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Vierschach. 19th Century 4-player game where allies start off at right angles to each other. (14x14, Cells: 160) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Jul 31, 2002 03:09 AM UTC:Good ★★★★

This is the same unusual placement of partners and order of play that is used by Parker Bros. Grand Camelot, published in 1932. I had thought until now that it was unique in that respect. I have never played Vierschach, but I have played Grand Camelot, and it is a good way to play a partnership game. Peter Aronson also made a variant of his Chaturanga 4-84 with the same seating positions and turn order.

Jared wrote on Wed, Jul 31, 2002 07:13 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

What if, to be able to destinguish between the allied teams, you gave them
totally different armies?  I don't know how you could do this, but it
would make it much more interesting!  Perhaps you could give the 'A' teams
standard armies, and the 'B' teams a Different Armies team.

On another note, you could implement this with Zillions by specifying the
two teams as two different players, making the two teams per player easily
distinguishable, and setting up a double-move script.  I don't know how
well Zillions would play, though.

--Jared

Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Jul 31, 2002 07:57 PM UTC:

Jared, the Zillions implementation of Chaturanga 4-84 does exactly that,
and seems to play pretty well.

Ralf Gering wrote on Wed, Aug 7, 2002 09:15 AM UTC:Poor ★

Dear Hans,

your e-mail server doesn't work. My e-mail was sent back to me. Now my
comments to 'Vierschach':

Vierschach was invented by the famous German doctor Dr. G. Arthur Lutze
(1813-1870). He invented a health coffee, founded the Lutze clinic in
Koethen (Sachsen-Anhalt) and was one of the greatest homeopath.He wrote a
poem called 'Der Drachenfels' (a mountain near the former capital of
Western Germany, Bonn. The Drachenfels is also called the highest mountain
of the Netherlands, because so many Dutch people climb it.)which was set
to music by Johann Karl Gottfied Loewe (1796-1869)in 1838.  
A photo of Dr. Lutze:
http://www.kulturstaetten-koethen.de/tourismus/images/lutze_1.jpg

The game is described in: Heinz Machatscheck. Zug um Zug: Die Zauberwelt
der Brettspiele. Verlag Neues Leben Berlin. 6th edition, 1990. (pp.
65-66)

BTW you have the book in your collection, Hans (your description of
Russian Fortress Chess is based on it.)

I have rated the site as 'poor' because when I try to print it, your site
crashes the workstation of the Institute for Data Processing at Tuebingen
University. There must be a major bug in the html of your page.

Ralf

Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Aug 7, 2002 10:34 PM UTC:

Ralf -- what browser were you using when your workstation crashed? I've tried this page with Netscape 4.7 on Solaris and IE 5 on Windows/NT and IE 5.5 on Windows 98 with no problems.

Ralf wrote on Thu, Aug 8, 2002 05:44 PM UTC:

It crashes the work station when I try to print it out. The browser is
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.50.4807.2300. It's not a problem to
view the page. The other pages of www.chessvariants.com can be printed
without troubles.

Ralf

Ralf Gering wrote on Sun, Aug 11, 2002 11:46 AM UTC:Poor ★

The description contains several errors: The right corner of White A
('South') must be a dark square. The book written by Theodor Müller-Alfeld
contains a rather long explanation why this MUST be so. The position of
the Queens and Kings must THEN be exchanged so that the Queens are on the
square of their own color.

Ralf

Peter Aronson wrote on Sun, Aug 11, 2002 06:53 PM UTC:

Jörg? Do you agree with Ralf? It's your article, but if you want me to make the change he says is correct, I'll make it.

Anonymous wrote on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 07:34 AM UTC:

Indeed -- it should be a dark square, Ralf is right.

--Jörg Knappen

Peter Aronson wrote on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 06:43 PM UTC:

OK, Jörg the figure is corrected and Ralf's author and reference information has been incorporated. <p> Ralf, I have made the diagrams one over the other instead of side-by-side. I haven't been able to reproduce your problem, even using a very similar release of IE, and I suspect the problem lies in the workstation's print driver. Possibly it was having problems with such a wide page. If so, this may have fixed it.

Anonymous wrote on Tue, Jun 8, 2010 12:28 PM UTC:

I can't understand, why chess variants, where teammates faces each other are more popular than variants, where they faces opponents? I think, facing opponent is more natural variant of chess, facing teammate is very strange, i think... So, why teamates usually faces each other? What's wrong with facing opponent?

Anonymous wrote on Tue, Jun 8, 2010 12:34 PM UTC:

I'm author of previous comment.
Yes, i know, that in chaturanga, the oldest 4-player chess variant,
teammates starts along oppossite borders of board, but they don't actually
faces each other: they starts on different files.

Anonymous wrote on Tue, Jun 8, 2010 01:30 PM UTC:

I think, positions of black kings should be swapped with thier queens: white can castle kingside towards teammate, while black can't.

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