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Capablanca's chess. An enlarged chess variant, proposed by Capablanca. (10x8, Cells: 80) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]May I recommend Embassy Chess? It too is played on the 10 × 8 board with
the same pieces as Bird's or Capablanca Chess though named as in Grand
Chess. The Marshall moves as a Rook or Knight and the Cardinal moves as a
Bishop or Knight. The set up is like Grand Chess if played on the 10 × 8
board with the Rooks in line with the other pieces. The game is played
just
like regular Chess except castling has the King move three squares
towards
the Rook instead of two. A promoted Pawn has the additional choice of the
Marshall or Cardinal. Seeing how so many people get worked up about all
the Pawns being protected from the start of the game, they should find
this version acceptable. I like it because the King and Queen are placed
together and it gives it a regular Chess look.
As far as I know, there's no quick and easy Fool's mates in this
version
either. Nor if it has a Scholar's mate equivalent either. With the
Marshall and Cardinal side by side they can both be moved like Knights
and
developed.
The game gets its name from Modern Bird's Chess (MBC) and seems like a
good choice if one thinks of an embassy with dignitaries visiting the
ambassador. Kevin Hill proposed it in 2004, but it mainly went unplayed
as
the other three versions are more or less the same game. Embassy Chess is not patented and is available to the public
without restriction.
I am wondering about Capablanca's Chess and the names for the Marshall
and Cardinal. What did he call the pieces? Did their names change as he
worked on his version of Bird's Chess? Were they are named Guard and
Equerry? Does anyone have the order in which the names developed? I am
not
able to get the books mentioned in the links above. If I ever come across
them, I'll read about the variants in them.
I don't agree about the wasted space comment of Grand Chess. With the
pieces moved away from the back row, it plays very much like a 10 × 8
board. The Rooks have free reign on the back rows and are in the game
from
the beginning. The King has some running room and it seems to make him a
little harder to get early in the game. Whether or not this makes the
game
better than the 10 × 8 games is a whole different deal. It certainly
makes
it the best 10 × 10 variant played with these pieces. The Pawn promotion
makes it a different game when it comes into play though. If a lot of
pieces get traded off the board sure gets an open look to it. At least
the
Pawns only have to go to eighth row instead of the tenth row.
All these games played with these pieces seem not too likely to go to the
end game as often as regular Chess. The extra power of the two additional
pieces and two Pawns with the King being the same piece as usual makes
him
lots more vulnerable to attacks, gambits, and sacrifices.
Reinhard Scharnagl has a program that plays Capablanca Chess. He is the one that made the random version too. His program, called SMIRF, also plays other large variant Chess games and regular Chess as well. Janus Chess, Embassy Chess, and Bird's Chess are in it. He says he's still working on it and trying to make it stronger, but it's had little trouble defeating me at BrainKing at Janus Chess for some time now. He just recently added Embassy Chess and the SMIRF is showing me how to play that game as well. I've played Janus Chess the most of the games, but I will get better at Embassy Chess. I've never actually played a game of Bird's Chess or Capablanca Chess, though those two games I've known for many years and only in the last couple of years did I get to play the other ones. The same goes for Grand Chess, though that's a 10 × 10 board size game it has a lot of things in common with these other games. SMIRF link: http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachsmirf_e.html
It doesn't play very well without the keys to unlock the machine's thinking powers. He listed them on the BrainKing 10 × 8 Chess discussion board.
Walter: The Embassy Chess position RNBQKMCBNR has its share of quick mates. Using C=Cardinal: 1. h4 c5 2.Ch2 e6 3.Cd6 checkmate. Fergus Duniho's Grotesque Chess is another variant of Capablanca's Chess in which no Pawn is left unprotected at the start of the game.
Earlier games of this sort are flawed by having an unprotected Pawn on each side. This is true of Carrera's Chess, Bird's Chess, Capablanca's Chess, and Aberg's Capablanca variation. More recent games of this sort have fixed this problem by initially arranging pieces in a way that keeps all Pawns protected. I think it is fair to say that this is an improvement, and any of the more recent games (such as Grotesque Chess, Embassy Chess, and Ladorean Chess) are better than the earlier games. I have not played any of these games extensively enough to say from experience that any is better than any of the others. Based on my understanding of good game design and an examination of the rules of these games, I would venture a guess that Grotesque Chess is the best of the bunch. Bear in mind here that I invented Grotesque Chess and could well be biased toward my own creation. Be that as it may, I had reasons for designing it as I did. The main thing about Grotesque Chess that I consider an improvement is its more flexible castling rule. I think this is more suitable for a board this size, and unlike the similar castling rule in Aberg's variation, it stops short of being the equivalent of two moves. I also think that moving the Knights closer to the center may make them more useful, given the greater width of this board. Ladorean Chess has the same castling rule and the same initial position of Knights. I created this game too, at one time considering it as the form Grotesque Chess would take, but discarded it in favor of the form Grotesque Chess did take. I favored the form I gave to Grotesque Chess, because it more symmetrically arranged pieces with Bishop moves.
I took a look at Grotesque Chess. To me, it is too much unlike chess so it would get low marks for being a viable variant. There is no way to put the Bishops on long diagonals so finachettoes are non existant. Next, the Knight placement upsets the addage 'knights before bishops.' If you play Nc3 or Nh3 you block in the c-pawn or h-pawn which would keep the Bb1 or Bi1 locked in place. So, you need to play the c- or h-pawn almost by force to the 4th rank before putting a knight in that same file. This detracts from the game. So playing the knights even closer to the center on their first move again seems almost forced. And knights on e3 anf f3 immediately interferes with the the diagonal range of two majors, the Qc1 and Eh1. I think it safe to say the Grotesque setup introduces more problems than it solves so at least you picked the right name for it.
Go take a look at Univers Chess, which I invented yesterday. It uses the same pieces with a more Chess-like setup.
If anyone would like to see multiple attempts at 8x8 Capablanca chess, you can go to this thread here and get ahold of a ZRF file which contains 15 variants on the idea: http://abstractgamers.org/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=54&page=1#Item_3
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, May 17, 2008 09:50 AM EDT:Note there are now many free computer programs that can play the 10x8 variants with the Capablanca piece set. Many do use the WinBoard protocol to communicate their moves, so they can be made to play each other automatically under the WinBoard GUI. Pages with many links to downloadable engines you will find at http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/10x8.html and [at another site.] The results of a recent tournament of the WB compatible engines at long time control (55 min + 5 sec/move), where each engine had to play each other engine 10 times, over 5 different opening setups (Carrera, Bird, Capablanca, and Embassy), led to the following ranking: Rank Name Elo + - games score oppo. draws 1 Joker80 n 2432 96 83 70 80% 2110 0% 2 TJchess10x8 2346 83 76 70 72% 2122 4% 3 Smirf 1.73h 2304 80 75 70 68% 2128 4% 4 Smirf Donation 2165 73 73 70 53% 2148 9% 5 [other software] 6 Fairy-Max 4.8 v 2027 72 77 70 34% 2168 11% 7 BigLion80 4apr 1945 76 84 70 26% 2179 7% 8 ArcBishop80 1.00 1822 86 103 70 15% 2197 4% Except for Smirf 1.73h, all the engines are available for free download, from their various sources. In addition, there exist several programs with incompatible interfaces, such as ChessV and Zillions of Games. Their level of play is not thoroughly tested, as the incompatibility of their interfaces makes it impossible to play them against each other without assistance of a Human operator, which again makes it difficult to conduct the hundreds of games necessary for reliable rating determination. Compared to the ranking above, Zillions would rank at the very bottom. [The above has been edited to remove a name and site reference. It is the policy of cv.org to avoid mention of that particular name and site to remove any threat of lawsuits. Sorry to have to do that, but we must protect ourselves. - J. Joyce]
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, May 17, 2008 01:05 PM EDT:I am sorry to have put your site in jeopardy, I was not aware that giving a link to a site as a source of information could make you subject to a lawsuit. But why did you delete the reference to poor Michel's program? My own engines are mentioned on the unspeakable website as well, on the very page of which you deleted the link. I even gave permission to its owner to host them there for download, should I no longer want to host them myself. Does that mean I will in the future also not be allowed to mention any of my own engines here??? Would it at least be allowed to mention the perfomance rating of the [other software]? Anyway, people interested in the complete result of the WinBoard General 10x8 Championship 2008, can find it on my own website, on the page: http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/BotG08G/finalstanding.html
Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, May 17, 2008 06:37 PM EDT:HG, before I became editor, this site and editors had considerable problems. It is unfortunate that people cannot always get along, and things sometimes get unpleasant. It is one of the reasons we ask for civil discourse. Sadly, things have not always run smoothly, and we edit. This editing includes both specific names and more general references, most of which are obvious upon reflection. If you don't mind a bit of levity here, I'll say you have certainly not managed to get yourself on our watch list. So you are quite welcome to post references to your own site [unless it becomes advertising - this site does charge for advertising ;-) ] and you can certainly reference such people, places, and things as you desire on your own site. A number of people maintain their own sites, and post variants and related works on them, with links posted here at CV. No problem, especially since you're not selling anything. But any reference to a banned topic will be edited out here on this site. And this is very much a 'G' [for 'General'] site, kids are welcome. So we keep it safe for children, also. I hope this has clarified things [although it's probably just muddied them up more]. With the extremely rare exception, we invite people to participate - politely, of course. Enjoy. Joe
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 18, 2008 02:01 AM EDT:OK, fair enough. But 10x8 variants are rapidly growing more popular with engine programmers, and I intend to contribute to that process through organizing the 'Battle of the Goths' tournament series, and publishing rating lists. I might want to share important developments in that area here, so it would be useful to know which engines can be mentioned, and which not. Is the problem caused by the 'G-word', and should I avoid any reference to engines that contain the G-word as part of their name? So far there are only two of this, but there are likely to be many more in the future, as people tend to name their engines after the variant they are playing.
H.G.
Here is another idea for 10x8 openings to test with your engines, use random setups with the Four 'Modern' Chess Principles.
- The option of having both Bishops start up on squares of the same color
- Reverse Symmetry
- Symmetric Castling to either side
- In a 10x8 setup it could be: either short or long castling (but not both)
- short castling: O-Ob is Kb1 & Rc1 [Kb8 & Rc8 for black]; O-Oi is Ki1 & Rh1 [Ki8 & Rh8 for black]
- long castling: O-O-Oc is Kc1 & Rd1 [Kc8 & Rd8 for black]; O-O-Oh is Kh1 & Rg1 [Kh8 & Rg8 for black])
- The Bishop Adjustment Rule to give players the choice (if they wish) to move a Bishop to the opposite color squares in setups where both Bishops start on the same color squares.
Hi H.G.
Here is another 10x8 variant option for your engines, a random setup with the Four 'Modern' Chess Principles:
There are 151,200 possible starting positions!
The Four 'Modern' Chess Principles are:
Here is a sample preset for 'Modern Capablanca Random Chess'.
PS-I submited the comment below on the subject of the Four Modern Chess Principles. The comment below can be deleted.
Here is another 10x8 variant option for your engines, a random setup with the Four 'Modern' Chess Principles:
There are 151,200 possible starting positions!
The Four 'Modern' Chess Principles are:
- The option of having both Bishops start up on squares of the same color
- Reverse Symmetry
- Symmetric Castling to either side (Players must agree before the game which type of castling [short or long] will they use in the game)
- In a 10x8 setup castling can be either short (O-O) or long (O-O-O), but not both:
- O-Ob is Kb1 & Rc1 [Kb8 & Rc8 for black]; or O-Oi which is Ki1 & Rh1 [Ki8 & Rh8 for black]
- O-O-Oc is Kc1 & Rd1 [Kc8 & Rd8 for black]; or O-O-Oh which is Kh1 & Rg1 [Kh8 & Rg8 for black]
- The Bishop Adjustment Rule giving players the choice (if they want) to change one of the Bishops to the opposite color squares in those setups where the Bishops start off on the same color.
Here is a sample preset for 'Modern Capablanca Random Chess'.
PS-I submited the comment below on the subject of the Four Modern Chess Principles. The comment below can be deleted.
Joe Joyce wrote on Sun, May 18, 2008 09:43 PM EDT:HG, you seem to see the problem area. In this particular area, the site policy is annoyingly restrictive, but that's unfortunately how it is. I sympathize; at one time, my Capa variant had seven different setups, running all the way from Variant A up to G, which one I realized I couldn't use, luckily before posting. I wound up getting permission from Christian Freeling to use his Grand Chess setup, and decided to use only that on both my Capa and Grand Chess variant individual pages, to keep it simple. Please share all the information you can here, and feel free to reference both your site and other sites should you wish. I assure you we do the least editing we think we can. Very little relating [however tenuously] to chess variants is turned away. [I somehow think there might be a person or two - maybe more - who feel we should turn away even more than we do, so you can't please everybody no matter what you do.]
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, May 19, 2008 04:06 AM EDT:Would it be OK then, if I just circumscribe the [other software] in my tournament as 'a version of the well known open-source program TSCP, adapted to play some 10x8 variants', and call it 'TSCP-derivative' for short? Or is it too risky to mention the name of popular Chess engines like TSCP even in their normal Chess version, (or Capablanca version), once someone created a derivative of them that is capable to play the unspeakable variant?
H.G. Muller says today ''8x10 are rapidly becoming more popular with engine programmers.'' It is ironic that only one 8x10 board appears in the many hundred diagrams altogether in D. Pritchard's original fifteen-year-old 1994 'Encyclopedia CVs'. The one 8x10 there is on or about page 203. Yet '8x10' should have been self-evident as the correct expansion of played-out standard 8x8, since this H.R. Capablanca, expert Mad Queen player for what it is worth, had it almost 100 years ago now with reuse of the intuitive, albeit awkward and unbalancing, old Carrera Centaur(BN) and Champion(RN). Or put it favourably that our Capablanca orthodox grandmaster was unusually prescient for such olden time between the world wars, not himself to survive World War II era, some would say for his own excesses in lifestyle, dead for sixty-six years now. Would Capa still espouse his tweak of Carrera/Bird, or would he fall for some more recent ''prolificist'' extravaganza? As starter, probably he would agree there are no replacements for the F.I.D.E. 8x8 formula with 9 or more ranks. And very recent smaller boards as 7x8 are clear worsenings. Still plausible are the right-fit 2,3, or 4 new pieces on 8x12, set up like mediaeval Courier Chess. At least Jose Raul would recognize that by next milestone year 2100, there can surely be no more interest in intermediate Mad Queen than in Shatranj itself. Counting predecessor form the one reigned from circa 600-1500, the other 1500-2000. Not many Shatranj players around by JRC's day, or even Philidor's, or likely even Carrera's.
On 2008-05-21 H. G. Muller said:
>Well, I do not really play CVs myself, but I love to watch games played by
>my engines, especially blitz games. And from this I learned that
>Knightmate is a CV that definitely works. It is just different enough from
>FIDE Chess to make it interesting, but familiar enough that you immediately
>can grasp it. Great game!
>
>Similarly for the 10x8 Capablanca variants. They are very interesting
>because of the Archbishop, which tends to be very active.
H.G.
Have you tried the Modern Capablanca Random Chess viariant with your engines?
>Well, I do not really play CVs myself, but I love to watch games played by
>my engines, especially blitz games. And from this I learned that
>Knightmate is a CV that definitely works. It is just different enough from
>FIDE Chess to make it interesting, but familiar enough that you immediately
>can grasp it. Great game!
>
>Similarly for the 10x8 Capablanca variants. They are very interesting
>because of the Archbishop, which tends to be very active.
H.G.
Have you tried the Modern Capablanca Random Chess viariant with your engines?
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, May 22, 2008 03:10 AM EDT:'Have you tried the Modern Capablanca Random Chess viariant with your engines?' No, my engines do not have FRC-type castling ability yet. It is still on my to-do list for Joker80, together with allowing it to play on 8x8 by filling up part of the board with impassible objects. (It already uses such objects to confine the pieces to 10x8, as its internal board is 32x12, so this is a minor change; it just has to adapt the positional center-points table to where the new corners are. And of course use a different type of castling.) The main objective would be to play in FRC competitions. The Modern CRC variant doesn't particularly appeal to me. The resulting games should be indistinguishable from normal CRC. The only difference is the opening array. The Bishop adjustment rule is also an opening thing. Opening theory never had much appeal to me, I consider it the dullest part of Chess. None of my engines ever had an opening book, even in variants like 8x8 FIDE, where extensive opening theory exists. The Bishop adjustment rule seems awkward from an aestethic point of view, and half-hearted from a logical point of view: first you change the rules by allowing arrays with like Bishops, and then you largely subvert the effect of itby allowing the adjustment. As the disadvantage of having the Bishops on like colors was measured by me to be half a Pawn, not doing it would be very poor strategy. For exploring the possibilities like Bishops offer, it would be much cleaner to augment the Bishop with a single orthognal backward step as non-capture only. Then people can actually use it without hesitation, as they can always undo the effect later. The extra move of such a 'Naughty Bishop' hardly has any tactical value in itsels, as it is a non-capture, and directed backwards. It added only about 15 cP to the piece value. Introducing a piece of different gait is much cleaner than adding a special, complicated rule. The symmetric castling seems to add nothing, it looks just like a difference for the sake of being different. The same holds for the inversion symmetry in stead of vertical-flip symmetry. This doesn't mean this would be a poor game to play, of course. But I think such irrelevant differences do make it a poor design as a CV.
H.G. Thanks for your feedback. Don't neccessarily agree with it, but I apreciate it.
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Oct 15, 2008 02:22 PM EDT:Standard Staunton-style piece set for this game:
Does anybody have any of the games that Capablanca actually played of this that they can post?
I have now added a small board alternative to my Capablanca
variants zrf. This is perfect for making diagrams (see below). To
do this, press 'print screen', then press ctrl-v in any graphics editor,
cut the image, reduce it to 16 colours, and save as gif-image. Now
this Zillions program also contains Schoolbook Chess.
Capablanca variants
/Mats
variants zrf. This is perfect for making diagrams (see below). To
do this, press 'print screen', then press ctrl-v in any graphics editor,
cut the image, reduce it to 16 colours, and save as gif-image. Now
this Zillions program also contains Schoolbook Chess.
Capablanca variants
/Mats
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Oct 18, 2009 02:52 PM EDT:Note that WinBoard, for the smaller board sizes, also has a command for saving its board display as a bitmap files. (File -> Save Diagram...) To customize the diagram you can use all the options for setting piece color / square color, or use user-defined piece symbols in stead of the built-in bitmaps for the 2 x 22 piece types it knows.
I know in discussion of Capablanca and other games in the Knight+Rook and Knight+Bishop family of variants, there is concern over uncovered pawns. I happened to just look at the Capablanca arrangement and was curious if anyone else might of tried to do the following: Swap the positions of the King's Knight and the Chancellor. When I did this, it looks like the initial position of every pawn is covered in the game, and there are no uncovered pawns. Anyone else ever play with this? I know the Chancellor and Archbishop don't have the same symmetry, but it appears there isn't a problem with uncovered pawns. So, what we had as the original position: White: King f1; Queen e1; Archbishop c1; Chancellor h1; Rook a1, j1; Knight b1, i1; Bishop d1, g1; Pawn a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2, i2, j2. Black: King f8; Queen e8; Archbishop c8; Chancellor h8; Rook a8, j8; Knight b8, i8; Bishop d8, g8; Pawn a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7, i7, j7. Becomes... White: King f1; Queen e1; Archbishop c1; Chancellor i1; Rook a1, j1; Knight b1, h1; Bishop d1, g1; Pawn a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2, i2, j2. Black: King f8; Queen e8; Archbishop c8; Chancellor i8; Rook a8, j8; Knight b8, h8; Bishop d8, g8; Pawn a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7, i7, j7.
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