2009 03:32 PM EDT:

'Silver Elephants are leapers that can reach all squares on the board and can also be very nice and useful short-range attacking pieces. They are similar in value to the long-range color-bound Bishops and stronger than the leaping Knights.'

In Peter Aronson's White Elephant Chess this piece is called a Great Elephant. I would value this shortrange piece halfway between a Bishop and a Rook on a 10x10 board.