I am looking for information on a variation of 3D chess developed by a
Sacramento California Company in 1990. It was palyed in a 10x10x10
cube with the sides starting on oposite edges, (top front, bottom
back). There was an extra piece added, I beleive they called it a
duke,that had a 3D move. I used to have a book on it but have
misplaced it and forgoten the name of the outfit that was pushing the
game. Anybody have any ideas????

On 5 Oct 2003 11:24:45 -0700, (jeff fairchild) wrote:

|I am looking for information on a variation of 3D chess developed by a
|Sacramento California Company in 1990. It was palyed in a 10x10x10
|cube with the sides starting on oposite edges, (top front, bottom
|back). There was an extra piece added, I beleive they called it a
|duke,that had a 3D move. I used to have a book on it but have
|misplaced it and forgoten the name of the outfit that was pushing the
|game. Anybody have any ideas????

How would you be able to reach inside and move the pieces? If the
distance between layers were high enough to reach in, the board would
be huge. How would you even see what's in the center if a checker
pattern dims half the squares?

Most 3D chess rulesets are poorly thought out, resulting in a game
which is either a huge advantage for the first player or a dull
draw. Ambiguities and self-contradictory rules are not uncommon.
It is usually not easy to checkmate a 3D king with fewer than four
pieces.

Maybe this company sold software...?

On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 17:21:58 -0400, David J Bush
wrote, in part:

It is usually not easy to checkmate a 3D king with fewer than four
pieces.

Even Glinski's hexagonal chess (two-dimensional) had, I think, a
similar problem. I, too, have offended, having yet another form of 3D
chess on my web site! I know that for hexagonal chess, I think the
Wellisch moves are better, even though they are less analogous to
those of regular Chess. Giving the King, in 3D chess, the move of the
Alfil is probably what needs to be done.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

Yes the stacked boards wer a bit big, made a 5 foot tower. The squares
were only croshatchet shaded so you could still see through the thing
quite well. The way the rules were set up you could checkmate with 3
peices. There was somthing about moving across the path of another
piece that made the game a bit messy as you had small colored chips to
mark out the controled area of various peices in 3D. The extra peice ,
I believe they called it a duke, had a 3D move and could not move in
2D only.

Are there currently any workable true 3D (played in a cube) chess games out there???

On 20 Oct 2003 07:22:44 -0700, (jeff fairchild) wrote:

|Are there currently any workable true 3D (played in a cube) chess games
| out there???

Perhaps the members of the 3-D Chess Federation would know:

http://www.3dchessfederation.com/index.htm

You might be interested in the software Zillions of Games, for which
many 3-D chess variants have been written:

http://www.zillionsofgames.com/

The generic Zillions engine usually plays decently any chess variant
you care to define, so it provides a way of at least working out the
basic tactics. (You can program other types of abstract games on it as well.)

Here's the BoardGameGeek link for 3-D chess:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=3499