Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Mar 25, 2018 03:17 PM UTC:
Yes, that's right. That fact (and that kings cannot reach corners, and that K+R cannot force mate against k) is pointed out in Pritchard's Classified Encyclopedia. Also mentioned there are some variants, which are available here under the Related menu as Friedlander's Java applets: Displaced Grid Chess, wherein the grids are moved one rank and one file resulting in the left- and right-most grids being only one wide and fixing the pawn problem; and Berolina Grid Chess, using Berolina pawns instead of ordinary ones.
(I'll fix the link description, which currently says grids are "4 by 4" squares.)
Yes, that's right. That fact (and that kings cannot reach corners, and that K+R cannot force mate against k) is pointed out in Pritchard's Classified Encyclopedia. Also mentioned there are some variants, which are available here under the Related menu as Friedlander's Java applets: Displaced Grid Chess, wherein the grids are moved one rank and one file resulting in the left- and right-most grids being only one wide and fixing the pawn problem; and Berolina Grid Chess, using Berolina pawns instead of ordinary ones.
(I'll fix the link description, which currently says grids are "4 by 4" squares.)