Chess 2.0 / Midline invasion

edited moderator AndrewSmith 

Chess 2 crams too many 'novelties' in the game, for my taste. And I am not convinced at all that each of them is an improvement. Like you, I am very skeptical about this 'dueling' stuff; it completely changes the nature of the game, making it resemble a lottery more than a serious mind sport.

I also have severe doubts about this mid-line invasion rule. It seems that this was inspired by a total misconception of the designer what Chess is about. Where opening theory in Chess is often criticised as being pure rote learning, end-game skill is very different, and in a sense end-games are the purest form of Chess. The mid-line rule does away with end-games as we know them.

Note that the idea of having different armies is not very new. Decades ago Ralph Betza invented a variant called Chess with Different Armies (see, e.g. http://hgm.nubati.net/rules/CWDA.html ). In contrast to the Chess-2 armies, which contain all kind of weirdness not seen in normal Chess, the armies designed by Betza consist of 'regular' Chess pieces, which just happen to move differently from the pieces in FIDE. A slightly more alien variant that employs unequal armies for white and black is Spartan Chess ( http://hgm.nubati.net/rules/Spartan.html  )

I consider these variants better than Chess 2. They solve the problem of opening theory, lead to very interesting and challenging end-games, and do away with much less of what we value in Chess. Both CWDA and Spartan Chess can be played with WinBoard (against the Fairy-Max engine). I don't know if there are places where it can be played on-line. The Variant ICS at winboard.nl supports Spartan Chess, but there never are any people there.

Those varients are interesting. I'll check them out.

Maybe it's because I'm a noob but end games are really difficult and can be boring sometimes, it's either a race of who gets more pawns up while taking out the opponet's pawns and promoting first or constantly checking eachother until someone blunders.

Well, chess is really difficult in general. You have to make long-term strategic plans. That is why we like it, and those that want something simpler go for Checkers.

I got to play a little with mid line invasion rule, it changes the whole point of chess, instead of emphasising on tactics and gaining an advantage in term of pieces, the whole emphasis is on getting the king across the mid line.

It makes the game boring because now the king is basically a nuclear payload instead of a piece with limited moves.

I see your point now.

I need to point out that the King, who I need remind you you would need to keep alive at all costs, needs to move THREE times in order to even involve the Midline Invasion Rule at all. You also give up your right to Castling from moving the King at all. This causes any plan to involve the rule to become telegraphed unless any movement done by the King, who is slow enough as it is, already has sufficient flow or can get by on a well-developed position. That's the point of the Midline Invasion Rule: to make sure you contest the center with consistency and thus actually contest your opponent, rather than hang back with ever less interactive memorization shenanigans.

I can see it need to get nerfed to where the player simply declares Check upon the King reaching the opponent's side, Mate condition being that the King can't be forced off the opponent's side, but I think this works as a representation of a morale spike from subordinates who see somebody believing that the king must lead for the subjects to follow. In theory, this can invoke the extreme that the King wins when he has no allies left, but I can be sure practice would generally permit the King no such position, and focusing on a side to let the King develop there would likely have the Knights develop too far there too without sufficient benefit and the unguarded side would get mercilessly attacked as a result.

If anything, I think the Midline Invasion Rule would add more Affinity Play to Chess, by letting the King pull a checkmate situation. Much like the Bishop, the Fragile Speedster, being color-locked and thus being possible to evade. We already have THAT.

may you make long chess please