I learnt chess at an early age, though I haven't done a lot of playing over the years; I've invented one (or perhaps more) chess variants, though on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri that can quite safely be predicted not to have any influence from the Earth game: it's got a few twists - you have a citadel aka City, you have a Massif in the middle, and you have a set of free actors who are nominally on your side, in a "valley" running up both sides of the board: the trick is to suborn the opposition's free actors by placing one of your Lords (bishop plus Castle) within the free actors' "valley" on the opponent's side of the board, thus giving you a free pass to attack within the opponent's City and bypass the Massif, which is otherwise the key to success. I suspect I got a lot from my exposure to one of the Chinese versions of Chess, which I learnt to play in my late twenties.

You can use and do with the preset or customize it however you want.

I'm into random variants, so when I saw Alberto's issue, I took it as a challenge.

I have to admit I like the concept of the random pillars. I may use it as an option in some of my random variants. It's quite neat!

Cheers,
Jose

Thank you, both for Alberto and me! I know he will like this; would you mind if I grab this preset and put it in the Preset Primer? Or, you could add it, with a bit of explanation. I am very non-technical these days, and appreciate every bit of info I can get. This is definitely worth saving and adding to the primer.

Thanks again,

Joe

I created this simple preset that does what you need, randomize 2 Plinths per 6x6 quadrant:
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DShuuro%26settings%3DSetup2

I selected a red circle to represent the Plinths, and Knights with a little orange line on the bottom to represent Knights standing on Plinths.

You can customize the pieces however you want, but this preset will give you just enough to get your variant going.

To test it go to the link, and press the Move button. It will clear the pieces from the board and randomly place the plinths.

Now you are ready to place your pieces according to your rules.

The preset doesn't enforce any rules.

Good luck!

Jose

I've known about the Chess Variants site for years, but only recently got caught up in it again. I've become a fan of Game Courier, and, being a computer geek, I've gotten drawn into learning GAME Code and programming presets. The documentation for the language is a tad difficult for me to wade through, though, so I thought having an alternate reference on a wiki would be something worth trying. Lo and behold, a search-engine search revealed that there is already an unofficial wiki for the Chess Variants site, so here I am!

I like the reverse symmetry idea, it gives random setup variants a natural tension from the start. With each side starting with a strong half and a weak half. And with each side's strong half facing the other side's weak half and vice versa. One must decide to attack or defend. each of these necessarily take away from the other. I f you attack too much your defense suffers, If you defend too much you make no progress to winning!

Welcome!

-Ludic

My name is José Carrillo. I'm originally from the island of Puerto Rico, and I currently live in Ontario, Canada.

I'm the founder of the Fischer Random Chess eMail Club (FRCEC), and I'm a rookie chess variants designer.

I recently discovered the Prime Minister piece (Bishop + Knight) and Modern Chess (I know, I know, who cares about 9x9 variants…[I do!]), and after defining the general 'Modern' principles, have designed several 'Modern' Chess variants including: Modern Random Chess (9x9), Prime Ministers Chess (9x8), Contemporary Random Chess (8x8), Modern Capablanca Random Chess (10x8), and I'm working on a couple others.

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I believe there is a news wiki that allows for the signing up for latest new blurbs. Most of these are IAGO World Tour events that get added.

What I don't want to have happen is that by people being involved with IAGO Chess System, the end result was they lose the ability to make money using it. As for the Chess of the Future Project, that I will let others decide on.

the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.

Cheers
Graeme

I am Rich Hutnik. I am involved with IAGO (International Abstract Games Organization) and the IAGO World Tour (think World Poker Tour but with chess, checkers, variants, Go, etc…) and a range of abstract strategy games. The mission is to get abstract strategy games to go through a boom like poker had AS A GENRE, and not just a single game the way chess did in the 1970s. The point is to get it sustainable, and have it grow and be more profitable. In other words, work with a genre rather than a single game, as is normally done.

A byproduct of this, is I am working with chess variants, in order to help the community develop some common standards, terminology, and so on, to facilitate holding tournaments and perhaps working towards having perhaps a world chess variant champion, to legitimize variants as being an actually form of chess worthy of respect. To this end, I am proposing a "Chess of Tomorrow" project be started. The end result would be an open-source framework to facilitate the variant community to communicate with each other, be able to get needed equipment, and develop a roadmap for chess to continue to evolve, instead of just being stuck on the fallout of the Mad Queen. I am looking to offer the IAGO Chess System as a starting point here, and would look for people who want to be involved, to get involved. Please look at, test, rip and rebuild this. I also would like to have the best "terms and conditions" form with this document, so that it is free for people to use to make money, but also has people giving back to make sure that the framework grows and matures.

Anyhow, that is my take. If anyone is interested in the "Chess of Tomorrow" project speak up. We can end up having heated arguments, disagreements, ideas, compromises, etc… the end result should be a framework for chess to operate in (with some details) that won't dead-end up keep growing, that will tend to all the needs of all people into it, from the purist to the variant people, to people who like to experiment.

You may be onto something here, with small communities being involved in testing variants and so on, and local dialects arise that people play. I would support that happening, under the provision that such lend to the global version of chess.

If you would like to get involved with the future of chess, please do contact me on the abstractgamers.org site, for IAGO. My hope is enough people can get together and we open-source evolving of chess. I can't say I fully agree with your approach, but in it may be part of the answer.