nodnarbo: exactly, it doesn't happen too often ...

you got to be sure ,when attacking and squeezing white knight, that you are actually not sending the opponent knight to series of squares with rich potential ... I lost couple of games this way when playing as black knight ... I was blocking squares and preventing white knight from taking it making wrong assumption that white knight will try to cry about it and sudenly I was faced with the fact, that white knight started to run away from me leaving empty squares and I couldn't reach him anymore.
All the rich fields were facing white knight and I could only watch him collecting killer 90's and 80's ... when choosing the same colored square as a starting move by black, make sure white knight has "poor" fields behind him, otherwise he will show you his butt and winn the game ... I think this is very important message for the players playing white knight ... do not panic when black chooses the same field color as you ... map your moves carefuly and try to attract black knight to come close to you and then run way fast to rich fields ... this is what I learned from my mistakes.
Andy.

nodnarbo: in front means facing the black knight, and behind just the opposite ... black knight has the power to block squares only between these two knights, not behind the white knight ... so, white knight can outsmart black knight by choosing squares behind him ... I felt into this trap and white knight escaped me
to very rich squares behind him and I was stocked with
low numbers around me ...
Andy.

We know a little bit more about this game now and for many players it's becoming obvious that Black has the power to choose the color of the first move ... how about letting White start on any square on the board ? If Black knows the secret it shouldn't matter where White starts, on the first row or anywhere else ... many players say they would rather be the second player, so my question is, how would it change the situation if White were allowed to start anywhere ? Would it improve it's chances ? I think there are many board situations that White would benefit from them ... remeber that Black's blocking abilities work only "in front" of White piece, not behind it ... also, in the second part of the game Black may not have squares to effectively block the opponent ... so blocking by Black has to be exercized very intelligently ...
What do you think about this issue ?
Andy.

is the way we start the game ... I would let the white knight jump on whatever square it desires and black would wfollow with any square of its choice ... before the game was realeased I was thinking about it, but somewhat got scared that white will have too big of advantage ... after playing so many games I realized that this thinking was wrong ... there are 2 or 3 well populated areas on the board where black can respond without any disadvanteges ... not even mention that
black can easily block whites path be either choosing a mirror that breaks this path or (or double) position itself so it attacks next white's move ... this way beginning of the game can be very dramatic from the very beginning and it will be up to black knight what mode of play will be chosen ... remote or close ...
Andy.

AbigailII: "Two different colors" refers to
white and black knights not squares they land on ...
Andy.

just few words of wisdom I would like to share...
1. map the best deals on the board and look for clusters of 90s ... be there before your opponent gets there ..
2. Start with the highest deal ... but look for reasonable continuation ... sometimes it's better to start with middle number and have better jumps as a result ...
3. Eliminate opponent's high numbers in his/her starting row ... but be careful, high number you want to delete has its own low mirror on your starting point ... do not want to land behind from the very start ...
4. Always, before you move, analyse postion of your opponent ... try to cut his/her profitable path by using, if possible, your side of mirrors or doubles ...
5. When having advatage, try to make suicidal move as soon as you can ... watch for corners, some situations allows quick landing without an exit and win ...
I you have some more hints, please post them here.
Andy.

MadMonkey: it's called Garden of Imagination by D.B Pritchard, the author of the "Encyclopedia of Chess Variants" ... let clone Knight Fight ...!!!

rod03801: thanks, what I do I just look around opponent's squares with high numbers and than look at my highlighted squares ... it gives me hints what would be the best jump ... of course this is not so obvious since every jump has so many branches ...
Andy.

rod03801: I agree with you ... I think Fencer promissed somewhere to look at this ...

AbigailII: you are right, eliminating mirrors wil make this game even one more move longer, if played till the end ... it's still fast game ... compare to Ludo, Halmas, Reversi, Chess, racing backagammon, not even mentioning Go ...
I understand that you may find some rules inelegant, but I do not understand why ? Because numners differ from each other ? this is what you say ...... look, during the game, you will be trying to find the best "deals" ... one of the option will be to look for doubles or "7,8,9"
to limit opponent's choices ... and it's up to the author to define those "chosen" powerful numbers or features ... in Knight Fight it was kind of easy due to the size of the board ... here it's more challenging but I think it will be playable quite well ...
and you will excel in this game ... you showed me twice in Knigh Fight, that this concept is not a stranger to you.
Best regards, and keep commenting. I appreciate it deeply.
Andy.

AbigailII: Abigaill, I appreciate your comments, as always, since they provide smart
insights into the game rules and so on ... however, I think I found out an elegant solution to Knights of Fury ... please read my last modification to the rules I posted on the blog ... mirrors are not used anymore, only 4 groups of numbers, those with digits 7,8,9 plus 6 doubles that give a margin of 37 percent of all the numbers on the board ... so, as an effect, we have well ballanced game having "solo" numbers and those that cause other numbers to disappear ... you are right, it will not be a shorter game but the illusion of having a smaller board will make it "shorter" ...
you were also right saying that 25 percent of numbers have no mirrors ... but, instead of lamenting I turned around the whole idea and gave up the need for mirrors and replaced them with non-mirrors as the numbers that cause disappearing ... as you can see, there are many ways to let the fantasy manouver around the issue ...
thanks again,
Andy.

AbigailII: ya, there should be some dummy numbers displayed ... u are right

on a smaller board ... read on, please.
I would like to propose a fast adaptation of Knight Fight, this time on a smaller board, 8x8 ... It was suggested by some players that 8x8 may have some advantage over 10x10 board ... frankly, it was my original idea which I gave up for a bigger board due to elegant usage of all digits from 0-9 ... Board 8x8 has its own limitations because the numbers with digits 7,8,9 cannot have their own mirrors ... so, I had to modify some usage of these numbers ... Rules are basically the same as for Knight Fight so let me talk about differences:
NAME OF THE GAME: "Knigts of Fury"

Out of 64 numbers there are:
40 numbers that have their mirrors (example: 34-43)
18 numbers that do not have their mirrors (example: 27-72)
5 doubled numbers (11,22,33,44,55)
1 STRANGE number, namely 56 ... which for this game is attached to doubled numbers ... that's the only number that doesn't have 7,8, or 9 in it, but still its mirror goes beyond the set of numbers from 1-64 ...
Management of these sets:
-Numbers with mirrors behave exactly like in Knight FIght ...
(mirror is taken out of the board)
-Numbers without mirrors behave exactly like doubled numbers in Knight Fight (after jumping on non-mirror numbers, player is asked to choose another non-mirror number to be taken out of the board) ...
-5 doubled plus number 56 ( there is no consequance after jumping on these numbers)
***
This game is very aggressive and fast moving due to relatively large number of non-mirror numbers and list of choices we will have ... board is smaller and this also contributes to the pace of this game ...
Hope you will like it.
Regards,
Andy Lewicki.

joshi tm: you are probably right ... chess variations are like garden of imagination ... there is no end to our fantasy ... Fencer is so busy that I am not going to push for this new version ... I would rather contemplate entirely different variant ...
Andy.

joshi tm: I was considering this version ... without actually playing it there is no way to decide if this is a good idea ... for me, personally, one Knight is enough, the only improvement I would like to see is to have all the "mirror" squares visible at the same time and meditate on my strategy ... now we can see the squares we can jumo on but it would be really useful to see all the other squares that will be taken ...

ScorpionOct64: Hi Mike, I like this game too ... but since I am the author it doesn't count, right ? I hope Fencer will do something with colors and sizes of the numbers ...and maybe even higlighting mirrors for our current jumps ...
Andy.

AbigailII: it looks like nature helped to make this game kind-of-equal for both sides ... but on the other hand, players do not even need approach each other if they choose so ... they may choose to grab as many high value squares and commit suicide ... this is one of the strategy I can see now ... Abigaill, thanks for your analysis ... I think this game has more to it than just jumping ... as one of my opponent said: you get out of this game what you want ... kids can play and collect points and computers can use their brain power to find a perfect solution for every possible move ...
Andy.

coan.net: correct, and I used it several times ... it's nice feature ... one should be careful and not help the opponent to commit suicide "with lots of money in his pocket", lol

AbigailII: Hi Abigaill ... I just jumped into this board and had no time to meditate on this issue ... so basically you are saying that in order to enforce the rule Knights should start on different colored squares ?
Thanks for your insight ...
Andy.