A Game Courier Preset for Gross Chess

This preset enforces the rules and displays legal moves.

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Gross Chess

Rules enforced. Legal moves displayed.

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

Rules of Fergus Duniho's Gross Chess

Gross Chess is played like Chess except for the addition of extra pieces and some differences regarding Pawns and castling.

King

Queen

Rook

Bishop

Knight

Pawn

With the castling and Pawn exceptions detailed further below, the Chess pieces move as they do in Chess. Here is how the other pieces move:

Champion	The Champion may leap one space horizontally or vertically, as a Wazir does, two spaces horizontally or vertically, as a Dabbabah does, or two spaces diagonally, as an Alfil does.	Wizard	The Wizard may leap one space diagonally, as a Ferz does, or it may make an angular 1-3 leap, as a Camel does.
Marshall	The Marshall moves as a Rook or a Knight.	Archbishop	The Archbishop moves as a Bishop or a Knight.
Cannon	The Cannon moves as a Rook but must hop over an intervening piece to capture.	Vao	The Vao moves as a Bishop but must hop over an intervening piece to capture.

Castling

A King may castle with a Rook by moving two to four spaces toward the Rook, with the Rook leaping over the King to the space adjacent to it. Usual castling conditions apply.

Pawn Triple Moves & En Passant

The Pawn normally moves as it does in Chess, but in addition to making a double move on its first move, it has the power to make a triple move on its first move. This must be a non-capturing move three spaces forward within the same file. It may not pass over any occupied space. Double and triple moves are legal only on a Pawn's first move. A Pawn that moves one space on its first move may not subsequently make a double move. When a Pawn makes a double or triple move, it may be captured on the next turn by an enemy Pawn that can move diagonally to one of the spaces it has passed over in its double or triple move. To capture by en passant, a Pawn moves diagonally forward one space, capturing the Pawn that has just moved over its new space.

Pawn Promotion

On reaching any of the last three ranks, a Pawn may promote to a piece held in reserve. Each side's reserve initially includes 2 Queens, 4 Rooks, 4 Bishops, and 4 Knights. Each captured piece also goes into the reserve. But it is only on reaching the last rank that a Pawn may promote to any piece held in reserve. On the tenth rank, promotions are limited to color-bound and short-range minor pieces, these being the Bishop, Vao, Wizard, and Knight. On the eleventh rank, a Pawn may also promote to a Cannon, Champion or Rook but not to an Archbishop, Marshall, or Queen.

Notation

You should be aware that Game Courier's notation is not identical with standard Chess notation. Game Courier has been designed for general use with any of several different Chess variants, and it accordingly uses a generic system of notation. This system is described in detail in the User's Guide. Here are the basics you need to know for Chess. Move a piece by writing its present coordinate, a hyphen, and its destination coordinate. For example, "e2-e4". There is no special operator for captures. A hyphen should be used even when a piece is captured. To signal to your opponent what piece you moved, and to provide an extra bit of error checking on the move you enter, you may include Game Courier's notation for the piece before the move. For example, "P e2-e4". Note that Game Courier uses uppercase letters for White pieces and lowercase for Black pieces. Black could enter "p e7-e5" for a move but not "P e7-e5".

Most moves must be written explicitly. Game Courier does not rely on context to understand ambiguously written moves, such as "f3", which makes sense only when one piece can move there. Promotion should be handled by explicitly adding the promoted piece to the space the Pawn has moved to. For example, "P f8-f9; Q-f9" would move a White Pawn from f8 to f9 and promote it to a White Queen. Because this preset is automated to enforce rules and handle special moves, it allows slightly abbreviated expressions for en passant and castling. En passant should be entered as a move by your Pawn. For example, "P f5-g6" would capture by en passant a Black Pawn that had just made a triple move to g5. When receiving a move like this, this preset will check whether it is a legal en passant move, and if it is, it will automatically capture the enemy Pawn. Castling should be entered as a move by your King. Just move your King where it would go in the castling move, which is two spaces toward the Rook. The preset will then check whether castling to that space is legal, and if it is, it will automatically move the Rook to the space the King passed over.

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 fairychess settings file for Gross Chess, which was made by Fergus Duniho.

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

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017