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Carrera's Chess. Large chess variant from 17th century Italy. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Sep 21, 2004 01:12 PM EDT:

I was thinking of the same thing. It would be easier to program not only
for Game Courier but for Zillions too and maybe ChessV as well. I had
thought I had seen a new ZRF for Aberg's, and I was hoping to download it
and use it to test whether free castling gives White too great an
advantage, as some people have claimed it does. But I guess it doesn't
exist. I had never programmed free castling into my ZRF for Aberg's,
because I didn't know it was part of the game.

I was tending toward free castling, because there is already a name for
it. Perhaps I shall use a half-enhanced castling and call it flexible
castling. It would work like this. The King would move two or more spaces
toward the Rook, and the Rook would leap over the King to the immediately
adjacent space. By omitting the option of moving one space toward the Rook
and moving the Rook to the King's original space, a program doesn't have
to distinguish between a King's usual one-space move and a castling move,
and it will remain less confusing for players to enter notation into Game
Courier. It also helps to avoid making the castling move too powerful. I
think one of the complaints against free castling was that it would allow
the Rook to go directly to the King file. This may make castling too
powerful by increasing the opportunity of using castling to check the
enemy King. The flexible castling I'm suggesting won't allow the Rook to
move to the King file.

Here's another thing I like about flexible castling. It forces the player
to make a choice between one thing he wants and another. Is it more
important to move the King to a certain space or to move the Rook to a
certain space? He sometimes has to give a little to get what he wants. He
can't have his cake and eat it too. In contrast, free castling is
basically two moves in one. I think it's best to avoid that. So, I think
I will use flexible castling in Grotesque Chess. However, I'm now toying
with different ideas for the opening setup. I'm going to try out some
different setups with a Gothic Chess set and see which I like best.