Hello chess enthusiasts! Chess.com is amazing for providing all the data for all the games happening on the platform, so I had an idea and now need honest feedback on it.

Online fantasy chess - https://sovereign-gambit.com/

Let me know if "How it works" is enough to explain it all, how interesting you find observing the Cup, how easy and fun is to create and play the Leagues, and if Duel is a cool feature for 1v1 against friends.

Hope this is not considered spam or self-promotion; it's completely free, and I would just be happy not playing only bots all the time :)) If some traction - I'll be sure to continue working on it.

Cheers!

Tabula Rasa Chess is a new variant on the old game that does away with the opening book.

Pieces begin off the board and are placed one by one until all are on the board. During the opening phase white king may be placed into check in this placement phase.

After the game starts all the pieces move normally. No castling or en passant.

This is a middlegame with the heat map turned on.

www.tabularaschess.com

So I am creating a 10x8 chess variant which is mostly based on standard chess but among other things it adds xiangqi cannon. And the problem is NNUE thinks that the bishop is worth more than the cannon, despite the bishop doing nothing being blocked by a pawn, while cannon starting in a very open position where it has maximum opening power. So I "nerfed" the bishop by confining him to one half of the board (a bit like river in xiangqi). Now it can only reach 1/4 of the board, clearly now it must be only a bit better than an alfil?

But no, the NNUE still thinks exchanging cannons with bishop in the opening is a good idea. It's just not pushing it as zealously. It makes no sense to me and obviously it's shitty design if one of the first things that happen is exchange, instead of piece development. Plus I wanna keep the canon at least into the middle game, i mean it's one of the defining pieces.

I already made maximum effort to make it dominate the opening. Short of coming up with artificial nonsense arbitrary rules or redefining how pieces move, how could I get the cannon to have the upper hand, so to speak, and why the fuck does fairy stockfish consider the nerfed bishop superior? I understand exchanging a cannon for a knight when it's getting closer to ending, but exchanging a highly active cannon for a damn limited bishop in the opening makes no sense. Ruins such a cool variant.