Talk:Fairy chess piece

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Contents 1 Nightrider notation 2 Leapers 3 Pieces with different movement and capturing rules 4 Zigs and Zags 5 Notation for non rectangular boards 6 Chinese pieces 7 Universal leapers 8 Rose movements 9 Fairy piece values 10 Grasshopper 11 Using Notation in Wiki 12 Regarding the list 13 Pawn?

[edit] Nightrider notation

Under Nightrider, I found this text:

[the Nightrider is] in algebraic notation [...] represented by the letter N (for this reason, S, from the German Springer, is generally used to indicate the knight in the context of chess problems).

This may or may not be true in Fairy Chess but it seems to imply that S is used for the Knight in standard Chess, which is incorrect. See http://www.fide.com/official/handbook.asp?level=EE102 Since I am not sure whether the assertion about N for Nightrider is true in Fairy Chess, I am removing it. -- Ian Jackson

[edit] Leapers

You call the fers a (1,1) leaper. I'm not familiar with shatranj, but wouldn't that just mean one diagonal in any direction? Doesn't seem like "leaping". -- goatasaur

Yes, it does mean one diagonal in any direction. A "leaper" doesn't necessarily "leap" over intervening squares or pieces - it's just a technical term to distinguish it from riders and hoppers. In this case, it emphasises the fact that kings, wazirs and fers are in the same class as knights, dabbabbas and commuters (inasmuch as they move a fixed distance from one corner of a rectangle or square to the opposite corner). I've added simpler explanations of the moves of the fers, king and wazir to the page now. --Camembert

It's a bit weird to call a piece that moves only 1 square a "leaper". It's what we mathematicians call a degenerate case. Are leapers always commutative? ie, could a leaper be (2,1) but NOT (1,2)? Does the notation for leapers always imply the numbers can be reversed? -- Tarquin 17:53 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

OK, I'll change the wording so that the simpler explanation comes first and the "(1,1) leaper" (or whatever) comes later. On the other point: yes, the implication is that the numbers can be reversed (I've seen the knight described as a (1,2) leaper on many occasions). I suppose it would be possible to have a (2,1) leaper that could go two-accross, one-up, but not the other way round - I don't know of any examples of such pieces being used either in games or problems, however. I'll try to clarify this in the text. --Camembert

Indeed, such "directional" leapers were used in recent years in fairy chess problems, from among top chess composers e.g. by Peter Gvozdják, Jean-Marc Loustau and Reto Aschwanden. --Ruziklan 22:09, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Great article! -- Tarquin 20:46 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks tarq - and thanks to all for helping to improve it :) --Camembert

[edit] Pieces with different movement and capturing rules

What about the cannon from Chinese Chess (moves like a rook; captures by jumping over a single piece (friendly or enemy))? I thought that there were a lot of nonstandard pieces that had different movement rules and capturing rules? Shouldn't they be listed here?

The cannon from xiangqi, in my experience, is normally called a pao in the context of chess variants played on a chessboard (as opposed to the context of xiangqi, when the name is usually translated). I'll add a cross-reference.

This isn't an exhaustive list by any means - of course there's a lot of other pieces that can be added. If you can add things, please do. There are already various pieces that capture different to how they move, however - the pao, vao, mao and leo are all listed. --Camembert

As a general note: I've written this with reference to fairly scattered sources, and I'm not an expert, so it's possible quite a few things aren't clear (or even just wrong). If so, do point them out. --Camembert

[edit] Zigs and Zags

About this:

• Zag-Zag: a piece which can move vertically or along the NE-SW diagonal.

and all the other zigs and zags: the descriptions are too vague, as they don't say how far these pieces can move. Can they move any distance (like riders) or is it just one square (or some other number of squres) in the direction indicated (like leapers)? I'd like to fix the article, but I don't think I've ever come across these pieces myself. --Camembert

These 4 pieces are capable of straightline movements on geometrically-contiguous square spaces of unlimited range. In other words, they are all riders. Sorry, I neglected to be explicit. Without vigilance, familiarity breeds vagueness. Fergus Duniho at the Chess Variant Pages told me he has never seen this class of pieces used anywhere except within several of the games comprising the Symmetrical Chess Collection. Please check it out. --OmegaMan

[edit] Notation for non rectangular boards

Someone has established a convention on Wikipedia of describing piece movements upon 2-dimensional gameboards via a pair of positive integer coordinates. To be sure, this is decently clear and accurate. However, it should be noted (yet is not) that this system is implicitly being applied to square-spaced gameboards.

Although geometrically-contiguous square-spaced gameboards so based are by far the most prevalent, chess variants have been invented which play upon geometrically-contiguous gameboards which are triangle-spaced and hexagon-spaced as well.

I do not wish to clutter-up a concise, understandable description by fully explaining all of this yet I feel it should be mentioned somewhere. So, I would value the advice of an experienced editor on this point. --OmegaMan

I don't really have much experience of non-square-spaced boards (I'm not even sure whether I would call games using other types of spaces "fairy chess" games at all, rather than just "board games", but maybe that's just me). I hope we won't scrap the (1,2) type notation, since, as you say, it's easy to understand, but of course, if you want to write a bit about other shaped-spaces, go ahead. --Camembert

[edit] Chinese pieces

The article claims it's going to explain "Chinese pieces" at one point, but never defines this term.

Yes it does, in the list near the end: "Chinese pieces: a collective name for pieces derived from units found in xiangqi, the Chinese form of chess. The most common Chinese pieces are the leo, pao...". --Camembert

[edit] Universal leapers

The kraken and universal leaper can 'teleport' anywhere? Does that mean they can capture whatever they want on any move? How is that useful, as it gives a first-move checkmate? Radiant_* 12:05, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Only when the pieces are used with certain rule-sets. In orthodox chess, and many other forms of chess, such pieces would, of course, be unusable, but with certain esoteric rule-sets or problem stipulations, they can have a purpose (for example, the problem may be to get a line-piece to a certain square, with the kraken attempting to intervene to stop it). --Camembert

[edit] Rose movements

I created a diagramm for Rose movement exactly as it described in text. It doesn't seems to be correct. Are all possible moves given in text? What is missing? Andreas Kaufmann 22:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The list of possible moves in the article was not complete. I thought the words "...and so on" made this clear; my apologies if they didn't. I suppose I should have just included the full list in the first place, but I was evidently feeling a bit lazy. I'll add a full list now, and edit the diagram appropriately. It would be nice to draw dotted lines on the diagram to indicate the "circles" along which the rose moves (it would make visualising the piece's movement much easier, I think), though I realise that isn't possible with the template. --Camembert 00:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

If someone could add the circular pattern to the rose piece I would appreciate it. ChrisLawson 17:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fairy piece values

Has there ever been attempts to assign a value to these new pieces, e.g. rook 5, bishop 3, pawn 1...? If anybody knows anything about this, even for just a few pieces, please start a paragraph on this topic. --Sonjaaa 22:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a system which uses the Queen as the standard, placing it on every square on the board and then calculating how many spaces it can attack in total. Other pieces become ratios of this standard. The system has it's flaws, in particular to hoppers who require special conditions for movement. neoliminal 03:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting work in this area was done by Ralph Betza. For example, see his work About the Values of Chess Pieces.

[edit] Grasshopper

I add grasshopper as a reversed white queen . --andrejj 20:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I changed the symbol from d to g. So, the picture that should be used is . —This comment was added by Sibahi (talk • contribs) 22:23, April 9, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using Notation in Wiki

Unless I misunderstood, the list of pieces (fairy or not), does not follow the labelling conventions dictated above. For example the Knight is a "(2,1) Leaper" but wouldn´t "(2/1)" denote the same thing and be consistent with the labelling scheme outlined in the article?

Agreed. I'm not so sure the notation is really relavent to the article, maybe there should be a seperate article for it, or add those sections to the notation article. 71.250.1.198 12:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

What is important, it is the two-dimensional notation. I have seen many imaginable forms, besides mentioned also "x:y leaper", that I have taken for my pages, but in other chess problem sources (x,y)-leaper is seemingly the most frequent. --Ruziklan 22:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm puzzled as to why no ~ in front of the knight notation. MotherFunctor 12:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the list

I suspect that some of the pieces in "the list of fairy pieces" are a subject of original research and violate WP:NFT. Any thoughts? Introgressive 19:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. But if you want, you can check Piececlopedia. If the piece is not there, it could be an original research. Andreas Kaufmann 20:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, no, I found all the pieces I searched for in that book. I'm probably just being too leery. Introgressive 11:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

No, I concur, there is no original research there, many pieces can be found even in . There is however deeper problem with names and definitions of pieces. Some pieces with multiple names are already mentioned in the list, more precisely pieces with the same movement and different names, like e.g. chancellor and empress.

On the other hand, there are different definitions applied to the same name depending on the context, e.g. in various played chess variants and problem chess. An example is archbishop, that is here king+bishop, but in chess problems this name denotes prolonged bishop that bounces in the middle of edge square ad infinitum if the path is free, i.e. ABc1-h6-f8-a3-c1-...

It means, that the list of pieces should be rewritten somehow with indication where the piece is named like that. I can provide definitions for fairy chess problems, but I would not want to interfere with usual definitions from played chess variants as I recognize there are many differences and chess problemists are not the only ones using fairy chess pieces.

Also, given the length of the list, It might be considered its spawning on the other page, leaving here just a few examples and more general information, like basic ideas, classification, notation, etc. Any reactions? --Ruziklan 22:01, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pawn?

Why is the pawn in the list? It isn't a "Fairy piece" --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 21:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The list is a Partial list of orthodox and fairy chess pieces and the pawn is an orthodox piece. You might however believe that a list in an article about fairy pieces should not contain regular ones, or what? I have no opinions. Introgressive 13:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)