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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
mangue: . . . 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....
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.
grenv: . . . 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: 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:. . . 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 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: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
nabla: . . . 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....