Eric: I've never played a game where me or my opponent used all our freeze spells Eric two minutes later: I'm going to try and make the argument that a freeze spell is worth more than a minor piece 😂

@youjying

8 ай бұрын

I would say a freeze is worth 2 pawns and a jump worth a rook+

@ezra7088

8 ай бұрын

@@youjying I think your first jump is worth a minor piece and your second jump is worth a rook+

@Mrf0rk11

8 ай бұрын

And this makes perfect sense. The threat of being able to freeze is worth a lot, that’s why people prefer to keep it in reserve.

@LastStar007

8 ай бұрын

On the one hand, you get 5 freezes and only 4 minor pieces. On the other hand, spell chess theory is so undeveloped that most games are decided within 20 moves or so, which means that you only have 4 opportunities to freeze at the absolute max. More like 3 or 2 opportunities that make any tactical sense at all. What's more, a freeze isn't all that great when your opponent can counterfreeze, but a freeze when your opponent *can't* counterfreeze can be very opportune, and your own counterfreeze is a lifesaver in defense. Complex dynamics at play here; interesting to see nuclear deterrence theory tested out on the chessboard.

@LastStar007

8 ай бұрын

Chess has always had a temporal (number of moves) aspect to its strategy in addition to tactical and positional play, but heretofore it's been in support of the other two--mattering in the context of endgames, not falling behind in the opening, and tactical opportunities like complex exchanges and zwischenzugs. The spell cooldown seems to bring time to the forefront.

Eric experiences what we experience playing chess. The “wow, that’s checkmate!” says it all!!

Things I've learned about this game: 1. Don't move the d pawn. 2. Double checks are usually fatal.

@moistyboi7128

8 ай бұрын

I would also like to add that the wayward queen looks strong, but loses a queen for a rook

@All-star_Giga_Gargantuar

8 ай бұрын

There's still Qf3 or Qf6 if you're black tho.@@moistyboi7128

@tisban3013

8 ай бұрын

what about wayward but freezing the rook? @@moistyboi7128

@tianlecheng2656

8 ай бұрын

Ya bcuz of the jump

At about 13:00 when you said you had a cool idea, I had the exact same up until when you said you used the wrong spell and wanted to freeze. I saw jump spell on the rook on h7 over g7 and take f7. It's defended by the other rook and the bishop covers e8 so I think that's checkmate

@John-ss4xj

8 ай бұрын

I was yelling at my monitor for him to do that, lol. Crazy game.

@user-tp9nv3ls1b

8 ай бұрын

true, he can freeze your rook on a7 and take your rook on f7, but your counter freeze the king and it's gg. Or freeze your rook on f7 and Qb6+, but you counter freeze the Queen it's mate in next move.

@bowserificB

8 ай бұрын

I also saw this. I thought this was the cool move.

@emanuelrosenthal4271

8 ай бұрын

@@user-tp9nv3ls1b You have to be careful though so you freeze both the queen and the king. Otherwise queen can block, since jump has already been used earlier in the combination.

@henrycook859

8 ай бұрын

​@@John-ss4xjsame LMAO

5:50 When your opponent freezes to take a piece, you also have to freeze to take back a piece. You're trading freezes and pieces so to speak

@johnjantzen7508

8 ай бұрын

I think Eric was trying to save his freeze because he thought it would be more valuable than the bishop but ya it does seem hard to justify not freezing back there.

@muhammadmirzoxabibullayev3016

8 ай бұрын

I think Black has Qh4 in that position if you counter freeze

@1.4142

8 ай бұрын

yeah levy analyzed this@@muhammadmirzoxabibullayev3016

@dynamic.6302

8 ай бұрын

What does QH4 do there? The knight can just take the queen because the opponent's freeze was in cooldown

@muhammadmirzoxabibullayev3016

8 ай бұрын

@@dynamic.6302 if Night takes the the queen you use the jump spell and take the king with the bishop. Qh4 is double check basically

Eric did what's called a "frumpmate", similar to duckmate's name origin. Frump is a combination of freeze first, then jump. There can also be a scenario called "jeezemate", you know where that comes from. Then there's the normal freezemate and jumpmate.

@LastStar007

8 ай бұрын

Jeezing all over your opponent's king?

@Tzizenorec

5 ай бұрын

Can you give an example where a "jeezemate" is possible? It sounds pretty hard to set up to me, due to the opponent having a full turn to react between the jump and the freeze.

just realized that when the attacking player has a jump available and there are two pieces between an attacker and its target (as at 23:24) _both pieces are pinned_ (neglecting one's own spell arsenal)

@I_am_Itay

8 ай бұрын

Nice observation

@Benjamin-mq6hu

8 ай бұрын

X-ray vision is much more threatening than in normal chess

@moocowpong1

8 ай бұрын

You see something similar with cannons in xiangqi (Chinese chess)

@moocowpong1

8 ай бұрын

Xiangqi also has the “flying general” rule, where the general (the king equivalent) can deliver check to the opposing general along an open file. This means a piece will end up pinned between the two generals if it’s the only piece separating the two along a file.

@OoUndeadOo

8 ай бұрын

Actually, it's also can be deadly, I had a game where i was in a very similar situation as the one you timed to. And lets say it was the exact same situation, as my turn I use the jump on F7 to move my rook, and on the opponent turn he used his jump on D5, which allowed him, for some reason, to take my king. Seems double jump is possible if you used it just before ! I was suprised as fuck.

Someone needs to design a spell chess puzzle where the solution involves sacrificing a piece by using a jump spell to move a pawn 2 spaces and getting captured en passant.

@MenkoDany

8 ай бұрын

Oh my god can you please do this so that my brain can wrap around the en passant quirk?

It seems the freeze jump combo is pretty insane. If you can check the king regularly and freeze it at the same anything they use to block it can be jumped over the next move. I think you would have to do a counter freeze to stop it, and I'm pretty sure its a forced win if you do this when their freeze is recharging

Actually at the beginning I thought 'oh no, not another stupid variant' but towards the end of the video I actually not only started to appreciate the variant itself but also - and this is especially true of the Jump Charm - how playing this variant aid you in playing chess. This is indeed mind-boggling

Eric Frozen

26:24 Nf3 instead Bxd5 with Nxh2

I appreciated that you posted this content where you are already familiar with the mode, so we can see some impressive plays.

Eric we love you from baghdad iraq❤

@sarcastaball

8 ай бұрын

Terrorististan

@sam-wm2dd

8 ай бұрын

🤢

@TtttTt-ub5xb

8 ай бұрын

And from Syria❤

@lihapullahevonen

8 ай бұрын

​@@sam-wm2ddyoure disgusting

@kruksog

8 ай бұрын

​​@@sam-wm2ddwhat is that?

I've been getting into spell chess, really enjoying it! I'm learning some trappy openings and I feel like I have some basic tactical awareness as well. (Also just broke into the top 1000 as well, something I don't think I can do in real chess...)

13:44 Rook jump from h7 to f7 should be winning

@commentator3074

8 ай бұрын

Jump g7 Rhf7 - freeze f7 Qb6 (setting up jump c5 QxK) - freeze b5 Rae7 - ~ - RxK

A player can jump through a piece the opponent charmed. this means he can also charm an additional one and jump through 2 pieces in a move, it just happened to me in a game.

There's stalemate in spell chess if you have no moves (this can happen if all of your pieces are frozen by your opponent).

@lucasmatsuoca

8 ай бұрын

So if you’re losing and your opponent accidentally piles up all his movable pieces in a 3x3 area, you can force a stalemate and get a draw (assuming he does not have a jump spell to use on a blocked pawn). Very unlikely to happen but stalemates becomes much more common and part of tatics

Grudge match: Eric vs Levy. Five minute spell chess. Make it happen!

Wow, so many fascinating combinations in this video!

new to this variant but at 13:12 I believe Eric can win by playing Qa4+. king has to move since the queen can jump over any blocking piece, so Kf8 which loses to Rxf7 defended via jump by the h7 rook

@lucasmatsuoca

8 ай бұрын

What he did was basically the same thing but with a flashy and useless queen sac. (If he didn’t mess u the spells afterwards)

Here's an idea, Eric. You know a lot of strong players who are also entertaining on camera. You could get together 8 or 12 of them for a chess decathlon (or appropriate -athon depending on how many variants), where pairings cycle through different chess variants like bughouse, 960, duck chess, king of the kill, horde, kung fu, etc. and get points for wins, draws, and maybe bonuses for certain events/quacktics/etc. I would buy tickets to watch that!

2:08 using a freeze like this is very dangerous. I think white wins after Nb5, threatening various freeze mates, since you can't counter freeze. Probably the best move for black is Qa5+, saccing the queen to get the freeze back and avoid mate. The only other try I see is Kd7, which loses in spectacular fashion: freeze@e6&Ne5+ jump@f6&Bxe5 dxe5 Ke8 Nd6+ freeze@f5&exd6 freeze@c7&Bb5, white wins the queen and blacks king is still in danger

Just had my first few games. Beagn developing some opening theory around it and learning a few tactics around the spells. In the majority of cases so far I've found its generally best no to be the first to freeze. Due to counter freezing tactics. I am hoping to figure out some possible instances where this isn't the case soon.

I think the king is safer in the center because there are many pieces in the center so opponent won't really be able to jump. When castling it it has only pawns in front which could be jumped over, I think?

@guillaumec1636

8 ай бұрын

Until the center opens up

wow that last checkmate was genius !!

More spell chess please, love it!

19:50 Good callout by Eric, admitting he got "oh no my queen" happen to him this time

Bro the checkmate with the freeze idea was insane

A wild ride of emotions at 19:28 😂

Don't tell Jonathan Schrantz that this is chess with spells, he's adamant that this is not chess, so that he can play it ;)

I really like the jumping mechanic. Reminds me of the cannon in Chinese chess

more please!

It is good to be careful when using your freeze, because if you use it, any check could be deadly.

Some strange things that one doesn't realize: you don't have to jump over your jump -- you can use it to just create a check situation.

Couldn't he just have used jump on the g7 pawn to jump over and checkmate with the rook on h7? Sorry if I am making a mistake in advance.

@lucasmatsuoca

8 ай бұрын

He had no jump, he used accidentally on the last turn, it needs to replenish. The right move would be to just capture f7 last turn with no spells. Cause he would be the one able to counterfreeze if needed and also would have the jump to use on the other rook, but he massively messed up

@fortherealle

8 ай бұрын

@@lucasmatsuoca i meant at 13:43 where he does indeed have a jump spell

@physchee651

8 ай бұрын

Freeze rook on a7 then King take rook on f7. But white can freeze king on f7 and pawn h6 for a double check which will be checkmate.

19:35 Nxe4 is a nice move but its probably better to play e5 or Nh5 with the same idea (Bg4# or Nf4#) so white doesn't lose a piece ìn case you don't take on h1

Excited for the Wizard-Eric thumbnail

I’m loving the spell chess content

It would be nice if you could activate the abilities by a keybind like pressing 1 or 2 for jump or freeze instead of needing to click it with the mouse.

Spell chess seemed really fun. Would like too a learning arc on it!

I noticed that double capture thing too lol

Poison spell: a 3x3 area in which any peice dies in........... uhh how do you balance this... 5 turns? So if you manage to hit the golden 9 peices thats 4 guarenteed dead. Actully how often do you see 9 of the opposing players peices all in one place? Make it dies in 4 turns. The spell itself lasts 6 turns. Recall spell: a 1 tile spell that lets you take any of your own peices, and recall it to any of your first three ranks (pawns are not allowed on your first rank) Haste spell: also 1 tile, lasts for 3 turns, allows for limited range peices to move an additional space in any of their directions when moving from or through the haste tile. (Pawns can move 2 or 3 if they havent moved), (kings can move 2 spaces and direction), (heres the tricky one, Knights can only move 1 additional tile in either direction, not both, depending on where the haste tile is. If the knight starts on the haste tile, it can move 3 in one direction, 1 in another, so a long L. If the haste tile is a traditional knighrs move away, the knight now has the option to move two tiles in oen direction, and 2 tiles in another. It would make more sense with visuals). All other peices remain unchanged since they already move infinitely. Skeleton spell: spawn a pawn. Thats it. Spawn a pawn in any of your first 5 ranks, minus the first rank again. Those are all of my ideas

when you play with aiden he takes your knight and you decide to dodge with the king, and aiden retreats, but he could have used to jump to take your rook on a1. i think thats a lot of material lost unless you have an attack, which you didnt at the time - had nothing developped yet.

So fun to watch

You can't simply win material with a freeze. Always remember they can counter it. And also remember it when they froze you first, there's always a counter.

To disable CoC theme, go to boards setting and disable 'Enable Special Themes' option.

I hope it goes on youtube

This variant is so fun to watch but also really frustrating to watch lol

I love these kinds of variants. A ladder that randomly swapped between Duck chess and Spell chess would be a lot of fun

I've found a bug or a feature, idk. When you apply jump onto a cell, opponent can overpass this cell as well. I had two pieces in front of my king, put a jump on one of the pieces and the opponent put jump on the other piece as well on their turn an jumped over two pieces and took my king

17:54 This match puts Eric on a roller coaster!

Eric, do more spell chess please!

Itd be cool to add a third spell that lets any piece move like a king for a turn Turn your white bishop into a black one, or quickly adjust your knights

26:20 nice one!

Great games!

More spell chess!!

We should coin the term freezwang - zugzwang from freeze, where one freezes all the active pieces so that the opponent have to make a bad move with the remaining pieces!

Hey Eric, I came across a weird stalemate in a game - by opponent had all their pieces in a 3x3 square and I was down in material. Turns out, if you can freeze all your opponents pieces in one spell, it's stalemate because they can't make a move!

26:45 is not a checkmate, opponent king can use jump potion to jump over the rook to e1. EDIT: King can't jump over the rook. King still only can move 1 square. Jump potion only works for pieces that can move longer distances (queen, bishop, rook, probably also pawns in the default position).

13:43, missed literal mate in one jumping the g7 square.

@gokaytaspnar1355

8 ай бұрын

It's mate in 2 Opponent can freeze the rook and take the rook on f7 and then white must freeze both queen and the king and mate

At 6:26 the bishop was hanging, you could’ve jumped over your pawn with your king and took.

There's stalemate in spell chess too and it's draw. And if you freeze all of the opponent's movable pieces it will be a stalemate. But you can't freeze your own pieces to make stalemate.

@linuslucke3838

8 ай бұрын

What happens if you do freeze everything of yourself? You just lose on time?

@ggmoyang

8 ай бұрын

@@linuslucke3838 You can't do that, such freeze is illegal move.

@linuslucke3838

8 ай бұрын

@@ggmoyang ah, thanks

At 25:05 Eric said his only move was Kg8 to avoid checkmate but he could've used jump Kh6. Riiiiight?

@commentator3074

8 ай бұрын

King can go only 1 at a time. For going h8 to h6 u need 2 moves. Jump spell let work only on rocks, bishops and queens

@Zebo12345678

8 ай бұрын

No, jump doesn't give movement range. It's useless for the king, since it can't move far enough to reach the other side of a piece.

@papuce2

8 ай бұрын

Interesting, I didn't know that. The description is not precise enough, so thx for info @@commentator3074

@rodriguezro9999

8 ай бұрын

I see. That makes sense. Thanks gang.

I love the aesthetics of the pieces of thia mode, too bad we cant use them on normal chess

Here's a tip for anyone who wants to think about freeze in an intuitive way. One thing I think about when trying to think for tactics in normal chess is "if there was something I could do in TWO moves instead of one, what would it be?" The idea being that sometimes the solution to a tactic is to play a quiet move that threatens something bigger. This is exactly the logic you use when searching for a good "freeze" move. You want to find a 2 move combo, so you make it yourself by taking away your opponents responses to the first move.

@easymoney1226

7 ай бұрын

But you still have to be aware of the counter freeze :D

On the last position, the white King may jump over a Rook

When i was a kid and my father taught me how to play chess i used to be very upset when loosing so i came up with the idea of "special potion" which would let my king escape when needed. I am glad i was like 20 years ahead. And i still can't play the game.

Would be interesting if Freeze froze in time as well as space, i.e. nothing could move into or out of the frozen area, Jump spells could not be cast on any frozen pieces, etc.

More spell chess!

At the end the opponent could jump ver his pions I think

16:00 gxxf3 is so funny

Eric: "This game is so mind bending." Me: that's how I feel about normal chess 😢

thank you for more spell chess! MORE spell chess?

seems like checking is much stronger in this, bc blocking with a piece is bad... so the king has to move

MORE SPELL CHESS I NEED IT IN MY VEINS

6:38, I think you hung a rook to a bishop Jump spell there.

the only way to use your own theme with spell chess is to set up a custom game and apply the spell chess rule to your game.

At 6:36, the opponent could have traded a Bishop for a Rook by jumping the b pawn

4:55 I think opponent had freeze the queen and set up a double attack on her with Qd2. Even if we freeze their rook, we can't defend our queen from theirs.

I happened to get randomly paired against Benjamin Bok in spell chess. I got demolished lol.

Spell chess looks fun!

In the final position in the video I think the opponent could have jumped their king to e6 to avoid immediate mate

6:37 free rook. 11:26 free knight. 11:55 knight and two rooks for a queen though?

Suggestion: make a wizard Eric thumbnail if there's another spell chess video. I recommend Big Hat Wizard Eric or Pondering-Orb Wizard Eric.

15:20 eric what it u just jump over the g7 pawn with the h7 rook isnt it mate ?

I really wish the time control was longer because most of the games ended in flagging. The ones that didnt were really cool though

At 13:45, jumping the rook on h7 to f7 looks like a viable idea, talk about fancy

@commentator3074

8 ай бұрын

Yea, that f7 jump and Rf7 was pain to look at

At a certain skill level I'd think that freezes become mostly useless because the opponent will always counter freeze the same area. The only time a freeze would be helpful is to delay a check

@guillaumec1636

8 ай бұрын

Counter freeze isn't enough when you can defend the piece that was used for the capture

@rideroftheforce5245

8 ай бұрын

@@guillaumec1636 oh yeah, duh

when thinking what to do with the rooks against aiden on the last move before you flagged, wasnt just R jump but the other one, from H file over to f7 where its protected by the rook on A file, then its a mate in one isnt it?

@lucasmatsuoca

8 ай бұрын

With what jump? You need to wait to replenish, he messed up

I played this and got to a rook endgame where my opponent had a jump, and I didn't have any spells, and it wouldn't let me take his rook with my pawn on the back rank! Opponent said he thinks there's no promotion in spell chess?? Which if so, is really silly, and I don't see why that'd be the case. but it wouldn't let me move my pawn to the back rank, so either it was a glitch, or there's no promotion.

I think in the game against the NM the move to win at the end should have been the h rook jumping and taking the f7 pawn. Someone tell me if that doesn't work, but i think it should because eric was up on freezes

@dannychristensen7103

8 ай бұрын

The position is on the screen at 15:32

@commentator3074

8 ай бұрын

Yep, that was gg

Cmon Eric you literally just said you've never seen someone use all their freezes... lol you gotta use one there!

6:16 I think freezing the Bishop was correct.

"and i have to be careful, i think this is ok. 'cause i dont have my freeze, and opponent got 5 freezes. every check can be deathly.... but this check... " OPPONENT: knight check "OOHHHHHHHH!!!"

We need a way to do daily/correspondence games with variants 😂currently I think you can only do that with Chess960 - if we could do it with all variants I think the popularity of variants would skyrocket

14:51 If you played jump on g7 and took on f7 with the h rook instead, it would be instant mate...

At the end, could the king jump over the rook, effectively moving two squares?

6:52 you had queen takes d7 and freeze checkmate edit: I guess 1 spell at a time is allowed

@AZRockiesFan

8 ай бұрын

You can only use 1 spell at a time

@Ichthyodactyl

8 ай бұрын

Can you Jump and Freeze on the same turn? I thought it was one or the other.

you can cancel a spell if misplaced