sewzay: It should be a draw, but I think the players would have to agree, i don't think it's automatic.

In Atomic Chess, if both players are reduced to their kings is the game declared a draw, or can there be a winner?

I'm asking as the king is not allowed to take pieces as it will blow itself up.

That piece is the same which I have heard called elephant in african chess. It is said to be better than queen, but I am not sure if it is really better than Maharajah. Maharajah can go all the same squares, unless it is blocked. Maybe mix of these pieces would be better. Maybe we could call it Elephant Mounted Maharajah,

tbart: Perhaps the Maharajah could be replaced with Chu Shogi's Lion? It can only move one or two squares, but its capturing power is pretty strong. It'd be a real challenge to trap a Lion instead of the methodical way the Maharajah can be tracked down by anyone that knows what they're doing with the Chess set pieces. Hmm, maybe it'd be too strong? It'd be worth a try anyways.

an idea to balance maharajah: take away 2 black rooks.
an idea to balance horde:give black 2 free moves. I feel that whites advantage is not as big as the stats say it is. a good black player will try to keep the posistion closed and put up a battle.

Beren the 32nd: Oh I see now ... yes amazing ...

Beren the 32nd: .
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Exactly! Amazing huh....?

WhisperzQ: I think that white will choose the Knight to take the Knight on d5 and then give 'check' with the Bishop. Surprisingly, the King cannot avoid capture now!

nabla: Okay, I give in, why can't black now click on d5 so that the knight is taken (presumably by the queen which in turn gets taken) ... but then there is no mate (or Kingtaking) is there?

Harassed: Actually it was a nice "king capture in 4", which is analogous to a mate in 3. However, I didn't see it coming at all, probably disregarding the possibility that White would not choose the capture on d5 to be made by the black queen.

mangue: .
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my most beautifoul sacrifice :

Oh holly crap! Many thanks for this!!!!
Although i haven't yet started to investigate the game but with this sacrifice, my brain has built many patterns so it help me a lot....
Now i should observe many more games to help my brain understand what is going on. Please if you have any new brilliancy post it.... And not only you....

WhisperzQ: This is 99.9% correct. The only difference is that Fencer did it (rightly) so that when more than one piece can take the king, selecting the king's square as destination wins the game outright, the opponent does not have to choose who will eat his king.

plaintiger: Questions about rules do not bug me ! Although you already got the answer, I would add that in any chess variant saying "no check or checkmate, the goal is to take the king", it must be understood as "you are allowed to leave your king open to capture, though you will lose the game if you do so".
Actually, you can still talk about "check" (threat to capture the king in the next move) and "checkmate" (unstoppable "check"), but taking these concepts out of the game rules make them much simpler to state.

mangue: Very nice! Even though in classical chess sacrifice with mate in 4 isn't that unusual, it's because players are familiar with checkmating schemes, but to find such in this new game must be something very pleasant.

well, i have a definite answer now, got from experience. one's opponent can definitely move one's king into check and then merrily gobble it up.

WhisperzQ: okay. thank you very much.

plaintiger: I understand that your opponent can move whichever piece they chose so long as it is a valid chess move for that piece (checks not taken into account) ... so if your King could move there they could move your King and then they would click on the square on which your King resides and you would need to select one of their pieces to move to take your King, in this case the queen would suffice.

...which i'll ask here rather than bug nabla with every niggling thing that comes through my head:

the rules for ambiguous say there's no check or checkmate, but if the goal is to capture the opponent's king, and my opponent's queen is staring down and open file at my king, i consider myself to be in check. so: is ambiguous like regular chess in that i (and so my opponent) is/am obligated to protect my king when possible?

in other words, if i have this above-described situation, and i click a square between my opponent's Queen and my king, and any of several pieces could move there including my king, whose moving there would leave him in "check", can my opponent move my king to that square and then take him on his next move, thus winning the game? or is he obligated to move some other piece to that square, thus protecting my king?

thank you.

my most beautifoul sacrifice :
http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=1665304&i=18

Harassed: When I have played the game, most mates have come by errors. When I actually had to mate in one game, it was rather difficult even though I had a nice piece advantage.

yes, maybe

mangue: May be good way to resolve this would be to ask excellent chess variants players like: Matarilevich, Ughaibu, Oliottavio, Reza, Tenuki, Pythagoras, Nabla, Pioneer54, Anencephal and others, what do they feel when they play this game together.

nabla: .
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You are concerned about Pawn promotions right?
Hmmmm.... I know as the level increases you will see that more and more games will be decided at Pawn promotions so this could be a problem.

Remember: Chess would not be what it is if there wasn't the Pawn promotions!
Most of the times if you outplay your opponent you will not win immediately by mate but just obtain a material advantage like a Pawn more or Knight for 2 Pawns etc....
So most times you will have to find a way to promote that Pawn or to use your Knight to help your Pawns to promote while your King stops the opposite Pawns or the opposite or just capture tha opponent's Pawns, but the extra Knight doesn't win alone if a Pawn doesn't promote! And most of the times it should promote to a Queen to win.....

So i guess you will need to change the rule one time or another but we will see....

Pythagoras: I like the games with balanced results. Atomic and 3-checks for example have a clear advantage for white (ok, I still like them ) . Maharadjah and Horde are simply unfair. The player starting at ambigous has certainly an advantage. Like in CHESS, and here on brainking.com, blacks wins more often than white at regular chess, probably because some feeble beginners play only with white

mangue: Thank you ! It is true that these are very good stats, but Pythagoras is also right that it is too soon to tell what will happen later. I am still concerned about the possibility that there may be too many drawn endgames in the future.
For the moment, the game seems to work even better than I had thought

grenv:.
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OK then.... But why do you keep refering to a possible white advantage specifically? I've seen this from others too. You assume that if this game is not balanced and there is one side that has the advantage this side is white.
Why you don't even consider black for having the advantage....?

Pythagoras: I didn't say that white didn't have an advantage, only that it wasn't a clear advantage. If there is an advantage to white then it is unclear so far.

grenv: .
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No! From the statistics we can only make assumptions that white has not clear advantage. We can't say it with 100% confidence! That's where i disagree.

We can say that: From the statistics we see that the highest probability(we just have an indication) is that white doesn't have an advantage.

But we can't say that: From the statistics we see that white doesn't have an advantage.

Pythagoras: On the other hand, since it's not clear from the statistics that either color has an advantage, it is correct to say that there is no clear advantage to white, whether we find out later there is or not.

mangue: .
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and almost no draw
This is logical since this is a completely new game and no one knows to play it well so there can't be many draws.


Statistics of won games
white 119 (49.79 %)
black 119 (49.79 %)
no clear advantage for white

We can't imply for sure the last statement from the statistics! It is very probable that it is just a coincidence and that as the game evolves and some opening ideas start being created the statistics will change in favour of a color....

But the most important reason is that if we see in a game: White wins: X times, Black wins X times then we can't assume in any way that we have a balanced game, meaning that we don't have an advantage for black or white! We just can't!
Why? Because suppose we have 80 players that played all these X games and the distribution of a single players color at a game is NOT equal, that means he didn't played equal times with white and black.
And let's assume that white has an advantage.
So a single player-stronger than others- could have possibly played more games with black but because he is stronger than others, he won more games than the disadvantage of having the black color would predict....

Statistics of won games
white 119 (49.79 %)
black 119 (49.79 %)
Draws 1 (0.41 %)

This is great news, no clear advantage for white and almost no draw! This is what makes a game challenging. Congrats Nabla and Fencer for providing that new game

Marfitalu: That's how it works. After the second bugfix.

Pythagoras: Sorry I misread you ! I thought that you disagreed with my promotion rule because I missed the "only" in your first sentence. A more careful reading switched the meaning of your sentence completely :-)

wetware: Good old Compromise Chess is also a nice game, it is indeed the variant closest to Ambiguous Chess. It looks like it is usually played with the rule that if you have only one move to get out of check, your opponent has to accept it. However, I prefer the "wild" rule that in such a case you lose the game (because your opponent will capture your king).

wetware: .
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Do you think we will live forever? There is not much timeeeee for all these!
Ambiguous Chess is enough for me.....
Hopefully it will not be me that would decide if this new game you propose will be added here....

With all the interest in Ambiguous Chess, I'm beginning to wonder whether anyone else here would like to see Compromise Chess added. It seems to me to be a close cousin (or maybe just an older aunt or uncle) of Ambiguous Chess.

Rules summary: player to move proffers 2 candidate moves (except in cases of forced moves--which are directly made); the other player decides which of the 2 candidate moves is actually played. Where things get really interesting: captures and responses to them. :)

Pythagoras: Cool about castling :-) I will stick with the promotion rule as it is unless it becomes clear that too many endgames are drawn, in which case having the promotion by the owner would be a solution. But it can require a three-step move instead of a two-step one (player A points the promotion square, player B chooses a pawn, player A chooses the promotion piece).

I've not gotten too far in a game to see a pawn promotion, but all the rules I've encountered seem to fit so far. I think it's a very interesting game.

nabla: .
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I do not only agree with the promotion choosen by the opponent, but i've changed my mind about the castle rule. I think you've made the correct choice....!
And thanks about the history review.....

Pythagoras: Thank you ! Ambiguous Chess was born in January 2005, published on my web site, on chessvariants.com and some months later in the Variant Chess magazine.
Although it is a very simple idea, it came to my mind in a very roundabout way. By telling it I am a bit afraid to bore everyone with a long post, feel free to stop reading right here !

I read in the Encyclopedia of Chess Variants about a strange variant called "Unambiguous Three-symbol Chess", where the only moves allowed were those who could be written in three symbols in the English game notation. It gave me the idea of "Unambiguous Chess" where the only moves allowed are those who are determined by the arrival square alone (all ambiguous moves simply forbidden). This was probably a good idea for a problem stipulation (problem composers like strong constraints, which make it easier to avoid dual solutions), but not a good one for a playing variant (actually Unambiguous Chess is a forced win for White under the no-check rule).
Moving from Unambiguous Chess to Ambiguous Chess is not a very big step, still it took me something like five years and happened only when for some reason both Unambiguous Chess and the game of Quarto came to my mind in the same time - Quarto is an alignment game where you choose the piece which the opponent has to place on the board.
There were only two rules which were not obvious to settle, the castling one (argh!) and the promotion one. At first I had the "normal" promotion by the pawn's owner, but then a friend of mine rightly pointed out that it was more logical that the piece was chosen by the opponent, as the different promotions were different moves to the same square. I hope you will agree with this one :-)

Walter Montego, Pythagoras: I have already answered about castling somewhere lower on this page (May 16). It was the hardest choice and I am not 100% sure that I got it right, especially now that I have heard of four of you who are surprised that it isn't allowed.
What I am more sure about is that if one wants castling allowed, one should consider it as an two-piece unambiguous move that the opponent cannot replace by a rook move (because there is no point in having a special move if it is a disadvantage for the player at move), and that castling should be allowed only when it would be legal in normal chess (no castling under or through check). Like this, allowing castling would slightly complicate the rules but still be completely OK with me.
Maybe it is the opening theory (to be built) which should tell. If castling adds more variety to the games, it could be an excellent thing to allow it. If it turns out that castling is so strong that every games starts with 1.f4, 2.Nf3, 3.g3, 4.Bg2 and 5.0-0 then it is good that it is forbidden. Unfortunately, the game is still too new to tell.
For now, every other opinion on it is welcome !

Pythagoras: Why not have castling? You click the square two squares from the King, your opponent will either make the castle or move the Rook there or any other piece that can move there. I don't see what the problem is if castling was allowed. So why isn't it allowed as an option? As long as it doesn't move the King into check it should be OK to have it. IS there a problem I haven't considered with having castling that makes the game unplayable or unfair in some way? Like castling out of check? There's no check in this game, so that would make for some decision to how the rules are worded if one attempts to castle when his King is under attack. Are you allowed to leave your King in check?

Crap! Are you the inventor? LOL! Well done....!
So when exactly did you publiced this game and when did you first thought of it and when did you resulted in its final rules?

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When this game has been invented or anyway publiced?

Yes, there are examples, annotated games and tips here :
http://www.pion.ch/echecs/variante.php?jeu=ambigus&changer_langue=E
The tips should not be taken too seriously, everyone is still very much in learning phase.

Aaaaaaaarghhhhhh! Right now i saw that there is no castling!
This reduces my interest but not by much. Why there is no castling?

Any Ambiguous Chess links with games, or annotated games or strategies about this game....?

With a quick glance at the rules(around 40 sec) i suppose that if i click on e4 then the opponent has to play on e4 my Pawn right?
Hmmmm, interesting game then.

Before the big July tournament I propose this one to you :
Ambiguous training

Hrqls: no, not yet