Hey all,
lately I've been wondering, whether Antichess960 should actually be called Antichess960. The issue being, that "[t]he king has no royal power" (quote from https://www.antichess.org/antichess-basics/), hence there is no need to consider castling. It follows, that for the starting position the pieces Rook (R), Rook (R) and King (K) aren't forced to be placed in the order "RKR" from left to right on the chessboard for every possible arrangement of the other five pieces, but in Antichess2880 "RRK" and "KRR" would also be legal aviable options. Thus I'm thinking, that there should actually be 960*3 = 2880 unique starting positions. Please correct me, if my math or any of my thoughts are wrong!
What are your thoughts on this? Should the variant be changed and renamed slightly or is there no need to consider this circumstance?
EDIT: typo
Hey all,
lately I've been wondering, whether Antichess960 should actually be called Antichess960. The issue being, that "[t]he king has no royal power" (quote from https://www.antichess.org/antichess-basics/), hence there is no need to consider castling. It follows, that for the starting position the pieces Rook (R), Rook (R) and King (K) aren't forced to be placed in the order "RKR" from left to right on the chessboard for every possible arrangement of the other five pieces, but in Antichess2880 "RRK" and "KRR" would also be legal aviable options. Thus I'm thinking, that there should actually be 960*3 = 2880 unique starting positions. Please correct me, if my math or any of my thoughts are wrong!
What are your thoughts on this? Should the variant be changed and renamed slightly or is there no need to consider this circumstance?
EDIT: typo
I don't know if your math is incorrect, I didn't really check into it too deep....The problem I see with this is on chessvariantstraining (the site that hosts antichess960), there are still only 960 positions...so whether that's just because they programmed it that way or whatever, I think antichess960 will be here to stay rather than antichess with several more start positions.
I don't know if your math is incorrect, I didn't really check into it too deep....The problem I see with this is on chessvariantstraining (the site that hosts antichess960), there are still only 960 positions...so whether that's just because they programmed it that way or whatever, I think antichess960 will be here to stay rather than antichess with several more start positions.
Thanks for your feedback :)
You're probably right, any-variant_960 is surely by far more popular than any-variant_2880, since chess960 simply is well-known and well-established and chess2880 is basically non-existent, so of course any site featuring such a variant would choose 960 over any other number. I didn't come up with this argumet back then, so it's nice to get reminded of this fact, thank you for that. Considering this, I guess it really is better and surely more convenient to stay with Antichess960, since unneccessary complications usualy tend to make matters worse, I'd guess.
Thanks for your feedback :)
You're probably right, any-variant_960 is surely by far more popular than any-variant_2880, since chess960 simply is well-known and well-established and chess2880 is basically non-existent, so of course any site featuring such a variant would choose 960 over any other number. I didn't come up with this argumet back then, so it's nice to get reminded of this fact, thank you for that. Considering this, I guess it really is better and surely more convenient to stay with Antichess960, since unneccessary complications usualy tend to make matters worse, I'd guess.