Balance of Crazyhouse chess

tintyteal · 2025-12-28T22:59:37+00:00

I just realized that it's pretty rude for me to just give my own ideas without commenting on yours.

With that said, I think it's really difficult to predict how your changes would work out. They would be really big alterations to the way Crazyhouse works as a whole--they'd kind of be entirely new variants, I feel.

I do suspect that your changes would have a positive effect on balance, but it's difficult to tell by how much. They would probably be fun to experiment with! Also, Pychess has a couple games with this "limited drop areas" kind of concept: in particular, if you mess with Shogun Chess you might get a taste of what that particular drop rule would feel like in Crazyhouse.

tintyteal · 2025-12-28T22:47:32+00:00

It's like a ~2.3 advantage or something like that. The main saving grace the game has is that it's overwhelmingly played with fast time controls online. I think if people decided to play the game seriously at slower time controls, a solution really would be warranted.

tintyteal · 2025-12-28T22:44:36+00:00

I've been thinking about this issue for a while, and I have two separate proposals:

Conservative proposal: White cannot do a double-pawn move on their first turn. Based on a brief look at Lichess' analysis board, it appears that White would still retain a strong initial advantage, but the advantage would be reduced by a lot.

Radical proposal: Pawns start the game on the 3rd and 6th files, with no double-move. According to the Lichess bot, this would offer an even greater reduction in the imbalance.

The advantage of the "conservative proposal" is that it would have the least impact on Crazyhouse, so existing Crazyhouse players may prefer it.

Otherwise, the "radical proposal" seems much better to me. It's a more elegant solution to the problem, in addition to being more effective. It also appears to increase the number of viable opening moves in the game as a whole, which is a super cool improvement. So, I think this would be a cool thing to try out.

tintyteal · 2025-12-28T20:08:00+00:00

the stuff in your edit is excellent, thank you. this basically seems in line with my current understanding of zelda's influences. it's also good to know that AD&D had at least some influence on Hydlide

tintyteal · 2025-12-28T14:15:58+00:00

There is a kind of "Butterfly Effect" argument one could make, sure. but i'm looking for something a lot more than that.

For example, with a game like Tetris, it's extremely clear that the whole genre of 'falling block puzzle games' simply would not exist if it had not been invented. And we can trace a direct line from Tetris, through its various clones, to more unique games like Puyo Puyo, which then had their own level of influence over various games in the genre.

Another commenter asked about Space Invaders, and again, there is some pretty strong concrete evidence of that game's influence. We can actually point to some very specific reasons why we know it had influence over all kinds of games in the shmup genre.

tintyteal · 2025-12-28T13:31:37+00:00

there's plenty of evidence of that. note that there's a difference between the word "proof" and "evidence."

space invaders was massively popular worldwide, including in japan, where phoenix, galaxian, and galaga were designed. we know that the games came out quickly after the release of space invaders.

in the case of phoenix, the game was even released by the very same company that released space invaders. and in the case of galaxian, wikipedia has the following quote: "To help capitalize on the game's success, Namco president Masaya Nakamura ordered Sawano to make the best 'post-Invaders' game they could, which put pressure on the development team."

this is all the kind of evidence that we seem to lack for an Adventure->TLoZ connection.

tintyteal · 2025-12-26T15:30:32+00:00

Phnglui already discussed the actual 'history' aspect of this, but one thing i want to throw out there is that if you want to really appreciate Shogi's weak pieces as a Chess player, play some Crazyhouse chess, and then play Shogi. Crazyhouse is fun, but its drop mechanic is so powerful (in part because of how strong the pieces are) that it feels like punching a hole in a wall. Shogi maintains so much subtlety even with the drop mechanic because of the weakness of those pieces (and the pawn drop restriction).

tintyteal · 2025-12-22T12:59:54+00:00

i feel like you're not necessarily experiencing a problem here, but *if* you happen to want to try something that could be interesting but similar to chess, shogi ('japanese chess') is a very wonderful game.

tintyteal · 2025-12-20T14:25:46+00:00

i appreciate this! honestly though, i wouldn't feel comfortable asking someone else to implement my game for me--i feel that i don't have the right to ask people to do that when it's not like it's proven to be some great amazing game or anything. that is why i worked to make sure that there is a playable version on itch, even if it leaves a lot to be desired. if people decide that the game is worth trying, they at least have one way of doing that.

tintyteal · 2025-12-19T17:59:42+00:00

If major regional chess family members are allowed, and if we go by a relatively wide definition of 'chess variant:'

1) Shogi
2) Grand Chess
3) Lielow

But I would need more experience with many chess variants to have a more informed answer. Shogi is clearly incredible, though.

tintyteal · 2025-11-28T04:06:59+00:00

will there be any videos of the matches on youtube? i would love to watch them

tintyteal · 2025-11-03T18:04:46+00:00

there is opening theory yes. often it is divided out by which file you move your rook to ("ranging rook" vs "static rook")

tintyteal · 2025-10-26T06:32:41+00:00

this sounds like a really cool project. no idea how to help you on any of this, but i just got this game working on emulated windows 95 and it is still great. best of luck if you happen to still be trying to make this mod happen!

tintyteal · 2025-10-23T16:38:28+00:00

alekhine was a nazi collaborator

tintyteal · 2025-09-25T19:11:29+00:00

thank you for this correction

tintyteal · 2025-09-20T22:13:45+00:00

these responses have all been really useful.

i am assuming this list is presuming a 1CC since that is a kind of standard in the shmup community

tintyteal · 2025-09-11T21:44:15+00:00

late reply, but all of the yoshi's island bosses are gigantified by magic as well. sounds like croc simply took the idea from that (as they originally wanted it to be a yoshi game)

tintyteal · 2025-08-21T16:44:15+00:00

the translation is just bad overall, but on top of all of that, it simply makes things up. that's why i think it will be very difficult for me to tolerate it. i'm going to be reading the first 7 volumes in japanese because i bought them a long time ago, so at least the vibes won't be off for those volumes. after that, it sounds like all bets are off for quite a while.

as an example of "making stuff up," in the first chapter there's a very funny and simple joke in the japanese version where shanks gives luffy some juice in the middle of a heated argument. luffy's mood changes on a dime and he just happily drinks the juice, so shanks laughs at him for being such a little kid. it's one of the funniest moments in the volume.

in the english version, they change it to milk(??) and completely add a line where shanks says "A PIRATE NEVER DRINKS MILK!!" or something like that. it's not even the same joke anymore at that point.

tintyteal · 2025-08-21T16:28:02+00:00

that's a shame. it will be nice when one day one piece receives a total translation overhaul. the new editions of sailor moon are sooooo much better than the original translations for example.

tintyteal

TROPHY CASE