Friday, November 10, 2017

[pfsvuyvq] 10x10 chess

A straightforward way to extend chess to a 10-wide board is simply to leave 2 empty spaces on the first rank.  Or, add 1 more queen, leaving 1 empty space.  No new piece types are introduced, in contrast to Capablanca Chess.

If using Chess960-style randomization, then there are 42000 start positions for either possibilty (because of the duality of where to put the 1 queen and 2 empty spaces, or where to put the 1 empty space and 2 queens).

10 pawns on the second rank.  Castling travels longer, leaving the king the same distance (1 or 2 squares) from the corners as orthodox chess.

If the empty spaces are in the first and last files with orthodox piece layout in between, the pawns in those files would initially be protected by knights.

With 2 queens per side, it might be better to limit to initial positions in which every pawn is initially guarded by a non-king piece.  I have not enumerated these.

Maybe add one more piece, leaving no empty spaces: a Man, a nonroyal piece that moves like a King, a very conservative (compared to Capablanca Chess) new piece type.  RNBQMKQBNR is an initial position that mimics orthodox chess.  Again, 42000 shuffled positions.

Initial pawn move remains 2 spaces.  Assuming a 10-rank board, this will likely induce a lot of maneuvering before contact with the enemy.  This could be interpreted as richer possibilities in the opening, lessening the need for initial randomization.  What is the optimal initial position?

10x8 is also possible, but eliminates opposite flank pawns racing to promotion in the endgame, but whoever queens first attacking the opponent's promotion square in the opposite corner.

Previously, higher dimensional chess.

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