Chess with different armies This army includes a lot of leapers, but most of them have asymmetrical move patterns, with backward moves being restricted. The rooks, knights, bishops, and queen are replaced by the following pieces: The four armies described above were playtested by Ralph Betza and selected as the most balanced ones. There are other armies, invented by Betza and other people, some of which are presented here. In the initial version of the game there were 8 armies and in these armies the king moved differently from the king in the standard chess. Instead of normal pawns, fairy pawns could be selected,
Chess endgame opinions . Alexander Alekhine said "We cannot define when the middle game ends and the end-game starts" . With the usual system for chess piece relative value, Speelman considers that endgames are positions in which each player has thirteen or fewer points in (not counting the king). Alternatively, an endgame is a position in which the king can be used actively, but there are some famous exceptions to that . Minev characterizes endgames as positions having four or fewer pieces other than kings and pawns . Some authors consider endgames to be positions without queens (e.g. Fine, 1952), while others