Leopard (chess)
A Leopard is a fairy chess piece that can move like a bishop limited to two squares or a knight. It cannot jump over other pieces when moving as a bishop, but may do so when moving as a knight. Leopard was first introduced in Musketeer Chess variant, as part of a bunch of possible new/old fairy pieces, that are added to the classic FIDE army. The main goal behind this idea was to get rid of the opening theoryMusketeer Chess Variants & GamesChess Variants using Empress and Princess pieces, Leopard rules according to Musketeer Chess Variant, by Ferdinand Mosca.
Granola Ebinola, a known blogger and Chess enthousiast, involved in rewriting the rules of other games like Chess 2: The sequel, studied the game, tried all the pieces. Mr Ebinola, dissected many aspects of the game, and gameplay using the Leopard through all the different phases of the game (opening, middlegame and endgame) Chess.comAn introduction to Musketeer Chess, by Granola Ebinola.
Movement[edit]
The Leopard can move as a knight or a Bishop, but Bishop moves are of limited range (maximum range of 2 squares).
The Leopard is a reduced version of an ancient piece, named archbishop, frequently called Princess among problemist Community or cardinal.[1] The difference with the leopard is the Bishop component that isn't limited to 2 squares.
History and nomenclature[edit]
The Leopard was first introduced in 2011–2012, when Musketeer Chess Variant was designed[2]. Like Seirawan Chess, Musketeer Chess became a commercial variant in late 2014, making available many fairy pieces. Apart from the fact that some of the new pieces had unique rules, the inventor revised and designed Staunton-style pieces offering the Chess Variants community many possibilities to play Chess variants on physical boards. Here are two pieces designed and released with Musketeer Chess: The Leopard and the Archbishop, two pieces Staunton-style compatible.
Value[edit]
The Leopard can mate a Bare King with the help of his King in a more easy way than the combination of a Bishop and Knight alone Leopard mating patterns in the endgameEndgames with Leopard, how to manoeuvre to trap opponent King and mate.
Musketeer Chess team, made computer tests running engines for thousands of games. Their approach gave a relative value of 670 centipawns (or 6.7 Points, a Pawn being 100 centipawns or 1 point)[3]
Sbiis Sabian, used a mathematical approach explained in lengthy way in the following article[4]. The leopard value was 600 centipawns.
| This example uses algebraic notation. |
Concerning the Ancestor piece, Archbishop many trials gave a relative value of 700 centipawns. What comes to mind is Ralph Betza (inventor of chess with different armies, in which the princess was used in one of the armies) work. In his chess with different armies Variant, he introduced three alternate armies to the Classic FIDE. Practice and later computing proved that the alternate armies were stronger than the Classic FIDE army. It's a general tendency for players to undervalue pieces which they are unfamiliar with. As Grand Master Larry Kaufman commented: the Archbishop is significantly more valuable than most players predict.
Musketeer Chess team gave it 770 centipawns. This is probably slightly underestimating it[3].
Symbol[edit]
Algebric notation for Leopard is Le. An example: White play on the 15th move his Leopard initially on c4 square, it captures a piece on e6 square. The move is translated as follows: 15. Le xe6introduction to the rules of Musketeer ChessAn introduction to Musketeer Chess, by Granola Ebinola. Leopard has not yet Unicode standard, in the Chess Symbols block.
The Archbishop has been added to version 12 of the Unicode standard in March 2019:
The symbols are:
🩐 U+1FA50 WHITE CHESS KNIGHT-BISHOP 🩓 U+1FA53 BLACK CHESS KNIGHT-BISHOP
See also[edit]
- Archbishop—the bishop+knight compound
- Amazon—the rook+bishop+knight compound
- Empress—the rook+knight compound
- Queen—the rook+bishop compound
References[edit]
- ↑ Pritchard, D. B. (1994), "Pieces", The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, Games & Puzzles Publications, p. 227, ISBN 0-9524142-0-1
- ↑ "homepage". www.musketeerchess.net. Retrieved 2020-03-23.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Musketeer Chess, Relative Piece Value". Musketeer Chess Games. 2020-01-12. Retrieved 2020-03-23.
- ↑ "muskeetervalues - Recreomathematica". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2020-03-23.
Bibliography
- Chess Variants: exploring Musketeer Chess. by Dr Zied Haddad,
- An introduction to Musketeer Chess by Granola Ebinola,
- Musketeer Chess: a modern Chess variant by Dr Zied Haddad, The Chess Variant Pages,
- Leopard rules, according to Musketeer Chess Variant by Ferdinand Mosca, GitHub Pages,
- Piececlopedia: Bishop–Knight Compound by Fergus Duniho and David Howe, The Chess Variant Pages
- Endgame statistics with fantasy pieces by Dave McCooey, The Chess Variant Pages
- The NB (Princess) by Ralph Betza, The Chess Variant Pages
- BuyPoint Chess by Ralph Betza; contains a list of pieces with approximate values
- A mathematical approach to determine Musketeer Chess piece value by Sbiis Sabian.
Category:Chess variant Category:Musketeer Chess
Leopard (chess)[edit]
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