A Game Courier Preset for Chess on a Longer Board with a few pieces added

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Chess on a Longer Board with a few pieces added

Enforces rules, but does not display legal moves.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Chess on a Longer Board with a few pieces added and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

Rules for David Howe's Chess on a Longer Board with a few Pieces Added

k-King	Q-Queen	r-Rook	B-Bishop	n-Knight	P-Pawn

o-Halfling-Rook	I-Halfling-Bishop	w-Withdrawer	Y-W-Wall	z-E-Wall

Board and Setup

          The board is 10 rows by 8 columns. The first rank is the standard array. The pawns, instead of being on the second rank, are placed on the third. The new pieces are placed in the second rank, with the Changeling (as a Halfling-Bishop) on the two edge squares, the Withdrawers in the adjacent squares, and the Wall positioned directly in front of the King and Queen.

The Pieces

The King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn move as they do in International Chess.

The Withdrawer moves as a Queen, but does not capture by displacement. Instead, it captures by starting its move adjacent to an enemy piece, and moving directly away from it.

The Changeling is a piece which changes each time it moves, from a Halfling Bishop to a Halfling Rook and vice versa. It starts out as a Halfling Bishop.

The Wall is a two-square wide piece. It moves forward or backward as a Rook, or one square orthogonally sideways. The Wall cannot leap, so all squares that the Wall moves over must be free of friendly pieces.
Pieces may move over a friendly Wall if they are moving in a forward direction. Pieces may never move over an opponent's Wall (except for Knights which may always leap over Walls).
A Wall is captured if an enemy piece moves into one of the two squares the Wall occupies. A Withdrawer may capture a Wall by moving directly away from either of the two squares the Wall occupies.
Walls capture by moving into squares occupied by enemy pieces. If the two squares a Wall ends its move in both contain enemy pieces, both enemy pieces are captured. A Wall cannot capture a Wall.

Other rules

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.

Credits

This preset uses the Alfaerie settings file for Chess on a Longer Board with a few pieces added, which was made by Antoine Fourrière.

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

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017