Dragon Chess, a new Chess Variant by Keith Williams

Inspired by Omega chess, played on a 10x10 enlarged board + 4 corners (104 squares) Q on her color, but not white on the right.
Each player has one Elephant and one Hawk out of the board.
User avatar
JKWms
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:55 am
Location: Sunrise, Florida, USA
Contact:

Dragon Chess, a new Chess Variant by Keith Williams

Post by JKWms » Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:44 pm

Hello,
My name is Keith Williams, and thanks to Dr. Zied Haddad, I'm able to share my new variant of chess. I'd like to explain how I developed it over the past couple of years. It started from Omega Chess created by Daniel Macdonald from Toronto, Canada, back in 1998. He enlarged the board to 10 x 10 with 4 corner squares and added 2 new chess pieces, the Champion (C) and Wizard (W). You can go to his site to see how they move:
http://omegachess.com/

The Champion and Wizard added a new dimension to the game, but the Knight lost value and the board seemed to big for the pieces. When I added the "Knighted" Bishop and Rook from Seirawan chess, the Hawk (B+N) and Elephant (R+N), the game played better. Of course, the Queen had to be Knighted to the Amazon Queen or Dragon to stay supreme, but the value of the regular pieces still didn’t match the board size and the game was still unbalanced. When the House of Staunton came out with the Musketeer variant pieces by Dr. Zied Haddad, I replaced the Champion with the Cannon and the Wizard with the Unicorn. I changed their movement slightly from the original Omega pieces to give them more power.

Now, the regular pieces (B, N, R) needed more power, but I wanted to keep this variant as close as possible to regular chess, so it would be easy for players to quickly adapt to it. So, I "Crowned" the Bishop and Rook to the Archbishop (B+K) and the Fortress (R+K), which seemed like the perfect match. Then replaced the Knight with the Leopard, which also helped avoid confusing it with the similar looking Unicorn. Finally, all the pieces had a good balance of power. Later, when I showed Dr. Haddad my variant, he was gracious enough to allow me to use these pieces in a different way than in Musketeer chess.

I’ve played over 100 games with a few other people using this variant and we all agree that it plays very well, with good balance and complexity. When I first started playing this variant the tactical positions were getting so complex, I jokingly said it was causing me cerebral edema; hence the name Cerebral (edema) Chess or CE-Chess. Later the game was renamed Dragon Chess.

You can play Dragon Chess online at: http://musketeerchess.net/games/cerebral/
If you'd like to download a free instructional poster (24” x 36”) with diagrams of how the chess pieces move and see photos of the chess set,
go to my shared G-drive folder: Cerebral (edema) Chess https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... GdvR0M5SzA
I hope you enjoy playing this variant!

Sincerely,
Keith
Cerebral.Chess@gmail.com

User avatar
jerome
Site Admin
Posts: 128
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:53 am
Location: Damgan
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by jerome » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:46 am

Hi,

I create a "Cerebral chess" forum in "Chess Variants" and moved this topic from Musketeer Chess thread to it. Hope you won't mind ;)

jerome

User avatar
JKWms
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:55 am
Location: Sunrise, Florida, USA
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by JKWms » Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:43 pm

Thank you Jerome! I wasn't sure what or how to do it.

User avatar
JKWms
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:55 am
Location: Sunrise, Florida, USA
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by JKWms » Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:44 pm

I'd like to refer friends to this forum. Do they all have to register? Will the process be quick & easy?

musketeerchess
Posts: 165
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2016 1:28 pm
Location: Paris
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by musketeerchess » Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:30 pm

Hi
Your friends can check the page contains without registering. But the more we got visitors the better it is.

If they like our work they can make small donations. Any amount is wellcome

User avatar
jerome
Site Admin
Posts: 128
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:53 am
Location: Damgan
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by jerome » Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:33 pm

JKWms wrote:Thank you Jerome! I wasn't sure what or how to do it.
Sorry for that, you need to have admin rights to create forums, so I did it ;)

User avatar
jerome
Site Admin
Posts: 128
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:53 am
Location: Damgan
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by jerome » Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:35 pm

JKWms wrote:I'd like to refer friends to this forum. Do they all have to register? Will the process be quick & easy?
yes, it should be. Simple classic registration.
This forum is brand new, so if any problem please excuse us and tell us about it.

User avatar
jerome
Site Admin
Posts: 128
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:53 am
Location: Damgan
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by jerome » Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:37 pm

A "Registration" link is available on the top right of the window.

If you want to send it directly to friends, this is it : ucp.php?mode=register

User avatar
JKWms
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:55 am
Location: Sunrise, Florida, USA
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by JKWms » Thu May 18, 2017 9:09 pm

Once you're comfortable playing cerebral chess, try cerebral (edema) chess by starting with all the regular chess pieces plus the Cannon and Unicorn on their usual squares. Put all the variant pieces behind their regular counterpart, but off the board: Rook-Fortress, Knight-Leopard, Bishop-Archbishop. As a R, N, or B moves off the back row, the variant piece (F, L, A) simultaneously takes their back row square. When castling in cerebral chess, the King occupies the Rook square, so that Fortress can enter the board on the King square. The Hawk & Elephant enter the same way on any back row square, once the variant pieces move off. Use the Chancellor piece that came with the Archbishop as your Amazon Queen behind the regular Queen. I added a picture [Cerebral (edema) set-up] in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... GdvR0M5SzA

User avatar
JKWms
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:55 am
Location: Sunrise, Florida, USA
Contact:

Re: Cerebral (edema) Chess variant

Post by JKWms » Sun Jun 04, 2017 5:30 pm

After playing the cerebral variant starting with the regular pieces (edema) for a few weeks, I've concluded that it's not as balanced as the original cerebral variant. The minor pieces (N, B, R) disrupt the opening strategy. They are exchanged, sacrificed, or ideally exchanged for a variant piece (L, A, F) creating havoc going into the middle game. The board can get a little crowded, but creates higher multiples when calculating the exchanges. Some players might like this increase in tactical possibilities. However, I'm continually impressed at how well cerebral chess games play out with so many creative positions and surprises. I hope other players are trying it :-)

Post Reply