i'm working up a new webpage, at

My Games of Loop Chess.

http://www.geocities.com/ttrotter3/loopgames.html

If you have played any game of loop with me and you would like to see it linked in my page, send me a message directly to me (not in this discussion board, please) about it.

Thank you. Terry

It appears there has been no entries in this DB for nearly 3 months now. So I suggest that we start a little series of "show 'n tell" of favorite or interesting games that we loopsters have played. I'd like to start things off with the following recently finished game of mine.


Click HERE to see it.

What makes this game so interesting to me was the tenseness of the battle. The beginning was rather bland, but around moves 21 & 22 I began to feel a lot of pressure. It kept building. Clearly the momentum was to my opponent’s favor. On his 30th move B@g6, I was getting concerned. 33. Rxh7+ made things look bleak for me. I had to sacrifice my Q now. About this moment or perhaps a little before, my opponent sent this message, “Hey, this is rather fun. Lots of play in the game. Thanks Trotter. Whats next?” To which I replied: “this isnt quite over yet. let's see.”

Then on my 34th, rather than capture his B to save my R, I counterattacked. And the momentum swung in my favor. A series of checks brought black back from the jaws of disaster. White did not answer my last check, allowing the time to run out. No matter, it was mate next move anyway.

Now, who’s next in line? Show us your favorite recent game.

Last time it was a trio of horses working together to achieve the goal. This time it might be called the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, with some help of the lowliest of the lowly, a pawn, to deliver the coup de grace.

Let's pick up the action around Move 20.

(In all fairness to my worthy opponent, he returned the favor in our 2nd game in the tourney. Ya' win some and ya' lose some, right?)

I just finished a game that has a rather unique final position. Click HERE to see it.

Now only 1 more player & we can start.

Sometimes we learn from our mistakes, & sometimes we don't even learn from our sucesses. Observe this recent win of mine:
#109725. Nice smothered mate, no?

But then later, came this: #101783. No need to finish that. Sometimes I wonder where my brain has gone!

At least it brought to mind the title of this little note, explained below.

“To be hoist by one's own petard,” a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means “to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices.”

I have been informed that Loop chess as played here, is similar to a 4-player variant called bughouse chess. Upon doing a Google search on that latter topic, I found a site that discussed some interesting ideas that might apply to Loop. I copy them here & hope they will be of some relevance to we Loop players...

Piece Values:

Most serious chess players are familiar with the Piece Value Table: Q=9, R=5, B and N=3, P=1. In bughouse however, the values are completely different. While there is no general consensus on bughouse values, here is an approximation.

Q=10, N=7, R=4, B=2, P=1

The knight and queen rule the bughouse chessboard. The queen often can be placed into a position with mate. The knight is useful as well because it can check from a distance and not be blocked. Many bughouse mating attacks begin with a sacrifice on KB7 followed by a knight check. For example, after 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.Bxf7+ Kxf7 6.Ng5+ all white needs is a queen for f7 and black will get mated. The bishops value is seriously diminished, as it often performs no better than a pawn, and sometimes not even as well. The pawns promotion abilities may in some positions be worth significantly more than a bishop.

After 7 matches with my good friend & nemesis, Indiagonal Jones, all of which I lost, I finally pulled out a win! Proving, I guess, that perseverence pays. Please see my #8 game: Game #85675.