A quick thought I wanted to get every one's input on:
My brother-in-law, as I think I've mentioned before, is into this board game right now that's called "Heroscape". This game involves setting up a big 3-d map however you want, then drafting army units (each worth a certain amount of points depending on their strengths/weaknesses), until you reach your point limit, say 500 or 1000.
Anyway, he tries to get me to play Heroscape, I try to get him to play Chess...we end up making a deal of 2 Chess games per Heroscape game, etc. etc. So the other day we're on the phone and he says "It would be cool if the chess pieces had some kind of point value so we could draft armies like in Heroscape."
SWEET! I jump right in and tell him that they do just so happen to have point values! So I went over a quick breakdown of the points. Well, if you've never added it up, you end up with 39 points worth of pieces (not including the King, because you need to have a King).
So here's the idea I'm kicking around:
We get a few chess sets together and draft our Chess Armies until we reach 39 points, then we set them all up however we want on our own back 2 ranks, and the game begins.
At first I dismissed the idea rather quickly, thinking "I want to practice real chess!"...but now I'm thinking this would be a really cool way for me to at least get in some pure tactics/mating practice! What do you think?
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8 comments:
There is a chess variant called "Fischer Random Chess" that's not too dissimilar from what you're proposing.
Fischer thought that the great amount of opening analysis that had been developed had taken away some of the creativity of the game, and reduced it to one of too much memorization.
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/Fischer_Random_Chess.html
es_trick: Yeah I've heard of that and thought it was interesting. My reaction to it was similar to my reaction to the idea of drafting chess armies: "I want to play real chess!".
But now I think Fischer Random would probably be a great exercise and also fun to play! As far as playing for real goes (like in tournaments), it seems like FR would sometimes favor one side over another with piece placement, thus taking away one of the reasons I love chess so much...pure skill, no luck.
Don't forget to tell me what you thought of "Seventh Seal". :-)
There are a LOT of chess variants out there. I like the idea a lot. There would be questions of how to handle castling, and that sort of thing.
LEP, I figure that would be one of the strategic decisions...if you initially place the king and a rook in the traditional squares, then you could castle like normal...if you decide to place them elsewhere, then you wouldn't be able to.
My GUESS is that we will never actually get around to playing this particular variation, but it was interesting to think about. :-)
Sounds fun.
Fischer random is also a lot of fun.
It's not great practice for real chess, but it probably won't hurt, and the enjoyment is worth it. I play a couple of Fischer Random games a week.
There's an international chess festival going on now in Germany, featuring Fischer Random Chess. Quite a few grandmasters are included in the field of 300.
http://www.chess.com/news/chess-classic-mainz-update
http://main.uschess.org/content/view/8603/141
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4801
I can see how GMs would be interested in Fischer Random, since maybe ONE new move ends up winning a game that was played "in book" for the first 30 moves. It must suck being deprived of the creativity that amateurs feel while playing chess...getting out of the book sometimes as early as move 1! Or, not having any "book" to begin with.
Like every game is a piece of art that you've created. A new path you've traveled down.
Imagine being an artist...a painter...and you start every single painting you do with the exact same set of 30 brush-strokes.
I'll bet after starting every painting the same way for 20 years, you'd really get to missing the beauty of a blank canvas...the limitless possibilities that await your loving touch of the brush.
Ok so maybe it's a bit overboard...but it's a reason I have NO desire to be a Grandmaster.
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