Boring holidays...

The holidays are officially making me feel bored, and as such I shall talk about stuff today. Ever since Tux has started posting despicable vocabulary to instill sheer terror into the hearts of all those not protected by a lexicon, ethereal or corporeal, I have thought that this blog was getting diluted. And hence I guess... RJT Chess!

Yes, it's that no capture chess again.

Today I shall be talking about RJT chess in general, as nobody (really) has bothered to play this modern variant of chess, where no blood is spilled (apart from splitting headaches).

So firstly, the value of pieces.

Bah! Zerothly, I shall be talking about the variant where pawn swaps are allowed (Carnage of the bings!) and as far as I can remember, no other weird new rules.

Back to firstly. I must roughly give an idea of what the value of pieces could possibly mean in a chess that has totally nothing to do with trading pieces and praying that somehow it was a good trade for you. Also, the value of pieces does not accurately reflect how likely they are to wreck havoc in your opponent's base and win you the game. For such a turtlish (check RM-Sanctus' dictionary and possibly mind for details) variant of chess, if you want to win, you must get many many pieces, or actually, all your pieces as close to your opponent's king as possible. And he can still block... But with enough luck and perseverance, you will eventually force the game to an end (in somebody's favour, and after an innocent couple hundred moves).

I know this sounds like an essay written by a stressed student trying to write a story but failing to think of ideas, giving rise to lengthy preambles, but hey, the context is suspiciously similar.

Fret not! I have content *hurries to make up nonsense on the spot*.

So what do I exactly mean by value? Value is the amount of headache a piece can cause your opponent.

Yet again, I deviate to put across a more complete picture.

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Imagine.

Imagine...

You are playing RJT Chess with your friend, and it is in the middle of the afternoon, and you are sitting on a stuffy table without a fan. Or air-conditioning.

You take out a flimsy chessboard, and start playing.

Time seeps by, and flies like an arrow, at the rate of 0.0167 minutes/s.

Without your knowledge, it is already dinnertime. And the match still isn't over.



Moral of story? RJT Chess is really a game of attrition at high levels, and whoever gets a migraine first loses.

As a result, here's a rank of the value of pieces, from the pieces that stone and rot in a corner of the board for the entire game, to the ones that jump around and cause chaos.

1) Advisor (shi) -- Pretty useless, doesn't even block the king probably most of the time.

2) Elephant/Minister (xiang) -- Can block 2 bings from crossing the river. And will probably rot there until the end of time as well.

3) Cannon (pao) -- These insanely tricky things in the actual Chinese Chess tend to fester quickly in RJT Chess, as violence is no longer permitted.

4) Chariot (ju/che) -- These things are rather easily blocked, and hardly cause a headache.

5) Bing (!!) -- Once these creatures get near, the game draws to a conclusion. The king cannot run too much, or risk invulnerability (and hence breaking a rule), yet once checked by a bing, the game is almost over.

6) Horse (ma) -- Always the source of checks, on average 14.159 moves checks to be exact. These things are your Lodanap.

7) King (jiang) -- need I say more?