A Game Courier Preset for Korean Chess

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Korean Chess

Appears to enforce rules, but no display of legal moves.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Korean Chess and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

Rules of Korean Chess

Start

At the start of the game, each player may transpose the positions of adjacent Elephants and Horses on either or both sides. This gives each player four possible starting positions. (See Notation below for details.)

Object

You win by checkmating your opponent. There is no stalemate, because a player may pass any turn. (Enter pass as your move when you pass.) Different interpretations of the opposing Generals rule have been offered by different sources. The one enforced here is that if one General faces another across an empty file, and the other General does not immediately move away, the game ends in a draw.

Pieces

Red	Green
		The General moves one space along any of the lines in the palace, the X-marked nine-space area at one end of each board. It may not move into check, and it may not leave the palace.
		The Councellor moves one space along any of the lines in the palace, the X-marked nine-space area at one end of each board. It may never leave the palace.
		The Elephant steps to the opposite end of a 2x3 rectangle by making one orthogonal move, followed by two diagonal moves in the same direction. If any space in its path is blocked, it may not complete its move.
		The Horse is a kind of non-jumping Knight. It moves one space orthogonally, followed by one more space diagonally outward. It may complete its move only if its first step takes it over an empty space, and it may not stop on the first step. Without any obstacles, a Horse reaches all the same spaces as a Knight.
		The Chariot moves as the Rook, riding along any orthogonal line. Additionally, it may move diagonally along the diagonal lines inside a palace. For this to be possible, the move must begin and end in the palace.
		The Cannon moves as a Chariot, except that it must hop over an intervening piece to move. Unlike the Cannon in Chinese Chess, this Cannon must hop over another piece even to move. One Cannon may never hop over another Cannon, which allows one Cannon to block another. Also, a Cannon may not capture another Cannon. Because of these restriction on how this piece moves and the initial positions of the pieces, no Cannon can move at the beginning of the game. Like the Chariot, it may move diagonally along the diagonal lines inside a palace.
		The Pawn moves forward or sideways one space. It may never move backwards. When inside the enemy palace, it may move diagonally down the diagonal lines of the palace.

Notation

Game Courier uses a generic form of algebraic notation. Every move may be written as a move from one coordinate to another, using the hyphen to separate the two coordinates, as in "e1-e2". As a courtesy to your opponent, and to allow Game Courier to do some simple error checking on your move, precede the move with the piece label, as in "G e1-e2", which moves the Red General from e1 to e2. Note that Red's pieces are identified by uppercase labels, while Blue's pieces are identified by lowercase labels.

This game allows you to pass moves. To pass a move, enter pass as your move.

To swap Elephants and Horses at the beginning of the game, use the swap command. For example, this will swap Elephants and Horses on both sides for Red, then move an Elephant. Follow each swap command with a semicolon, and use coordinates for its arguments. Use it only before your first move.

How to Move Pieces

Full Algebraic Notation

Algebraic notation identifies each space by a coordinate that begins with its file label and ends with its rank label. On the Chess board, files go up and down from one player to the other, and ranks go from left to right. In most games, files are represented by letters, and ranks are represented by numbers, but there is no fixed rule requiring this for all games, and some games, such as Shogi, reverse this convention. If you look at the diagram, you will usually see the file labels going from left to right and the file labels going up and down. And if you hover your mouse over a space, you will normally see the name of the coordinate appear in a tooltip.

It is not uncommon to see algebraic notation being used for Chess, but it is often in an abbreviated format that requires you to know both the rules of the game and the current position to know exactly which piece moves where. For example, the notation "Ne6" indicates that a Knight is moving to e6, but it doesn't indicate which Knight, and it doesn't specify where the Knight is coming from. To figure this out, you need to know how a Knight moves and which Knight on the board can make a legal move to e6.

Although rules may be programmed for individual games, Game Courier itself does not know the rules of any game, and it is unable to parse abbreviated algebraic notation. Therefore, it relies on full algebraic notation, which completely specifies the move without requiring any knowledge of the game's rules or the current position. The most usual type of full algebraic notation indicates the piece that is moving by its label, the space it is moving from, and the space it moving to. In Chess, a typical first move might be written as "P e2-e4". When you hover your mouse over a piece, you will normally see the piece label followed by the coordinate for the space, and when you hover it over an empty space, you will normally see the coordinate label. Including the piece label in your notation allows Game Courier to check that the piece you're moving is the right one, and it makes game notation easier to follow, but it is not mandatory.

You may promote a piece by including a promotion move after your regular move. A promotion move has a piece go directly to a coordinate. Here is an example: "p e7-e8; q-e8".

You may remove a piece from a space by adding an @ to the space or by omitting the destination coordinate. For example, both "@-e4" and "e4-" would remove the piece on "e4". This is useful for en passant when you are playing a game that does not handle this automatically. For example, "P d5-e6; e5-" removes the Pawn on e5 after a Pawn moves from d5 to e6.

You will not need to remove spaces for most games, but if you should need to, you can do this by omitting the first coordinate in a move. For example, "-e4" would remove e4 from the board. To add or return a space to the board, you may add an @ or any other piece to it.

Available Pieces

Pieces are represented by labels, usually using uppercase letters for White and lowercase letter for Black. When you enter a move or specify the starting position for a game, you should remember that piece labels are case-sensitive. Many piece sets are available for use with Game Courier, and this table shows you which pieces belong to the piece set you are currently using.

These pieces come from a set containing more pieces, but this preset has had the set of pieces reduced to those used in the game.

These pieces were made by Fergus Duniho from a Chinese language font. Since I could not find code for representing the draft script characters used for the green pieces, these pieces all use the regular characters. This set uses the characters for the Generals that are used in South Korea. These represent the rival states of Han (漢) and Chu (楚). The backgrounds are marble. The red characters and borders are ruby, and the green characters and borders are jade.

Credits

This preset uses the default settings file for Korean Chess, which was made by Fergus Duniho.

Game Courier was created, programmed and written by Fergus Duniho.

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017