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Seenschach. Variant on 10 by 10 board with lake in the middle and new pieces. (10x10, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Anonymous wrote on Wed, Oct 2, 2002 08:22 AM EDT:

A coment on my note: of course, the reflecting bishop of the
second kind was described earlier, and there is even a third
kind of it, with the mirror half a square beyond the border
of the board. They are all described by Ralph Betza in his
article on Billard chess on this server.

--JKn

Abdul-Rahman Sibahi wrote on Tue, Feb 13, 2007 05:52 PM EST:Good ★★★★

This is a pretty variant. I should try it some time.

💡📝Jörg Knappen wrote on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 04:53 AM EDT:

This is a forward reference to X Chess by Jeremy Gabriel Good

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MPxchess

where many pieces of Seenschach are set on another innovative hourglass shaped chessboard.

💡📝Jörg Knappen wrote on Sun, Oct 7, 2012 06:25 AM EDT:

This is another forward reference: the harvestman ist one of the many pieces featured in Carlos Cetina's UC-170-13.

Georg Spengler wrote on Fri, Jan 9, 2015 07:18 PM EST:

The opposing Genschers can get exchanged in the starting position. That's ugly.

Shouldn't they better be put behind the sea?

Georg Spengler wrote on Fri, Jan 9, 2015 07:21 PM EST:

Ah, that was stupid. They bet blocked by the pawn. My wrong.

Kelvin Voskuijl wrote on Wed, Nov 11, 2020 05:50 PM EST:

what is betza notation for the Harvestman?

Zhedric Meneses wrote on Thu, Nov 12, 2020 12:22 AM EST in reply to Kelvin Voskuijl from Wed Nov 11 05:50 PM:

if I'm not mistaken, it would be [WzB]

if I'm wrong, please correct me, I don't know fully get how to represent bent riders

H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 12, 2020 03:12 AM EST:

Original Betza notation was not precise enough to unambiguously indicate this piece. The problem is that even when it is understood that the continuation as zB after the W step should be outward, it is not clear whether the next bend should be in the same or opposit direction.

XBetza currently also cannot describe this piece in a simple way. (It is of course always possible to split up a slider move into a set of lame leaps of various distances, and mention each of these lame leaps and the path they take separately.) Introducing repeats on groups of modifiers would solve it, though. The half of the Crooked Bishop that starts bending to the left is FalFalarFalaralFalaralarF..., and this could be abbreviated to (alar)F(alar)alF if parentheses would be taken to mean zero to arbitrary many repetitions of the enclosed group. The corresponding half of the Harvestman would be Wafr(alar)Wafr(alar)alW.

💡📝Jörg Knappen wrote on Tue, Mar 9, 2021 02:58 PM EST in reply to H. G. Muller from Thu Nov 12 2020 03:12 AM:

The Harvestman goes only in the direction that is strictly incresing the distance from its starting field. I never intended it to take the sidewards turn that increases the breadth of the covered squares from 3 to 5. But I see that one can read the description in such a way that this kind of move were also allowed.

Bn Em wrote on Tue, Mar 9, 2021 04:55 PM EST:

I think the rules were clear, just that Betza notation does not describe it unambiguously. Though it seems reasonable to interpret crooked moves as continuing in the outwardmost direction by default, unless otherwise specified, in which case t[WzB] would indeed describe the Harvestman (the other option is then not covered by the original Betza notation, though something like t[WfhzB] would probably be clear enough)

H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Oct 27, 2023 04:41 AM EDT in reply to Bn Em from Tue Mar 9 2021 04:55 PM EST:

Now that parentheses are introduced in XBetza for indicating repetition of legs, the Harvester can be described as Wafs(az)7W.

Even the Reflecting Bishop seems possible: (oyabyas)11B. In the non-final legs this moves the Bishop to just beyond the edge (o), toggles range (ya) to retrace the latsest step (b) to get back on board, and then continue sideways (s) as a slider again by a second range toggle for the next diagonal leg. Only a single sideway direction should be available at this time, as it would be on an edge square. This procedure then can be repeated as many times as it is allowed to reflect.

H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Oct 27, 2023 05:30 AM EDT in reply to H. G. Muller from 04:41 AM:

files=10 ranks=10 promoZone=1 promoChoice=HMGBR graphicsDir=/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG35/ squareSize=35 graphicsType=png symmetry=mirror theme=OS firstRank=1 borders=0 useMarkers=1 stalemate=win hole::::d4-g7 lia pawn::fsmWfceFifmnDifmnH:chinesepawn:a2-j2 reflecting bishop::(oyabyas)11B:/graphics.dir/alfaerie/%reflectingbishop.gif:d1,g1 boyscout::zB:/graphics.dir/alfaerie/%crookedbishop.gif:c1,h1 genscher::N[W?DD]:chancellor1:a1,j1 harvestman:M:Wafs(az)8W:cardinal1:b1,i1 hornet::zBWafs(az)8W:falcon:f1 king::K::e1

HaruN Y wrote on Fri, Oct 27, 2023 07:22 AM EDT in reply to H. G. Muller from 05:30 AM:

Interactive Diagram seems to slightly undervalue zB.

H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Oct 27, 2023 04:00 PM EDT in reply to HaruN Y from 07:22 AM:

Interactive Diagram seems to slightly undervalue zB.

Well, I don't know. I don't think I ever measured the true value of the zB. The algorithm for guestimating piece values doesn't always get it right. E.g. BN is also underestimated. What is worse, I am not even sure it guestimates it on the correct board. In particulare whether it takes the 'holes' into account when determining the average number of moves. I suppose the piece values could strongly depend on that. E.g. a normal Bishop wouldn't be worth much on the Seenschach board, but if it estimates it the same as on a normal 10x10 board... This at least is something that should be easy to correct.