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KingElephant
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chess piece substitutions
« on: Mar 25th, 2011, 5:24pm » |
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When I play Arimaa with a chess set, I use the following meanings for the chess pieces:
King=Elephant
Queen=Camel
Knight=Horse
Rook=Dog
Bishop=Cat
Pawn=Rabbit
It has come to my attention that there are other substitutions. I think the other substitutions are strange. In the system I use, it seems logical to me that the knight should be the horse.
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Eltripas
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #1 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 6:06pm » |
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Fritz may disagree with this 
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Fritzlein
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #2 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 7:24pm » |
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on Mar 25th, 2011, 6:06pm, Eltripas wrote:| Fritz may disagree with this |
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Oh, no, I think it quite logical that the knight be a horse. Except then why should a rook be a dog and a bishop be a cat, instead of the other way around? Because a rook is stronger than a bishop and a dog is stronger than a cat? But a rook is stronger than a knight, so...
Anyway, there is no problem with everyone doing what seems most logical to themselves. If there are ever any face-to-face Arimaa tournaments, they will be played on custom Arimaa sets anyway. 
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qswanger
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #3 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 10:08pm » |
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I think the best, most logical method for piece substitutions (which has been suggested here before), is to simply use the height of the chess pieces. Most chess sets have a height "hierarchy" of King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn which has nothing to do with actual chess piece strength, but rather (I think) with the popular aesthetics of having the pieces larger in the middle of the starting setup and then sloping downward as you go left and right toward the edge of the board. Just forget the chess strength and instead look at the height to see who beats who. Very clean. Therefore (note the quotes):
King = "Elephant"
Queen = "Camel"
Bishops = "Horses"
Knights = "Dogs"
Rooks = "Cats"
Pawns = "Rabbits"
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Eltripas
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #4 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 10:58pm » |
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I'm sorry but in Spanish we call the knights "caballos" (horses), so it just seems dumb to use the horses as dogs and the bishops as horses when we can use the horses as horses.
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UruramTururam
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #5 on: Mar 26th, 2011, 9:50am » |
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There's quite similar situation in Polish. "Knight" oficially is "skoczek" (jumper), but in a popular speech is often called "konik" (little horse) so this substitution is obvious.
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megajester
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #6 on: Mar 26th, 2011, 4:21pm » |
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In Turkish you have the added complication that bishops are called elephants (I know this is the case for Arabic too). So when teaching the game to Turks with a chess set I tend to use the chess names for the pieces at first. Otherwise you just make the game sound complicated before you've shown them anything. I just ask them which they usually view as superior, the rook, the knight ("horse") or the bishop, and go from there. I leave explaining the official names until afterwards.
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qswanger
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #7 on: Mar 26th, 2011, 4:39pm » |
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on Mar 25th, 2011, 10:58pm, Eltripas wrote:| I'm sorry but in Spanish we call the knights "caballos" (horses), so it just seems dumb to use the horses as dogs and the bishops as horses when we can use the horses as horses. |
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I don't think it is dumb to simply ignore the Arimaa convention/theme of animals. Fuhgettaboutit! Think more abstractly. If you're using chess pieces, what does it matter about the Arimaa animals? Height makes the most sense for determining the Arimaa piece hierarchy.
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Eltripas
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #8 on: Mar 26th, 2011, 5:01pm » |
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I can't simply forget about them when we are always talking about horse hostage, horse frames, elephant-horse attacks, etc...
While I agree that it may be a good idea to use your substitution to teach someone Arimaa, when playing against other players who learnt the game with the animal pieces I is more reasonable to use the horse as a horse.
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Hippo
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #9 on: Mar 26th, 2011, 5:07pm » |
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on Mar 26th, 2011, 4:39pm, qswanger wrote:
I don't think it is dumb to simply ignore the Arimaa convention/theme of animals. Fuhgettaboutit! Think more abstractly. If you're using chess pieces, what does it matter about the Arimaa animals? Height makes the most sense for determining the Arimaa piece hierarchy. |
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Yes, I agree, the name of the piece is important only in communication (and notation). While playing only the relative strength is important. And the height/weight represents it well.
So when playing without need of writing down the moves the shape is not that much important.
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Arimabuff
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #10 on: Mar 27th, 2011, 9:46am » |
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on Mar 25th, 2011, 10:58pm, Eltripas wrote:| I'm sorry but in Spanish we call the knights "caballos" (horses), so it just seems dumb to use the horses as dogs and the bishops as horses when we can use the horses as horses. |
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In French the Bishop is called "fou" a mad man (maybe because it zigzags) so it makes more sense for it to be a dog as in mad dog than a cat. I've never heard of a mad cat... In Polish the Bishop is called "a runner" so it could be a greyhound or a horse or maybe a cat on steroids...
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Arimabuff
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #11 on: Mar 27th, 2011, 9:53am » |
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on Mar 26th, 2011, 4:39pm, qswanger wrote:
I don't think it is dumb to simply ignore the Arimaa convention/theme of animals. Fuhgettaboutit! Think more abstractly. If you're using chess pieces, what does it matter about the Arimaa animals? Height makes the most sense for determining the Arimaa piece hierarchy. |
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Or we can use the strength in Chess, A Rook is the strongest of the twin pieces and then comes the Bishop slightly stronger than the Knight according to the Grand Masters.
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megajester
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #12 on: Mar 27th, 2011, 11:46am » |
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on Mar 27th, 2011, 9:53am, Arimabuff wrote:
Or we can use the strength in Chess, A Rook is the strongest of the twin pieces and then comes the Bishop slightly stronger than the Knight according to the Grand Masters. |
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I personally prefer this system, but it doesn't make sense for people who don't play much chess. Whichever system you pick you get used to it fairly quickly, so I think height is the easiest system if you're trying to teach a group of people.
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Fritzlein
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #13 on: Mar 27th, 2011, 12:41pm » |
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on Mar 27th, 2011, 11:46am, megajester wrote:
I personally prefer this system, but it doesn't make sense for people who don't play much chess. Whichever system you pick you get used to it fairly quickly, so I think height is the easiest system if you're trying to teach a group of people. |
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Yes, I imagine it depends on who you are teaching. All that matters is relative strength, but chess players have a fixed notion of relative strength, so for them it is easiest to use king>queen>rook>bishop>knight>pawn. But for non-chess-players, it is silly to first teach the relative strength of chess pieces; height is an easy substitute.
I don't find it at all useful to teach the correspondence of king to elephant, queen to camel, etc. Why does anyone learning Arimaa on a chess set need to know what the animals are on an Arimaa set? When I taught hull how to play, he was perfectly clear on what could push what without having any idea which piece would be a dog if he played on-line. I admit that I sometimes slipped and called the pawns rabbits, etc., but my intention was not to add an extra layer of terminology that would make learning the rules more confusing.
If you are teaching Arimaa on a chess board to someone who has never encountered the game before, and your primary concern is to make it easy for him to learn (as opposed to making it convenient for you to teach), then try to get the mapping of pieces out of your head. Don't call the bishop a dog (or whatever); call it a bishop. Say, "The bishop can push the rook", or, "The rook can push the bishop", depending on which ordering of pieces you have chosen. If you point at a bishop and a rook and say, "The dog can push the cat," of course you are going to confuse your audience. You are forcing them to learn two new meanings that are unnecessary to the task at hand.
Arimaa is an abstract game. Try to abstract the rules in your own mind enough to make teaching it less confusing for the person who is learning. The relative strength of the pieces is all that matters.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 27th, 2011, 12:43pm by Fritzlein » |
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Arimabuff
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Re: chess piece substitutions
« Reply #14 on: Mar 28th, 2011, 2:15am » |
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on Mar 27th, 2011, 12:41pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Yes, I imagine it depends on who you are teaching. All that matters is relative strength, but chess players have a fixed notion of relative strength, so for them it is easiest to use king>queen>rook>bishop>knight>pawn. But for non-chess-players, it is silly to first teach the relative strength of chess pieces; height is an easy substitute.
I don't find it at all useful to teach the correspondence of king to elephant, queen to camel, etc. Why does anyone learning Arimaa on a chess set need to know what the animals are on an Arimaa set? When I taught hull how to play, he was perfectly clear on what could push what without having any idea which piece would be a dog if he played on-line. I admit that I sometimes slipped and called the pawns rabbits, etc., but my intention was not to add an extra layer of terminology that would make learning the rules more confusing.
If you are teaching Arimaa on a chess board to someone who has never encountered the game before, and your primary concern is to make it easy for him to learn (as opposed to making it convenient for you to teach), then try to get the mapping of pieces out of your head. Don't call the bishop a dog (or whatever); call it a bishop. Say, "The bishop can push the rook", or, "The rook can push the bishop", depending on which ordering of pieces you have chosen. If you point at a bishop and a rook and say, "The dog can push the cat," of course you are going to confuse your audience. You are forcing them to learn two new meanings that are unnecessary to the task at hand.
Arimaa is an abstract game. Try to abstract the rules in your own mind enough to make teaching it less confusing for the person who is learning. The relative strength of the pieces is all that matters. |
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I am not sure about that, it's a well known fact that habits are hard to break, for instance when you learn a wrong grip at ping pong, you can become a fairly strong player using that grip and then you can't evolve any further because of its flaws... Same thing here, its better to learn Arimaa the way "god intended" in a manner of speaking than to learn it with in mind the pieces of Chess, IOW if I were to teach Arimaa to someone, I would call the pieces elephant, camel etc... despite the fact that we would be playing with a Chess set.
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