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I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

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Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#101

Post by palata »

nescioquid wrote: post #66
lemmsjid wrote: post #5

It would be interesting to do an experiment on people playing one another (online) with these pieces vs regular pieces (e.g. one player with a regular set and one player with this set). Because I do feel like I can visualize the state of the board more easily with this approach--but would that translate across people into better play, or is there some point where a more expert player (I don't play very often, though…

If you're ever going to get the point where you recognize tactics (or anything, for that matter) on the board, how the pieces move must already be internalized and not require any thought. People even especially practice visualizing knight journeys between arbitrary squares to make this more automatic. If you ask an experienced player to use a weird piece set, you will only be introducing error and cognitive overhead…

Exactly this. Relatives have been trying to choose "fancy-looking" chess sets for me as a gift, and I always hated them. I don't want fancy pieces, I want the standard ones that don't give me cognitive overhead :-).

"Tournament chessboards" are my favourites, obviously.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#102

Post by Zanni »

donkeybeer wrote: post #62
sleeplessworld wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The knight shape does seem off. But it avoids the piece being a sun symbol / fascist tribute piece :-)

It shouldn't look like that, its two I's at 90 degrees: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEqoWAFXQAAPRXm?format=jpg&name=...

That's nice. Plus it solves the manufacturing issue if you try to turn this into a physical set (the current knight design is very thinly connected).

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#103

Post by andoando »

tasuki wrote: post #99
andoando wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to that, this also makes a knight and queen a very strong attacking combo, because they can uniquely cover the most squares.

Given... they stay... in the same... square?

In the image above, imagine a knight on H3, which covers g1, g5. Neither a bishop, a pawn or rook can help that way.

After one move, it can go to f4 where it can add on as a second attacker to the queen on 4 squares. After another move it can go to d3, where it can again cover squares the queen cant (e2,e5).

So I guess its both because it has a lot of alignment in doubling as an attack, and covering nearby squares the queen cannot.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#104

Post by ComplexSystems »

infogulch wrote: post #63

For me the most surprising observation from this thread is this tweet [1] showing that the knight's moves are exactly the squares that the queen can't get to within a 2 square manhattan distance. I.e. the knight is an anti-queen. [1]: https://twitter.com/skidbladnirr_/status/1750285122769957129

You mean a 2-square Chebyshev distance, I think (the Linf norm). A 2-square Manhattan distance (the L1 norm) wouldn't include any of the squares that a knight can get to.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#106

Post by goriv »

porphyra wrote: post #85
aurelwu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some non-orthodox chess variants have a piece which combines Queen+Knight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess) very old variants often had such compound pieces like for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Acedrex

There's also the knook that combines the Knight and the Rook, which was hilariously invented as a meme on /r/anarchychess: https://anarchychess.fandom.com/wiki/Knook

[flagged]

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#107

Post by paulddraper »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #94
dheera wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Chinese chess, the horse behaves like the knight in western chess except that (a) it cannot jump over pieces, and (b) the definition of jumping over is that it first move horizontally/vertically 1 step and then diagonally 1 step. It cannot first move diagonally. This also leads to situations where two knights can be positioned amongst other pieces such that one knight is able to capture the other but not vice vers…

Most people think of the knight move as one straight and then one diagonal. However, this is still ambiguous. Imagine one up, then one down left for example, resulting in the square left to the original square. A better description is moving 2 squares straight, not diagonal, into one direction, then moving 1 square into a 90° turned direction.

Most people think of the knight moving 2 and then 1.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#109

Post by paulddraper »

catapart wrote: post #8

That is very clever! But I hate the way the pawns face. Makes sense! But it still reads, to me, like one of those "color, but the text is in a different color" things. Feels like the pawns should be facing the opposite direction. =/

Yeah, I wonder if it would be a slight improvement to combine move+capture.

So pawns would be

    /|\  /|\


    \|/  \|/
which looks less anti-directional.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#110

Post by mc32 »

ramon156 wrote: post #73
crdrost wrote: post #52

I think this is fun, but (a) knights' threats are disconnected and this "flower" approach while good is maybe not ideal. You might as well use a hollow circle at that point. (b) when we say "chess pieces can be redesigned to be..." then I think about actual physical pieces, it would not do to make these as actual physical pieces because an accidental misplacement turns a rook into a bishop or vice versa. Gotta make t…

I also realized that if you defined the pieces like their moves, the knight's shape would be.... Interesting

Wouldn’t it look like four capital tees joined at opposites/right angles at the stem?
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