Chess 2: The Sequel

Greetings. I am a long time lurker, first time poster. If you don't like long-winded posts, I can only apologise and advise you to drop down to the TL;DR at the bottom of this post. Just thought I'd give insight into who I am and what I'm here for.

I stopped playing vanilla chess a good while ago. While I'm certainly no so-called 'expert,' I got bored of it, and with knowledge of the faults that haunt it today, I couldn't find the passion to go back to it. So, for the past couple of years or so, I've spent a good bit of my spare time investing myself in chess variants, in order to find out for myself what's the best next step for chess.

One of the variants I've come across is, evident by the title of this post, Chess 2: The Sequel. The game is certainly well thought out, actively trying to be the de facto sequel to chess, by fixing upon and answering the questions left behind by the original, while also going in its own direction to surprise us with new and innovative ideas. And isn't that what a good sequel tries to do? It certainly is fun to play - I have played many a game with people OTB, and all who I have played against have said the same thing: it's great. I personally think it tries to appeal to a more gamer-y, e-sportsy audience in its design, trying to give chess more action without adding any rules which might be inelegant and jut out. Unfortunately, the game hit a snag. Though the game was well publicised before its debut on Steam and OUYA, the pricetag wasn't a good reflection of the quality put into the game (it was $25 and the devs admitted they spent way too much time with the 3D models) and did not appeal to its target demographic, chess players, because it did not give them what they were actively expecting. You can play Chess 2 against an opponent online and that's it. No way to save games or replay games. No puzzles. No leaderboards. No notation. No this, no that. Some chess players saw the game and were instantly sickened and astonished at such dastardly mechanics like bidding, midline invasion, and the fact there is more than one set you can play with. As a result, many turned their nose up and said, "It's not chess - I don't have time, for such ridiculous variations!" And just like that, the playerbase took a nosedive. If you purchase Chess 2 now and take a look at how many people are playing, you'll find that no-body is playing live, only correspondence. There are, as far as I can tell, only three regular players, and goodness knows how many players congregating on a cracked copy.

HOWEVER - that's the digital version. What about the physical version? You are able to play Chess 2 on a regular chessboard, after all. And here's where the real meat of this topic is concentrated. For a number of years, a print and play guide was made free to download on the creator's site. David Sirlin's a renowned game designer, but due to Chess 2's flop, there isn't much of a point in investing in Chess 2 further. His site has since moved from when he first published the Chess 2 article on the Chess Variant Pages; as a result the link to the print and play has been obfuscated. The print and play does not go into very much detail however, and looking at the copy that I had and after much consideration I decided that the print and play wasn't good enough, and I have spent the last month or so working on a new version, taking some resources from the old PDF and using a handy diagram tool to create updated images (thank you musketeer chess devs). This new PDF contains:

• A form of algebraic Chess 2 notation, which tries to respect the integrity of vanilla chess notation as much as possible;
• A few extra rules for tournament play, if playing OTB, regarding duelling and the way in which pieces capture;
• A conversation with a beta tester of Chess 2, Kristoph (known as Thiediev here and elsewhere) about the current state of Chess 2: theory; opinions of the six 'armies'; and the faults of Chess 2.

You can find the link to the PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9qCB9zFQM1neHVMY3pUanh5eXc/view

For a version with no backgrounds, you can find it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9qCB9zFQM1nOUcxLXVydWI4d3c/view

I am also working on a second booklet, filled with sample games, but I cannot release this as of yet because I don't have enough games.

My aim in posting this here is to just offer a better version of what already exists, and to arouse some interest in Chess 2 again. I have no intentions of starting play-by-forum games or making more topics about Chess 2. I just thought I would share my work here, as those of you who browse this forum regularly will be most interested. Do whatever you want with it, though do note I am a fervent believer in Wheaton's Law.

TL;DR: I remade the Chess 2 print and play because I felt the old one was outdated and also I felt bad for it flopping big-time. Here's the PDF https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9qCB9zFQM1neHVMY3pUanh5eXc/view and here's one with no backgrounds https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9qCB9zFQM1neHVMY3pUanh5eXc/view

I have a second booklet on the way with sample games but I can't release this yet as I don't have enough games.

EDIT 27/7/17: Updated the conversations bit at the end with another conversation I held with Steam user sirius3100, who's clocked quite a number of hours into Chess 2.

The bidding totally changes the character of the game. It is no longer a game of perfect information. This introduces an element of chance, where your actions no longer have a predictable outcome. This makes thinking ahead much less effective. That doesn't mean it must be a bad game. But being so different from Chess, it is rather unikely that people that like Chess will also like Chess 2.

As for the 'midline invasion': this in itself doesn't destroy the chess-like character of the game. It is just a bad idea. It does away with the most beautiful and interesting part of Chess: the end-game. It sort of guarantees that games end before they can get interesting.

Having different armies is not a bad idea. I vaguely remember that some of the armies had pieces with rather un0chess-like properties, though.

You essentially sum up the criticisms that people had that led to Chess 2's decline. People are just turned away from the bidding mechanic and midline. My opinion though is that there is another side to these criticisms.
Bidding: the entire point of bidding is to add a fog-of-war aspect. If you're playing OTB bidding requires you to actively read your opponent more a la poker. It's just one example of Chess 2 going in its own direction. It tries to be like and unlike chess at the same time. The problem with bidding however lies more within the fact that it is woven entirely into the game. You remove bidding, and a lot of problems crop up. Reaper, for one, becomes more scary. The eponymous piece, a pseudo-universal leaper, easily the strongest piece in the game, cannot be punished. Against armies like Animals and Nemesis, Reaper can just play 1. Qxc7 and cannot be punished for it. The reaper is already extremely difficult to chase down as it is. And without bidding, how would you punish Empowered? Empowered's sheer force is kept at bay by the prospect of an exchange through a duel. Empowered already hates exchanges, but without duels, whittling at Empowered becomes a lot more difficult. Let's also consider the fact that bidding makes pawns a much more valuable resource since they give stones. You can't just fritter away a pawn in a gambit - that's not going to fly in Chess 2. The way that Chess 2 is designed makes bidding a necessary evil, but it's entirely understandable why people frown at the idea of trying to outwit your opponent in a duel. I also wouldn't explicitly call bidding an element of chance - I reckon that there is some kind of skill to be found within it. Again, Chess 2 tries to appeal to a more 'gamer' audience - if we were to compare the 'gamer' audience and the 'chess' audience that Chess 2 tries to appeal, we would most likely find a few likes and dislikes which overlap each other. And as for making thinking ahead less effective - the goal of Chess 2 was to eliminate theory, so I guess you could say Sirlin definitely succeeded in that aspect, right? You're not wrong - in Chess 2, when you think ahead, you have to also consider the idea of you or your opponent duelling; not only does this bidding create a mindgame for your opponent, it also creates a mindgame for you.
Midline: The concept of winning by having your king crossing a certain point is not new. KOTH is the best example I can think of where you can win if your king crosses a certain point. Of course KOTH is different in that it's only the four centre squares, and without asymmetric sides and bidding it's much more defensive than Chess 2. I couldn't tell you if winning by reaching the centre occurs more often than checkmate in KOTH, but in Chess 2, almost every video that I've seen has ended in midline - when it's a checkmate, it usually stems from a major blunder. See, in Chess 2, the endgame comes much, much sooner because rushing your king to the midline is the endgame. Yes, it erases classic chess endgame theory - but it also generates some endgame theory of its own. Midline also encourages your king to be significantly more active. Classic is the only army that can castle, so for the other armies they don't need to worry about castling and getting the king in a safe space, they're worrying about their opponent blocking their path to the midline. Not that the king isn't already active in vanilla chess, but in Chess 2 it's far more apparent. Midline, much like bidding, is also woven into the game as well - bringing up Reaper again, remove it and Reaper will suffer harshly because the reaper and the ghosts can't attack anything, and you only have pawns, knights and bishops to attack the enemy king. Midline, whether one approves or disapproves, does do its job in shortening games and spicing things up a bit by keeping both players on their toes when playing. The centre and edges become much more significant areas of defense. Perhaps midline could be altered in some way to make it more appealing to chess players, But Sirlin has the final word on that, and it's unlikely he's going to invest time in Chess 2 when he has other games to work on.
As for pieces with 'unchess-like' qualities: only Animals, Nemesis and Two Kings have pieces that could be considered remotely unchess like, and even then they're still pretty tame. The elephant is a short rook with a kind of super-armour, that is it cannot be taken unless a pieces is within a 2-square radius of it. Pieces with areas of effect are quite uncommon though - you have the fire demon from tenjiku shogi which has the power to capture all adjacent enemy pieces when it moves; and hiashatar's guard which stops all sliding pieces from moving through more than 1 square which is adjacent to it. Now, a piece which has the power to rampage through every piece within its path and capture them is something I haven't seen. The beauty of the elephant in Chess 2 is that in the opening you can develop them very early, and for a rook-type piece, that is unique. The tigers are short range bishops which essentially do not move when capturing.  The wild horses I don't get though - what benefit does being able to capture your own pieces bring? Saving yourself from a potential mate? The ability to easily pick off annoying pawns which aren't doing anything? Two Kings is a different matter altogether. Two Kings essentially give you two royal chu shogi lions. It's not as cut and dry as that but it's what I imagine them as. What the warrior kings have over the chu shogi lion though is that with the 'king-turn' they're always on the move. The whirlwind attack makes them especially dangerous, essentially giving the warrior king the burn ability of the fire demon but it is controlled by the player instead of being automatic. Nemesis' titular piece is designed with the definition of its name in mind: an opponent that cannot be beaten or overcome. Only when the nemesis is adjacent to a king can it be captured. I like to consider the nemesis a parallel to the classic queen because there are some things that it can do that the queen can't and vice versa. For example, with the nemesis you can really get it deep into your opponent's territory in the early game without fear of capture. With the queen you usually have to wait until the late opening to early mid-game to bring it out. A piece that is immune to capture and cannot capture but can still give check and checkmate is pretty unusual though. Chess 2 tries to keep the moves relatively chess-like - you don't have anything like what Ralph Betza offers in CWDA, with those charging rooks and colonels and half-ducks. The moves seem more natural and symmetric. 
Chess 2, at any rate, is still a very interesting game which people ought to take a look at, even if they disagree with the ways that Sirlin tries to fix the problems with chess. That is, after all, the reason why I re-made the print and play. I'd very much like to see what theory and strategies would form if Chess 2 was to be given an actual playerbase. But Chess 2 for the moment seems to be stuck in limbo.

EDIT: I suppose you could call the reaper and ghosts unchess-like with their unlimited range. All of the unorthodox armies try to be unique while still being relatable to chess.

I like the tiger - a piece that returns to where it started from after it captures. Somewhere I heard this is called "stationary feeding".

One advantage of adding "chance" to a game: if you lose you can blame it on bad luck, rather than a superior opponent.

Again, I wouldn't explicitly call duelling an element of chance. One flaw with Animals and Nemesis is that the way in which the pieces move leaves the c pawn undefended. If I can bring up an example:

1. W=A B=A

2. Qc3 ...

Black has a few options. He can offer a jungle queen exchange with Qc6 - after a pawn recaptures he can get rid of the doubled pawns by playing Nxc6; He can play c6 to defend against Qxc7; He can also play Na6 to defend against Qxc7; Qe6 defends but leaves the jungle queen on a square it doesn't want to be on, and the king's not a big fan of where it is. One move which looks quite aggressive and focuses on midline is e5, but after the 3. Qxc7+, Black has to play Ke7 and White wins the elephant. It leaves the jungle queen congested at the edge of the board. Whether the elephant sacrifice is beneficial or not for that reason is down to you. If Black tries to rush to the midline White can just develop his elephants in response. Let's say that Black does nothing about the c pawn, and his king has a means of escape. White plays 3. Qxc7. Black can and always will duel. If White is paranoid, they'll bid 2 stones. Black however will rarely bid 2 stones in return. It is more or less a bluff to get the opponent to waste stones. If Black bids 2, he has no stones; if he bids 1, he loses a stone; and if he bids 0, he's wasted his breath trying to bait you. Remember that duelling a piece that is of a higher rank than yours require you to use up one of your stones. If White wins this duel, unless Black has made a move to prepare for Qxc7, it's mate. In this situation, as White I would bid 1. If you bid 1, you win every time. If Black bids 2, he has no stones, and therefore cannot duel. Not being able to duel in Chess 2 puts you at a massive disadvantage. So, again, I would say there is some element of skill in duelling.

I've seen a number of variants here adopting various pieces of other variants. Perhaps someone could try chess but with a few Chess 2 pieces, without all the midline and duelling stuff? It'd be interesting, for example, to see a chess variant but Black has a nemesis instead of a regular queen. With no midline, the nemesis is instantly stronger.  Maybe you could have a variant where White uses the nemesis pawns. Maybe even a variant where one side is given the elephants instead of rooks?

'Stationary feeding' is indeed the literal translation f the Japanese term "igui", used for this in Shogi variants that have the Lion piece. (A few other pieces can do this too, but the Lion is by far the most popular.)

The more common western name is 'rifle capture', derived from the variant Rifle Chess, where all pieces return to the square they came from after a capture.

Ebinola, you're right, the game doesn't have "chance". It does have hidden information (when a player holds a secret number of stones in his fist).

So I guess this can be categorized in games with imperfect information, which also includes Rock-paper-scissors and Poker. This is such a drastic change from normal chess, that in my opinion should not be called a "sequel" of chess. But it still might be an interesting game.

HGMuller, thanks for the info on Rifle chess. Interesting. I guess it's like a really-low resolution shooter game.

The title does sound very boastful - when I had first heard of Chess 2, even I asked, "You're seriously going to give a sequel to a 1500 year old game?" Yet it is what it is. And there have been certain sequels to games which have changed up the genre entirely - either be being revolutionary in its design, or literally changing the genre from the last game or games. Chess 2 does actively try to be a sequel, but don't take the title literally to heart. Could Chess 2 be a good candidate for a sequel? Yes, but as you say it is not a game of perfect information. This would put it more in the category of variants like Kriegspiel and dark chess, but unlike these games, once the armies are picked, you know what your opponent has picked and what each piece does. In Chess 2, the fog-of-war mostly lifts after players reveal their armies. The bidding mechanic is more a 'mist-of-war', if anything.

Disregarding the playerbase however, Chess 2 seems to have been successful in minimising computer play, and to my knowledge only one person has developed an engine for it. The discussion of the game is exactly what I'm looking for; the game is very interesting, I'm very eager to dig up the theory that still remains buried. However, until a better application is created for it, which won't happen, Chess 2 will be mostly discussion, because no-one is going to pay 10-odd bucks for a game that really should be about 4 or 5. I'd very much like to hear any ideas on Chess 2's mercurial opening theory. If there's anything I can offer on opening theory, I can make the comment that people really like playing c4;Kc2 and f4;Kf2 as Two Kings. As Nemesis, everybody I have played against likes ee3 followed by either Qg4 or Qh5. Of course, there's a fair bit of opening theory stuff in my conversation with Kristoph at the end of the print and play, and as he says, this is mostly the 'infancy of opening theory' for Chess 2. 

It is true that strictly speaking duelling isn't an element of chance, but just complete information. The duelling is a prisoners-dilemma type of game, however. The optimal play for such games consists of making each bid with a certain probability (depending on the desirability of the various possible outcomes). So effectively there is an element of chance, because a well-playing opponent will use an element of chance to determine his bid, in order to make it unpredictable, and thus optimally benefit from the fact this information is hidden.

Interesting feature - no chance event but best play is to be unpredictable. Also like in rock-paper-scissors - players need to be unpredictable. The best strategy is to play randomly, so two experts might as well just flip a coin to see who wins.

Also, I'm wondering, can this be played by correspondence? Players have secret information, but this needs to be trusted to a third party for fair play, right? Or is there a way for two players to play it without special software?

Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it like that. We can conclude then, that duelling is not an element of chance in and of itself, but the way in which we handle it gives it an element of chance.

Vickalan, you can always play Chess 2 OTB. There are cards floating about somewhere that you can use to represent the armies (or if you're like me you can 3D print an entire set of about 70+ pieces) and you can use go stones or draughts pieces to represent the stones. As for playing it here and now? You would have to either confide in a third party to make duelling possible, or you would have to play without duels. That is why I mentioned in the OP that I wasn't interested in starting a play-by-forum game because that seems too much of a hassle; also, there's already a good number of threads being played as of right now, so until a few of these games are finished, I personally wouldn't start another one. Aside from these options, you can always get the Steam version of Chess 2. It's on sale for about $5 right now. On an OUYA you can get it for free, but it's pay-to-play. I think both versions are cross-platform multiplayer, but I can't be certain.

OK, so I've decided to elaborate on a Chess 2 opening, in order to encourage theory discussion. The double ghost rook opening (or DGR) is the first major opening to be developed for Chess 2, and it's an opening used by Reaper against Classic, Animals, and Empowered.

DGR is not so much of an opening as it is a number of opening systems - as the name suggests, DGR involves putting both ghosts on your opponent's third rank. This is intended to create a permanent weakness in the opponent's structure and ability to develop. As their ability to develop and create a structure is weakened, this gives the DGR player opportunity to aggressively rush his king towards the midline. In Chess 2, players rarely get their king going in the opening, so this opening is very aggressive, to say the least. This opening stands in stark contrast to how players initially played Reaper. Before, Reaper players brought out their king very early, and when their opponent tried to create a midline threat of their own, Reaper players would then start to use their ghosts to address the threat. DGR scraps that whole idea and says that it's better to be proactive than reactive, even if it costs you tempo.

Here's an example of DGR in play, shown through a match between Kristoph and another frequent Chess 2 player, sirius3100:

1. W=RE B=C
2. Rhg6 e5
3. Raf6 Ke7
4. e4 Ke6
5. Ke2 d5
6. Kf3 Kd6
7. c3 dxe4+
8. Kg3 Black resigns 1-0 

And so, the power of DGR is displayed in one simple miniature. What makes DGR so good is the reaper piece. It singlehandedly turns what is a solid defensive position into a nightmare for an army like Classic to defend against. Classic is the least capable of defending against DGR - for Animals and Empowered, they have certain perks which makes DGR less effective against them, but they still struggle. Animals of course has the elephants which can immediately be developed in the face of midline and cannot be captured by the reaper unless it's within 2 squares of it; furthermore, the jungle queen is immediately active because of its knight move. As for Empowered, it's a good idea to start developing all of your empowered pieces straight away. Classic however has no such countermeasures - it can't even use the queen to discourage midline, because DGR has arguably the greatest trump card in Chess 2 - the reaper sacrifice. An opposing player therefore has to have squares on the previous rank behind the ghosts defended twice over.

Just an update, folks. The print and play has been updated again, same old links as posted above. You'll find a conversation I held with another Chess 2 player, and a little cliffhanger at the end...

For this update, I'll make a post, but if you're interested in the print and play, keep your eyes on the OP because I'll be editing it whenever I update the PDFs again.