Kemistry: The officer in back knew that when everyone started pointing towards the smell, they figured out he shit his pants - 1 pt
Disc the Band: We pride ourselves on our extensive home security. You''ll never be able to leave again! - 8 pts

snarl: the officers were only following clear orders to catch the cereal killed - 9 pts
CoolFox: It says right here: "All you can eat, but left over rice results in incarceration!" - 3 pts
fork lady: Do not disturb this man eating a 20-lb can of rice and beans. If you don't understand, just read the item description! - 7 pts
MathEquals5: Guys, look! Rules! - 4 pts
Canopus: "You wanted us to show the cause of all the pudding cups disappearing from the break room? Well, here he sits!" - 6 pts
Chadomancer: They all pointed, but Steve didn't need to look. "You know the rules," he though to himself, "and so do I." - 15 pts
blockhead77: Rulebreaker Bob was about to enter the maw. - 1 pt

			1							1
3				3				2		8
	1		2	1		3	2			9
2					1					3
		3	3				1			7
							3	1		4
1	2	1			2					6
	3	2		2	3	2		3		15
						1				1

Chess Piece Essay: Other concepts

This one here's for the concepts that aren't covered by the previous essays, which are more concerned with movement.

Take it or Leave it

Capture is taken for granted in chess. Capture by replacement is assumed in so many chess variants that it is to be noted whenever a capture doesn't simply involve moving to an enemy piece and taking it, e.g. en passant, Chinese chess cannon. Variant methods of capture are better covered on its own article but it's worth nothing how Ultima is the game that has opened this hitherto unexplored area in chess variants. While not every capture thought up by Robert Abbott has gotten much attention, the mechanics brought up by this game and other inspirations is still open for exploring.

Ultima itself is a worthy first try at pitting capture dynamics against one another, though it has its flaws. The game itself can be described more as a chess-type game with pieces of different powers. Rococo is a great game derived from this idea, keeping some pieces while replacing some with new ones, leading to more piece variety.

Some games have been made based on a change in capture mechanic. An old variation is Rifle Chess, where captures are done but the capturing pieces do not move. Dynamo chess pieces push and pull other pieces instead of simply displacing them, with removal done by pushing pieces off the board. Jumping chess takes pieces by, indeed, jumping on them like checkers. Each of these games have differing dynamics thanks to this change in capture.

All Hail the Piece, Baby

It's not chess without check or checkmate. Most chess variants have a piece that must be protected at all costs. If a piece cannot be allowed to be captured ay any cost, it is said to be royal. In practice, the royal piece is not actually captured, but if it's threatened to be captured next turn, then the piece and player are in check and must get himself out of check on his turn.

In orthodox chess, the royal piece is the king, and there are rules that center over making sure the king doesn't die, mostly involving making sure a move that captures the king doesn't happen. 

The original goal is of course to capture the king, the concepts of check and checkmate stemming from the importance of this goal slowly making the actual act of capture a formality. This paradigm shift has made consequences in legalities that wouldn't exist if one could just simply take the king and end it there. One of them being checkless chess, a simple stipulation with interesting implications.

More legalities abound with stuff like stalemate. Originally a win based on the goal of capturing the king, in modern chess stalemate is a draw thanks to it being a state of being unable to move legally instead of the king being directly threatened. Stipulations between variants vary but are more of a legal requirement; the area where checkmate and stalemate positions matter more is chess composition.

The orthodox chess king moves as a leaper, rather agile for a piece whose preservation is a must (e.g. king geometries in pawn endgames). A more agile piece is any rider, which has given rise to the idea of not letting agile riders move past a square that would put it in check if stopped to make catching them easier. Speaking of riders, it is still an open question if a pinned piece can make a null move that requires it to move anyway.

Quick notes of interest: the anti-king, who is checked if it is not within capturing range; and the contramatic king can move into checked but cannot be checked (in contramatic chess a player unable to do any move other than a check loses). King variations that would only exist as offshoots of the current concept of royalty.

Multiple royal pieces have their own quagmires: What happens when one is checkmated and the other isn't? If both pieces are checked at the same time does that suffice as a win?

Some chess variants do not have a royalty stipulation, such as in Losing Chess or Mock Chess. In these games, the goal is to lose your pieces or capture all your enemy's pieces respectively. How much this deviates from chess is something worth discussing, though it has led to asking if checkers can be classified as a chess variant.

Extinction Chess has a distinct property of all pieces technically having royalty, as the goal is to eliminate every piece of a type. I'm bringing up this game as a borderline example of how royalty works in chess.

A Bit of Reincarnation

Pieces do not return when captured in most variants, a given in most cases. Returning captured pieces developed in Japan through the drop mechanic, the most common form of return mechanism. Parachuting pieces opens up new tactical ideas and is just a fun idea to play with all around.

Within chess composition circles is another way of returning pieces by returning captured pieces back to set squares. Circe chess has gone beyond its original form in 1968 and tons of Circe in various shapes and sizes abound.

These two mechanisms each deserve a piece on their own so I will close this article by noting that Circe is only here rather loosely, most rulesets still allow full capture and in a way the return of the piece onto the board immediately makes it questionable if the capture is a real capture at all.

Stone Placement (and maybe Movement) Games

(An early piece trying to cover types of games that are played with stones and a grid board. Might be better off done as a live catalog of such games.)

Abstract strategy games pride themselves in their relative simplicity, even if such a game were to be embellished in its packaging, it would still be the same as if it were played with household items on a board drawn on the floor. Aesthetically, these games are packaged in the plainest of designs, a bare bones approach to the game where distinctions stay on the text as much as possible.

Equipment for such games need only be made distinct and assigned its task, whatever it looks like is anyone's game. Chess pieces have their roles carved onto them, colors imply ownership if not attribute(for games that use a common pool). One of the simplest yet is a pile of stones distinguished only by color and stones of a like color are owned by one player.

As with every abstract game, it is important to set the terms a bit. In general abstract parlance a stone is a piece that is played by being placed on the board and possibly moving it afterward. A board must consist of cells where a stone must be placed onto, any of that dilly-dally halfway crap is not allowed. Stones of one color are practically indistinguishable from one another and everything that pertains to a stone's capability applies to every other stone bar geographic rules.

Gameplay must involve stone placement, with or without movement. Any starting stones placed on the board are allowed if they aren't the only ones that will be in play. Some would argue that strictly placing stones should be covered here, but this is for the purposes of putting a game where placement and movement happen somewhere.

The most ubiquitous of this form of game uses a Go board and stones, but we can keep the stones and change the board a bit for each example, but that doesn't mean every game listed will work with any type board, e.g. Square grid games have rules that don't work on a hexagonal grid. The game types listed will also be limited, or I'll be here all day splitting hairs.

From Point A to B, or the other one

One of the easiest goals for an abstract strategy game is forming a line between two sides of the board, the sides need not be parallel as long as the only ways of forming the connections are nontrivial. This genre generally splits into two versions, either you try to connect the sides you own or connect any sides that fit the condition.

Cameron Browne has a book on this that I haven't read so I can only give some observations that may or may not have been dealt with in the book.

The purest form of this game is Hex, where players try to connect their two parallel sides of a hexagonal grid rhombus by placing stones on cells. That's it, but some analysis has been done with this game that one of these days we'll find the perfect strategy.

Games of this nature are always designed to achieve no draws by design. I have spitballed about this here, but the way this no-draw thing is done is through:

1. The board geography.
2. The rules of placement. Some placements are banned or can cause changes.
3. Obliging moves. If passing is rarely an option either player has a chance to shoot himself in the foot.

An interesting subset of connection games has appeared where the design goal is to try to make a connection game work on a square grid. Square grids are notorious for their eight-direction connections that either force paths to intersect each other, or forsaking diagonal connections not allowing any connection at all. 

The shape created by two stones of different colors crossing each other in a checkerboard patter is called a crosscut and any purely orthogonal connections are immediately severed once this shape comes into play

From downright banning crosscuts, adding connection rules, allowing captures and whatever could work, the connection game genre has flowered in tougher landscapes.

Not that other board shapes had not been used, but as with the case for hexagonal grids, there's little need to meddle with it except by having some fun with the rules or using a different layout. Practically, regular tilings are already there ready for use, but connection games are a breeding-ground for funny geometries that other game types don't have a demand for.

Ding Ding Ding Ding!

Much simpler is to extend the premise of the classic game Tic-Tac-Toe and have games where the goal is some stones in a row. Obviously the goal is to line their own stones before the other can.

Gomoku is the simplest of this wider generalization, although this has fallen out of favor as being first in turn is too much of a headstart. Attempts to level the balance are solidified in Renju.

Pente has given the whole n-in-a-row game a new twist with its capture rule, even ensuring that the game doesn't devolve to mindless capturing by practically limiting it as a win condition.

This is My Claim

When it comes to games where stones are placed to demarcate territory there's no arguing over Go, but this doesn't mean that other ways to play territory are no longer up for grabs, just a bit unnecessary given that none of them can ever be a contender.

Unsurprisingly, language of games that revolve around stone placement use the language of Go to explain things, even using similar equipment. We'll stick to them as long as there are no equivocations.

Practically, some of the games that Luis Bolaños Mures have designed use territorial concepts but rely on it being a connection game. Whether such games work in a territorial sense (from most enclosed spaces to most stones placed on the board) is yet to be tested, though the bigger the territory the more likely you can build a bridge on it.

Counting score in Go may take a while to learn, but in essence a shortened form of counting spaces claimed by placing stones on every point. Simplified scores(as befits the game) include counting groups of stones, counting the largest group or even going back to raw stone count. Mixing these criteria does happen and you get wild equations to reach a score.

One can also win these games by being the last player to move, which, depending on the size and gameplay, good luck. 

While this may be considered a voting game, Majorities does have a mechanic where a majority-claimed row/direction counts toward a player's vote count, and this also gives a better demonstration of how small moves affects the whole game.

There will be more games with these items that will be made, new mechanics, geometries, concepts. After all, how can you go wrong with such simple pieces? It's as simple as it can get.

Crimbopalooza 2022 Stories and Results

Shogi has given inspiration for a number of chess variants centered on the drop capability. Curiously, I have yet to find compositions for such variations. I may not be looking deep enough, but in this article I intend to propose a way to compose problems with drops.

As mentioned, one of shogi's most well-known feature is the ability to return a captured piece by placing it onto the field of play, this drop move being a move in itself. Putting drops in western Chess has been tried, with Chessgi and Crazyhouse being the main forms taking a direct borrowing of the capture-and-drop aspect, though they cannot readily be played on-the-board. Another well-known variant is Hostage Chess where equipment limitations made use of an exchange mechanism to allow drops without any piece changing color.

Taking cues from Japanese tsumeshogi, this proposal is for a form of directmate problem with conditions as follows:

1. Every move by White must be a check

2. If a variant is named(e.g. Chessgi, Crazyhouse), it is implied Black has possession of every other piece not under White's control. In any other case the composer must make an account of every piece in play.

3. The mating position must leave White without any pieces left to drop.

4. Black cannot simply drop a piece to delay an inevitable mate, i.e. an interfering drop that the mating side can capture with no effect to the mate.

Borel Game Session Notes

When I made my review post on Borel, I hadn't played the game; I acquired it from a thrift store of sorts as it was a relative steal for a designer board game. It took a while before I managed to have a session at it, but I managed to have one with my relatives and it turned out to be a bit more fun than expected.

First session notes:

A finite number of games is a must; the bank runs out of physical money fast.

Somehow the 100/500/2500 denominations worked amid the money having to move in blocks of 100/300/800/1500.

As the players treated the game as a sort of gambling game the timer felt like an afterthought during betting rounds.

The experiments in the cards might have been easier to explain if everyone involved could understand English. Being precise with an experiment's language is a must as ambiguities may affect how a result is interpreted. The experiment descriptions are rigid enough that there is no room for ambiguity but they must still be explained clearly.

Some experiments finish early if the answer is incontrovertible, e.g. A dice roll hits a threshold sum value. There is no provision that the experiment has to be done in full before a result is declared, then again treating this game with too much rigor kills it.

Reruns were done a bit differently due to improper rule reading. Reruns were usually done by those who lost their bets.

It's a mild surprise that a game whose premise is intuition of probabilities — and testing them — can be fun with the right means of doing so, which inevitably involves what amounts to gambling. The variety of experiments does leave one wanting, though this is more of a limitation of equipment; one can only do so much with some of them, and dice rolls are fun.

For later sessions it would be interesting to look more into the rationale of players' betting patterns, what makes one choose a bet, whether their bet is affected by their current score. The free bet rarely found use even with its no-loss nature, though it's of no surprise that one would prefer a big win than not losing.

With this being a rough assessment, more thoughts will come in a later piece after more games.