Author: Dan Ellwein
Date: 07:59:48 12/16/99
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My original post came about as a result of wanting to know how many unique movements there are in chess (or at least have a rough idea). Chess, being the complex game it is, I wanted to see just how many unique movements this complexity was based on. What came to mind for consideration were the following: the movements of the 32 pieces special moves like castling and en-passant pawn moves being different from pawn captures pawns being able to move 2 squares on the first move and pawn promotion (although this may not apply) (there may be other possibilities to consider) Since pawns do move differently than the way they capture, I decided to use as one of my parameters for movement - Type. I came up with 3 types of movement which I called: Capture/NonCapture, NonCapture Only, and Capture only. Capture/NonCapture would include all the pieces except for the pawn. NonCapture Only would include the pawn moves (including the option of the pawn moving 2 squares on its first move) and castling (since a capture cannot occur on this move). Capture Only would only include the pawn. En-passant would be covered in this category. Also, since, pieces can move more than one square on a move (moving from one end of the board to the other end a piece travels 7 squares), I decide to use as another parameter of movement - Magnitude. Since chess is played on an 8x8 board, Magnitude would have a maximum limit of 7. So, Movement, then, (at least for my purposes) is a funtion of Type and Magnitude. Type - having three categories: Capture/NonCapture, NonCapture Only, and Capture Only. Magnitude - ranging from 1 (square) to 7 (squares). Looking at the 32 pieces we have the following: K's - 2 Q's - 2 R's - 4 B's - 4 N's - 4 P's -16 So, from the 32 pieces, 6 pieces need to be considered - K,Q,R,B,N,P From these 6 pieces, 4 need to be looked at due to the Rook and Bishop movements are incorporated into the Queen. So now we have - K, Q(which includes the Rook and Bishop), N, P And this is how I came up with my table and came up with there being 11 unique (discrete) movements in chess. If, instead of Magnitude having a range of 1 to 7, but we give it a range of 0 to 7, then pawn promotion could be considered also. Replacing a pawn with either a Q,R,B,N does not involve a movement (the Q,R,B,or N is placed on the same square as the pawn was on - the actual promotion requires no movement). In this case there would be 12 unique movements in chess, and these 12 movements would be what gives chess its complexity. PilgrimDan
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