Big Chess Thoughts and Tips

  
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Normajean Yates    (2009-05-11 02:24:03)
Big Chess: Thoughts and Tips

(This is essentially my forum-post: I thought it should be in my blog for my quick future-reference)

I think Bigchess is a wonderful invention of Thibault's (I presume it is Thib. who invented it: any way he is the only one offering serious bigchess (on this site) - the starting position is very well-concieved..

I feel Bigchess needs more publicity. This is about the only place one can play it - and here there are 2-3 top-class players; less than 20 middle-standard players (including me); others try it once or twice and for some reason get scared or overwhelmed and give up - I see no reason why..

Bigchess gives no advantage on account of huge memorisation of theory, or of better engines: there are *no* theory books; and there are no known engines in existence (probably there isnt one - too little demand, and writing a *good* engine is somewhat laborious, coming up with a *good* static-eval function is tricky, fast board-implementation issues...), so it is all wits...


In fact last week I spend part of two days writing down whatever theory I could discover [with help from top games], it comes to half a page.. but it is very rudimentary.. (it is 'work in progress')



So, here are some tips for people who want to try bigchess:

1. Bishops are much more powerful than Knights. (because of much longer range compared to 8x8 chess).

The consensus on the values of bigchess pieces is David Grosdemange's valuation: pawn=1
knight=2.5 (written 2,5 in the continent, of course)
bishop=4
rook=6
queen=11



2. In the opening position, the c,f,L and o-pawns are unprotected.

So, if white's opening move is with the j2-Knight ( freeing the queen), then on move 2 white can move the Queen and threaten to pick up a pawn by forks.. Similarly for black.

*However*, such pawn gambits are quite playable because the Queen can be forced to make many moves to capture a pawn, while the gambitting side develops their pieces.


***3. Most Important For Many People: board for offline analysis.

Best of course, is to take time to draw a 16x16 board on paper and stick it on cardboard. And get hold of four sets of chess pieces.

Another way: print a position, and after a move is made - just update the position using correction fluid (typewriter/printer-ink erasing fluid) or something. That way you don't have to keep printng a lot of positions.