Atomic Chess (Walter Montego vs. Pedro Martínez)
Whatever the outcome, the current verdict on 1.h4 is "unproven either way".

WhisperzQ: I lost a game in this manner. When it ended I had seven pieces available as he kept checking me, but I couldn't get them into play with each move I made being a forced capture and next thing you know, checkmate.

Justaminute: Or it staves off defeat for a little longer ... it is surprising the number of times a seemingly wanton flurry of check sacrifices, particularly when additional pieces are acquired in the process even if of a lesser status than the piece sacrificed, can end in a victory. For those who are more skilled they might retreat to a mantra that it was all planned but being a more shallow player I am willing to admit that sometimes it is just a happy circumstance.

These days i have enough other things in life which require my concentration that chess, of any description, for me is a mere diversion from the rigors of the real world.

Walter Montego: Given endgames are usually defined as involving reduced number of pieces and the number of pieces in loop chess never reduce, you are right, endgames are impossible in loop chess.
I don't think there is much change to pieces values but I do think having the initiative is worth a lot more than in standard chess. Being able to give 4-5 checks on the trot can often lead to a winning position.

rabbitoid: You know, I think I agree with you rabbiroid. I have only just played a few games of Loop Chess. My first was just a week or so ago, and it seems this game has no end game and a trade is really not a trade. All the pieces seem much more equal.

WhisperzQ:
reckless abandon is rewarded and minions get to carry on their meaningless lives while their generals' fragility is exposed

You've provided a perfect description of loop chess

WhisperzQ: Yes, elephants. I think of the Rooks as elephants, marching in a straight line destroying things in their path. Bishop are like arrows or archers, and the Knights already are what they are.

Pawns are the foot soldiers in all of three of the games, but even in Atomic Chess they end up being more important than the strongest piece on the board in many games.

The King is like leaders since the end of the middle ages and beginning of the renaissance, not the strongest piece and surrounded by underlings who are all more powerful than he is, but whom all depend on his leadership to carry the day.

The Queen, Marshall, and Cardinal are the power of the game that they're used in, but are vulnerable to all sorts of palace intrigue and plots from the minor pieces and Pawns..

WhisperzQ: Not sure about that, seems to me reckless abandon will lose Atomic Chess very quickly.On the contrary accuracy and discipline are paramount.

Walter Montego: Elephants? ... I also think that Atomic Chess is also so very 20C where reckless abandon is rewarded and minions get to carry on their meaningless lives while their generals' fragility is exposed such that the nearest pop will see their demise :)

Regular Chess is medieval war with knights, arrows, and elephants.

Embassy Chess is eighteenth century war with much the same weapons and some stronger ones brought in with diplomats and leaders.

Atomic Chess really is war with nukes, bomb shelters, and Mutually Assured Destruction! It's played with a hair line trigger for destruction on every move.

I believe there once some discussion about how White does not have a forced win in Atomic Chess as played here. I remember grenv defending the position and saying Black can hold his own but must play carefully to make it to equality.

I have been wondering about if White opening the game with 1. P H2-H4 is a good move. In regular Chess this is a poor opening move, but as anyone that plays Atomic Chess knows, all conventional wisdom is thrown out the door. I decided to try this because the move sometimes comes in handy after a few moves with Black with moving the Pawn from H7 to H5. I figured, why not start with it there and then play Black with that move in place. It keeps the Queen off that diagonal quite well and the Rook and Knight on the Kingside can move. It does weaken G3, but I haven't had a problem with that yet.

I suppose my question is; has this been checked into? How well does it go? Is it bad for White? At first it seems passive and a loss of tempo for White, but I haven't figured a way for Black to turn it to his advantage and White can bring out the pieces without much trouble. Maybe I should play grenv a game? Anybody else want to play a few games of Atomic Ches. Each color is fine. I'll start my White side with this opening and you can prepare for it. I move fast and like a Fischer Clock 4.7/1.18/11.1 timer or two or three day limit for regular time.

There's a bug in Screen Chess. Sometimes when I'm White, after my opponent is finished editing his/her starting position, I'm asked to edit mine once more. Have anybody else experienced this?

Fwiffo: You will need only one King. Unless you want to make a Knightmate Chess set as well ;)

45 moves in this one: Behemoth Chess (DarwinKoala vs. Resher)

Chessgi - how does it compare to Loop Chess? Being able to drop pawns on the first row should make it easier to defend; or does it hardly matter at all?

Probably I should be safe then, when I add 2 rooks, knights, bishops (double sided) and 4 queens.

Justaminute: yes, but it would seem to be vanishingly rare that you want 5 knights at the same time for example. I guess anything is possible.

grenv: You could underpromote to another piece.

rabbitoid: So 2 sets and a plethora of queens. No need for more than 2 full sets is there? Other than the queens.

DarwinKoala: You're forgetting conversions. even in regular chess there's a theoretical possibility of 9 queens. Here too.
In loop chess conversions are far more common, parachuting pawns on the 7th row happens all the time.

Thanks all!

Fwiffo: At a minimum 2 sets of black and 2 sets of white. The combination of piece exchange means you will never have more than 4 knights/bishops/rooks or more than 2 Queens on the board.
The addition of promoting pawns does add more to this, which is no more of a pain than with regular chess sets.
To cover 90% of promotion cases, 3 sets of white and 3 sets of black should cover it?

Theoretically - a lot, but that's just like saying you need 9 queens in regular chess to account for all the possible conversions. In practice it's rare to see more than 4 knights bishops or rooks of one colour, but say you need 8 of each, so you can sell more pieces :)

Fwiffo: you meant a 'real' board. thought it was an image set for online game.
I would be curious to seet it :)

Fwiffo: Ah well, why play games on a real board anyway. Nevermind.

I'm thinking about creating a Loop Chess set from Othello/Reversi pieces. How many pieces would most likely be enough to play the game?

This has been argued here if black's 20th move checkmate counts as a checkmate. Here is the answer:

http://ikorid-cv.blogspot.com/2011/05/clarification-on-ice-age-chess-rules.html

I think 3rd check is equivalent to mate and mate is finishing game so no threefold repetition.

grenv: No dissent here, it is exactly what I meant.  

Justaminute: But then it is very possible the third check occurs in the same time as the third repetition of the position.  

I believe it should work this way:

position also includes number of checks each player has made.

3x repetition of position would have to take that into account.

therefore the only way this is a draw is 3x repetition of a position that isn't check... and only if there has been no intervening check between positions.

Anyone disagree? I invite dissent.

Justaminute: Actually currently the most common cause is that two chess bigshots find it in their common interest to have a draw outcome, then go through the motion of having such a repetition early in the game to avoid the wrath of the referees.

nabla:
I know. I was pointing out the usual way of arriving at three fold repetition of position is through perpetual check which would result in a win for the checker before three fold repetition of position occurred in three check chess. The other most common way of repeating a position in normal chess is in the endgame where there is limited material and fixed pawn positions. It is quite possible for three fold repetition of position to occur in these circumstances in three check chess but I suspect it is even rarer than normal chess. I was wondering whether anyone had a practical example or was this just a theoretical discussion. A theoretically drawn endgame in normal chess like bishop and king v king is perhaps where it would occur.

Justaminute: There is no rule about repetition of moves in chess, only about three repetitions of the same position.

rabbitoid: You are right of course, I had forgotten about that ! A word in the rules wouldn't hurt though.  

rabbitoid: I would be interested to know if this ever occurred in practise though. You can’t get it by perpetual check as the third check occurs after only 1.5 repeats of moves. The other way this usually occurs is in long drawn out endgames where one player is trying to make something of a small advantage. It could happen in these circumstances but I would think it was very unlikely.

nabla: As I recall the repetition rules were never implemented in the code here, you have to ask the admin (Fencer) explicitly to end a game.
The reasons were: first, it's very complicated to implement, since repetitions may concern moves that are not consecutive; second because that's how it's done in regular chess tournaments anyway: a player has to inform a referee that a 3rd repetition has occurred. And now you have discovered a third reason: the rule doesn't necessarily make sense for variants :)

ughaibu: The obvious answer is that the same position with a different number of checks given beforehand is in fact not the same position, so the repetition rule should not apply. Good question though since it is unclear whether the written rules mean that, and whether the implementation matches that. 

What's the result, in Three Checks Chess, if the third check repeats the position for the third time?

DarwinKoala: yes, but diagonal counts as touching too

Resher:

Perhaps I also misunderstand "touch" - I assume that to be an adjacent square?

DarwinKoala: Each piece has to touch another piece, but not necessarily an opponent's piece (except black's first and last moves).  I needed to read the rules carefully to understand this - I agree it could be expressed a little more clearly.

Cheversi (aaru vs. AlterMann)

I thought that a placed piece has to touch an opponents piece?

Thad: Using just one monitor can be done, but it would be a major hassle just making sure you didn't accidentally show your opponent your view of the game. You might even be able to use the same browser, but I'm thinking probably not with cookies and passwords and all.

I used two separate computers logged into two accounts on It's Your Turn (IYT) about seven years ago to try it. Unfortunately my opponent didn't like Dark Chess and I had no one else to try it with. This game is on IYT as Walter_Montego versus Walter Montego. I had accidentally created the account when I didn't notice the underline was missing and somehow ended up with two accounts. It is the only game I ever used the second account for.

If you don't think it would be a hassle getting up from the monitor after you make your move, making sure to blank the screen, and then have your opponent take over for his turn, and them keep switching back and forth the whole game, I am not sure what you would think is tedious. It'd be a lot easier to use two monitors hooked to one computer. Your idea will work. Give it a try and see how well it goes.

Walter Montego: Can you play using two different browsers signed in to two different accounts on one computer to play live? Players would have to manually manage minimizing their window when they finished their turn, but it'd be better than nothing and not too tedious.

DarwinKoala: It is true that we can play Dark Chess using BrainKing, but that is not what I want nor what I am talking about. I have tried to use BrainKing to play Dark Chess live. It is tedious, though it works. Besides having to log into the site and having to use an internet connection to do so, and hopefully the site is up and running when you want to try it, there's plenty of other things that just having the program on my own computer would solve. It'd be lots more user friendly in many ways. And it would not tie up BrainKing resources just for the one game either. Extra monitors will work, but even one extra monitor should be big enough to show all three views of a game in progress. And I can envision a type of overlaying the display with all three views superimposed on each other too.

Since I did miss the obvious thing about this that rabbitoid points out and that is such a program does indeed exist. The very program that BrainKing uses. Perhaps Fencer could let me have a copy of it or a modified version that I could use on my own computer to play Dark Chess at home? I had not thought of this. I will write him and ask in a few days so as to give him some time to respond to it here in the discussion board. It would have to come ready to use as I do not know how to program computers or change program code to do it myself.

Walter Montego:
As rabbitoid noted: Brainking already handles the logic. "Lock Screen" works as a blanking tool when the player leaves the keyboard (this has an added overhead of either using own laptops or setting up user accounts (or a uer account) so users can control passwords.

Dual monitors can be used to display both views of the board to spectators - thus they can see it how the players see it!!

Walter Montego: That program exists. It's called brainking.com.

Pegniar: Thank you for the link. A small correction is needed as it is Kevin Hill that invented the Embassy Chess and you have it as K. Hill.

I am curious if you will make a program to play Dark Chess? I mean a program that will let two people play Dark Chess, not a program to play Dark Chess against, though that'd be cool too though to make it fair you'd have to have the board set up elsewhere and tell the machine what it sees as I do not trust the inner workings of the machine to not cheat and be looking at the position. It is this that makes Dark Chess different than other forms of Chess, the players have restricted information and different views of the board. Seeing the other person's view ruins the game. That is why when you view a game in progress here on BrainKing the board is blank for everyone but the players. You'd have to have a secure blank button on the program I want created to cover such looking while an opponent left the room for some reason or even just an accidental viewing that neither player would want to have happen.

I would like to play Dark Chess live against a person in person. It'd take two monitors hooked to one computer. The computer would not have to know anything about playing, just keep track of the pieces and displaying the correct information to each player. If the monitors were placed back to back, you could almost have a game like regular Chess with the feel of playing Battleship and hidden information. A third monitor away from the players could show all three views of the board and let kibitzers follow along with the action. Embellishments to such a program would be different displays a player might want, 2D, 3D, Chess clock, speculative piece placement, and other things that I'm sure people that play the game have thought up, but just the basic game itself would be a great thing to have.

If you're interested in this and are not familiar with Dark Chess, please write me and we can set up a few games to let you see how it is played. There's many of us here that play Dark Chess that would like to be able to play the game at home or in a club, but there's not any available software for it, or the rules are not as they are here as it seems Dark Chess is hard to program just to display the game as compared to having the program play the game. "Lawless" has expressed much interest in someone making this a project. I'm sure we could help you test it out, make suggestions, and find bugs for you.

I'm glad to find a forum about chess variants. Please visit my page about chess variants. It contains both interesting historical variants and my own suggestions of "improvements" of chess (at least they are good for training purposes).
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/chessvar.htm