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Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Mike Nelson wrote on Sat, Aug 31, 2002 04:18 PM UTC:

I've been playing around with variations on the Separate Realms pieces for
use in CWDA. The last army I proposed is much too strong--in fact the FIDE
team get slaughtered regularly.

The regular SR army is too weak -- every piece is mesurably weaker than
its FIDE counterpart.  The FIDE army won 9 out of 10 in Zillions vs itself
testing (the tenth game involved a huge blunder). Yet the SR team often
holds out for 60-70 moves even though I would guess its value at 3/4 of
the FIDE army.

What I must be seeing is the effect of the SR army's rapid
development--the SR team jumps the pawn line and FIDE is fearful of
devoloping its Bishops and Knights, least they be exchanged for their
weaker counterparts.  (A stunning confimation of Ralph's 'levelling
effect' -- the SR pieces are strong because of their weakness.)  This also
shows the value of leaping moves in permitting rapid deveopment (and
'undevelopement': the SR pieces are good at jumping back behind the pawn
line when needed.)