If there were a fencing themed chess set...

[onesandzeros]

If there were a fencing themed chess set, who would be the pawns, rooks, king, queen, etc...?

[arcon]

Are we to pick individuals for this or do you want it to be like
pawns are foil, bishops are Sabre, rooks are epee? hmmmm
not enough styles for the complete board.
What to do?

[onesandzeros]

Hrm.... I guess I wasn't too specific.

The King and Queen can be actual Fencers from past or present. Then, the rest of the pieces are up to you to decide what goes where (i.e. Foil fencers as pawns, directors as pawns, etc...)

[Sabresque]

Directors are definitly the pawns

[arcon]

I must admit im stumped with this. I have to ponder for a while.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[Almightynoitall]

Pawns: Children Foilists
Rooks: Armorers
Knights: Sabre Fencers
Bishops: Epeeists
King: Referee
Queen: Wears the Statue of Liberty's robes, and holds all three weapons crossed down at the forte.

[Inquartata]

King: the FIE ( ruling by fiat )
Queen: the USFA ( submissive to the FIE but still powerful )
Rooks: Referees ( "I was rooked on that touch!" )
Bishops: the elite fencers ( "Oh let us kiss their rings!" )
Knights: Bout Committees ( jumping over decisions )
Pawns: all of the rest of us

[I_luv_saber]

Hahahaha! I like Inq's chess set best!

[OCTAVIA]

Foilists would be the pawns.

Epeeists would be the bishops

Saberists would be the knights

The machine box would be the Rooks,

The queen would be a Side Judge

The king would be a Director

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Then we could call the "files" a piste
Who goes first = right of way

[C.J.]

Originally posted by Inquartata
King: the FIE ( ruling by fiat )
Queen: the USFA ( submissive to the FIE but still powerful )
Rooks: Referees ( "I was rooked on that touch!" )
Bishops: the elite fencers ( "Oh let us kiss their rings!" )
Knights: Bout Committees ( jumping over decisions )
Pawns: all of the rest of us

Actually the queens are the most powerful pieces on the board.

[Iwant2bafencer]

What about a character fencing theme bored. Like in the movies.
Wesley -Princess Bride
Catherine Zeta Jones - Mask of Zorro
etc etc

[neevel]

The Chevalier d'Eon would seem the natural choice for queen.

[arcon]

This is Wild. It belongs in Fantasyland!

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by C.J.
Actually the queens are the most powerful pieces on the board.

Eeeeveryone's a critic!

Anyhoo, the queen is still less important than the king and must defer to him. You can lose your queen and still win, after all. And in a pawn endgame the king comes into its own.

[OCTAVIA]

Who do you sacrifice in chess the king or the queen! Though she is worth about 10 points, off she goes if you have to win the game, the queen is dispensible! [bwohahahahah] -

I would rather not be the queen I would rather be the Bishop or the Knight, remember if your pawns make it to the other side of the board you can always come back as the queen again, later on.

[I_luv_saber]

Has anyone played cylindrical chess? You just imagine the sides of the board are connected. Adds a new twist, but still not as hard as 3D chess!

[C.J.]

I said queens are the most powerful pieces on the board, not the most important pieces. Plus, if you lose your queen(lose, as in without positional or tactical compensation) you might as well lose your king. So in that sense, the queen is just as important as the king. The queen is worth 9 points(not 10. two rooks worth 10 points), and the king is worth, of course, infinite points. But that is not the same as saying the king is more powerful than the queen in anyway.

[veeco]

Not one piece is more powerful than the other in chess.

All things considered, you can have a queen that you cannot use because it's locked in a position where it doesn't have any impact (i.e. behind a row of pawns) and 2 knights well placed that are worth more than the queen.

[Inquartata]

A queen sacrifice is one of the most impressive moves you will ever see on the chessboard. Losing it does NOT dictate that you lose the game. And in certain situations other pieces are far more "powerful" than the queen: ie if a knight move to a certain square is the only one which will impose mate, that knight is more powerful than three queens you may have elsewhere.

Don't be so concerned with how many points each piece is supposed to be worth. That's an artificial and essentially meaningless concept, as the object is a win, not a point advantage. ( See how that stupid ELO system and its focus on points makes people think about the wrong things? )

[C.J.]

As Kasparov described it, chess has three dimensions: material, time, and position(quality). A queen sacrifice that leads to a mate is simply one of many forms of trading your material to gain advantages in position and time. So, that's why I mentioned positional and tactical compensations; if you sacrificed your queen, and you knew you could win it back, then you didn't really lose your queen, did you?

But why are we talking about these "special" cases here? Why are we talking about the situation when a knight is more important then a queen? That doesn't help in deciding what should be assigned to what chess piece, does it? Following the general guidelines for chess piece values assignment makes sense in what we ware discussing here. A queen is worth 9 points.