Michael's Shadow Chess: On each turn, you make 2 "moves". One move is your REAL move. One move is your fake "Shadow" move.

Your opponent will see both moves, but will not know which one if your REAL move, and which one is your shadow move (until after they submit their next move[s]) So your opponent will not know which move is real, and will see both - and will be able to make their REAL and "Shadow" move for their turn. (After they submit and confirm their moves, they will only then see which one of your moves were the real one.)

Other rules:

Pawns can still capture like normal (diagonal / En passant) - even if the "captured" piece ends up being the fake shadow piece, the pawn will still be allowed to stay in the new column.

Checks: Unlike normal chess, you ARE allowed to stay in check, you ARE allowed to put yourself in check & ignore being in check. (your own risk) SO FOR EXAMPLE: Your opponent puts you in check. You can then use your fake move to move your king out of check, and then use your real move to put them into check. So now your opponent will have to decide if they want to try to capture your king, or protect their own king with their real/fake moves.

Thad: Seriously? If I were to capture my opponents king, and then submit and the Behemoth took my king out, it would be a draw????

Actually I never play this game either... it's just part of a random tournament, so don't ever plan to play many more of these games... (not to mention that I'm not that good at chess...)

Thad: I know (and I'm not really complaining to get it changed or anything) - but the rules do say "If the Behemoth destroys both kings at the same time, the game is a draw." - well it wasn't the same time, it was the square after.... same TURN, but not really the same time.

A draw in Behemoth Chess..... Behemoth Chess (coan.net vs. mangue)

Now technically, my opponent lost his king first... so I think I should have won! It took the Behemoth 1 extra move to take my king. Grrr....

So after playing the game for awhile, does anyone have any tips or suggestions they would like to share about Massacre Chess?

Even though I'm no expert, here is what I try to do:

1. I try to do is take out many if not all of my opponents queens.

2. While doing #1, I will try to use knights or bishops to do that - trying to see if they have limited attack power from previous position and move them to a new position.

3. Check bishop on the long diagonal - if they are mine in the corners, if I can attack to get them out in the middle a little more, I try. If they are my opponents, I will then try to move my pieces from their attack line to make them unusable.

4. After that, I try to move on to the rest of the queens and then rooks & sometimes knights that are more in the middle with more attacking range.

Lawless: I like the idea, but what about doing it on a 10x10 board - giving 10 pawns, and 3 kings in the back row (without losing any of the other normal chess pieces)?

... even though I would say keep the rules the same where a pawn can't promote to a king so there is less confusion (and easier programming of the game)

ChessVariant: Cheversi did have different rules when it first came out - and was VERY unbalanced. (leading stats to lean one way) - the rule changed happened awhile back. I'm not sure exactly how the stats are once the rules were changed.

It would be interesting to know though. Not sure if that is something Fencer can look up or not.

nabla: I don't think you can move your king into check - and you can't move another piece that will in turn put your king in check - so if the system would have let you play e5xd4, then your king would have been in check (and then game over.)

If say your opponents king had already moved (so it is back to it's 1 space at a time mode), then letting your king (in it's queen move mode) check your opponent would have been acceptable.... as long as you don't put your king in danger.

Even though Fencer below says a king can't give check - I could have sworn that it can in this game while still in "queen-move-mode" against a "king-move-mode" king.

joshi tm: I'm not a chess expert, but doesn't have to be no pieces in between the king & rook?

While playing a few games of Cheshire Cat Chess, and idea for a variant came to me. I figured I would post it here before I forget. (nothing test, or played in real life) - feel free to comment.

Basically the same as Cheshire Cat Chess - when a piece moves, the space it was at turns red (I think of it as Lava - and normal pieces can no longer land in those spots)

But you can now get a "Super" piece which is allowed to land in the red spaces.

What is a "Super" piece - A Super Piece is any piece on the board that has captured another piece. So as soon as your queen captures any of your opponent pieces, it turns into a "Super" piece (I image it as the same piece with a green glow - like my black rook icon, but maybe with a "S" on it to make it easier to tell it is "Super")

Anyway, at that point, the super piece can land on any space, even the red spaces. The super pieces can be captures just like any other piece.

So, what do people think?

joshi tm: I would also think it would be illegal since C6 is an unavailable space for your opponent to finish there move.

I have not played this game for awhile, and not since the more recent rule changes.

I was wondering from the players who have - do the new rules fix the balance of the game?

joshi tm: I think what AbigailII was meaning, and I some-what agree - even if they were to make the worse first move they can think of - I would still want to be the one with the last move since 85% of the time you can win with that move - no matter how bad the start was.

I still like my idea of making each player play at the same time so there is no advantage for either player. (and if the 2 pick the same spot to play on, then they try again with that spot unavailable to choose on the next try)

dicepro: I'm unable to get onto the chessvariants link you gave right now - but limiting the move to a privious played attacked space might be good - since which can just plan to put the king next to last to make sure the queen is put in a limited area.

As for MadMonkey's Dark Cheversi - the problem would still be black last move would be an advantage. But an idea that just came from that - make it so both players move at the same time.

That is both players pick a spot on the board to place a piece at the same time. Then after both players choose, as long as they do not pick the same spot - then play the piece. If by chance the 2 players pick the same spot, have them replay that move - but don't allow anyone to play that spot for the next move.

In this way - there would not be a first & second player.

There is something that I've been thinking about - but I would have to sit down and play around on the exact setup and such - but lets called it:

Choice Cheversi

The choice is that before the game starts, you decide which set of pieces you want to play with. (and you will not know your opponents set until after you start - or possible keep it hidden and learn 1 piece at a time as they play)

For example, let say there are 4 sets to choose from.

1. (power) - 1 Queen, 2 Rooks, 1 bishop, 1 knight
2. (mid-power) - 1 queen, 2 bishop, 2 knight, 1 king
3. (mid-bulk) - 2 rook, 2 bishop, 1 knight, 1 king, 1 pawn
4. (bulk) - 1 rook, 2 bishop, 2 knight, 1 king, 2 pawn

So it would be a game of power vs. quantity - you can choose a few powerful pieces - or a more less powerful pieces to help block the power play.

AGAIN - the above is just off the top of my head - I would have to sit down, try to figure out the "strength" of each piece in the game to come up with a good set of pieces. But as you can tell - if you have "power" pieces, you have less moves - and if you choose more bulk, you will have more moves - in which you can block the power pieces

dicepro: Well now would be a good time for any type of rule change.... since there are under 50 current games going on.

I don't know if Swap is good - seems like everyone would still try to be black. Maybe give white an extra piece, a "pawn" for their last move.

Anyway, if anyone can come up with a good rule to make the game more equal - this is the perfect time to get Fencer to change it since very few games are going on right now.

dresali: You must be talking about offering a draw with your move. I believe you can also offer a draw without moving. (Of course if your opponent does not answer the draw, you will still need to make your move before the time expires.)

grenv: Oh - I was just saying that was my opinion - how it is done is up to Fencer or whoever - I was just giving my own opinion that I would rather play a game to win/lose rating points - not just show up to win/lose them. Again, just my opinion - not complaining or anything.

AbigailII: After thinking about it for about 60 seconds, my opinion is that I like the fact that it would not count towards the BKR rating. Yea it's a lose, but it seems kind of silly to lose ratings (or gain ratings) when you don't even get a chance to play. At least that is my opinion.

emmett: Looks like a bug to me - Black should win. (Let fencer know)

emmett: From the rules: "....(it is not adjacent to any other piece in any direction)"

It says "ANY" other piece, so it seems enemy pieces count also.

emmett: Well if you don't, black will capture it... since the ice does not come back until after blacks 60th move (right before your 61st move)

But it is an interesting position - that is if white puts black in check on the 20th move, should black have to move his king even though right after that ice will block the check?

Pafl: I always like to start to move the "g" pawn up quickly - that way if you are lucky, you can capture the "f" pawn and capture the king the next move of the pawn.

Of course most of the time it gets blocked or the king moves, but I think it has worked out for me in a couple of games.

Dice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice (Some links at the bottom of the page go to others which talk about different dice.)

Walter Montego: The plan is already to make white first use King, and black use Queen. I've played it that was a few times as a "test", and found that white no longer gets blown out of the water. I was still able to win as black during those test, but that did not take into consideration the other changes to the game about what space scores what - so it should be a lot closer doing that.

The connect6 type of moving - that is also a interesting idea. Just looking at it, without making black use his queen early - I would still say Black would have an advantage because on their next to last move, a rook & queen places could attack a lot of the board that white would not be able to block with just one piece..... but I would have to play it to know for sure.

furbster: That is what I was getting at - there is no point in hidding the points since if someone "really" wants to know how many point there is, they can sit there for 3 minutes and figure it out. When I play, I try to play and move on so hiding the score would only slow down game play.

Basicly it's how many spaces your pieces are attacking. So on the first move, if you put a rook in a corner space, you would have 14 points (for "attacking" 7 in each direction). If then the player places a piece right next to your rook, they would take away 7 points from you since you are no longer attacking in that direction.

Marfitalu: Having the score hidden would just take extra time since anyone can sit there and count up how many squares are being attacked.

I had 2 ideas about it so far.

1. Make black use his queen in the first 3 moves of the game instead of keeping it until the end.

2. Possible make some sort of handicap points for white to start out with to make the match more even.

grenv: problem is I play so little ex. chess that it there is not something jumping out at me and saying "Hey, don't lost all of 1 piece", it's easy for me to forget.

Walter Montego: The problem is if it has the same border (no color) as regular chess, if you are not paying attention and just going from game to game, you could easly make a stupid move in Extincion chess thinking it was regular chess.

Some more talk was started on the BrainKing.com board about how to make the game more balanced.

I'm far from being a chess expert or anything - but what about taking some of the important pieces away - maybe like remove the queen from the start - or maybe start with only 1 knight & 1 bishop.

probable have to play around with it for awhile to figure out what would make it more balanced.

Ugh, learn something new about the rules everyday.

In a game, I already have my opponenet checked 2 times, with just 1 more check needed to win the game.

My opponenet just put me in check for the first time, and even though I can move my bishop and put my opponent in check for the 3rd time and win the game (like the rules say), I have to instead get my king out of check. (Which will allow my opponenet to probable now get 3 checks on me)

Are these rules correct?

Yup, looks like a bug to me (opponents pawn should have been removed).

Fencer should be able to fix it. You may want to send Fencer a message, or post about it in the Bug Tracker since I don't think Fencer reads all the boards every day.

Do you know what would be a more fun "Maharajah" chess game?

Cylinder Maharajah Chess :-)

A pawn can go two spaces diagonally on it's first move.

Can it capture a piece doing this?

For example if white had a piece on E5, could black take a pawn from G7 to capture the piece on E5?

Sorry, thought it was clear. Edited previous message to add "(Maharajah piece)" next to they so hopefully it would be more clear.

Quick question - if I DO NOT put the Maharajah piece into check, and they (Maharajah piece) DOES NOT have any valid moves - is it a win for me, or a draw?

*Edited to add "Maharajah piece" next to they

If you ignore the "blue" spaces which shows what moves were made, and just pay attention to the game notation, the game looks OK.

Kind of looks like the "blue squares" which shows the moves are not in-sync with the game.??

As a casual Chess player (Not too good), I really love the fact that Screen Chess & Crazy Screen chess start the way they do. I don't know any of the best chess opening moves, nor do I want to take Chess that serious.

I love the chance i take when i set up my board since i can set it up 3 different ways.
1) Have a good "attack plan" with possible leaving me in a losing position depending on opponenets setup.
2) Have a good defence setup - so no matter how the oppenent sets up, i should be OK - just no strong attack ready.
3) Or a mixture of both - keeping myself some-what defended, while having a small attack ready.

Yes, it put some luck into the game - but I think that is what makes these game great.

NOW having said that, i think the idea of possible having a variant where each player sees the board and you place your pieces alternately would be nice - but I don't think that the current games should be changed.

What if black had 2 or 4 "super pawns" - that is they can move 1 space any of the 8 directions. (Up, Up-right, right, right-down, down, down-left, left, left-up) (Can move & Capture in those directions - 1 space)

Put them in the back row - possible where the bishops normally are, or if 4 - where bishops & rooks normally are)

It will not be a very big change, but should give black more of a chance and possible "even" out the game some.

Any thoughts?

(Or possible a new game - "Super Horde Chess" - maybe even make the whole back row of black pawns - 6 total - be "super pawns")

That's because some users do not put the "www" before the link - and your "cookies" are set with the "www" in it.

They THIS LINK which is what he has below (but with the "www")