Random Idea #73: Simu-Chess · 4:15am Sep 14th, 2021
It is known that in Chess, what color you play as is not equal. White, going first, has a slight advantage.
One “solution” I’ve seen around is various forms of “Real Time Chess.”
Like other RTS, you can move whatever piece you want, wherever you want. Within their normal movements, of course, on top of each movement causing a cooldown period before the piece can move again. This means that if you were fast enough, you can make all of your pieces move simultaneously in one go. However, this turns a turn-based strategy into a real-time strategy, and isn’t really the same game anymore.
My solution is “Simu-Chess.” You keep the Turn-based nature of the original game, but you solve the winrate imbalance of one color going first ... by making both move at the same time. For the most part, most of the game is intact. However, you do need to decide the behavior of piece capture, especially when two pieces move into the same spot.
Note, in all variations, the only time Pawns can cause mutual annihilation is when two pawns faceplant into each other.
Version 1: Mutual annihilation. A bishop and a knight both land on the same spot, both die as if they were a matter/antimatter collision. Pawns still die though, because they can only attack when there’s a piece in range of their diagonal. This does mean a Pawn could just move diagonally and capture nothing if the opponent's piece dodges.
Version 2: If the piece has more points (Say, Queen vs Bishop), the piece with a higher point value survives. If the point value is the same, still mutual annihilation.
Version 3: The piece that moves the most wins the engagement, because technically the further piece arrives after the closer one. Equal distance means annihilation. A Knight counts for 3 movement squares.
Kings behavior may become a bit different in Simu Chess, because of the necessity of both players moving at once.
Version 1: If you take the “The King must be captured to win” statement literally, it can become somewhat difficult to pin down where the King is going to hop to, since the King can literally either step forwards or backwards, causing the checking piece to over or undershoot. Movement blockers become extremely important to lock down where the king can move. This feels a bit too janky.
Version 2: Instead, focus on “The King MUST escape check on the next turn. If the King cannot do so, the King is Checkmated.” You don’t need to have a piece to physically move to the king, as long as the King’s next move still leaves them in check. After escaping check, the checking player can then make a move, then normal Simu play resumes until there is another Check to wait for the Checked King to try to escape.
A weird situation may occur if two kings 3 tiles apart move towards each other, ending up side by side. In this case, the only move that guarantees escaping check is for both kings to undo the move. A minor rule to prevent repeated movements to force a King through is that both must move another piece first before returning to the King. Hopefully, this chain is broken when one player eventually decides to go left, and the other right. If one player has only the King left, they can move normally. Back and forth penalties still apply otherwise. If both players are out of pieces except for their Kings, that’s going to end in stalemate eventually anyways. I think Ver 2 is closer in spirit to the original rules for Check.
And that’s it, Simu-Chess. Still turn-based, but ostensibly balanced for both sides since neither go first. I dunno, I’m not a world class Chess player. I dunno enough about Go to determine whether Simu-Go would run into any issues.
As for timers ... Either there’s a beep every X seconds, where each Beep means you can move one piece (in which someone else could move a piece and you do nothing), or both players must stop their clocks before a piece is moved. I dunno if this will result in a game of chicken, of pressing it early and getting bonus time.
Maybe a way to avoid this is for a player to mark down their next move in some way, and keep it hidden from their opponent, before stopping the clock, to prevent one player getting bonus time. This is easier to do online, where you can make a move and the other player won’t see it until they make their move.
