A Game Courier Preset for Two Players Four Seasons Chess

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Two Players Four Seasons Chess

Uncoded. No rules enforced. No legal moves displayed.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Two Players Four Seasons Chess and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

Axedrez de los Quatro Tiempos del Anno (Chess of the Four Times of the Year, or of the Four Seasons)

A very modified variety of Indian Chaturaji explained in 'Libro de los Juegos del Axedrez, Dados y Tablas' (Book of the Games of Chess, Dice and Tables), manuscript of ninety-seven parchment sheets illustrated with miniatures, terminated in Toledo and Sevilla in the year 1283 by a team of specialists coordinated by Don Alfonso X el Sabio (the Wise, the Learned), King of Castille and Leon.

Rules of Four Seasons Chess written by Herr Hans Bodlaender:

http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/4seiz.html

Important: of the two boards shown in the rules explained by Herr Bodlaender, the bigger brown board appearing first is inclined at a right angle, perpendicular to the observer. The smaller yellow board appearing second is axial to the observer. The orientation must be respected, otherwise the locations of knights and castles would be switched. The correct array can be seen in the illustration of the original manuscript, explained in Wikipedia, hyper linked below.

Rules of Four Seasons Chess explained in Wikipedia (in Spanish):

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajedrez_Cuatro_Estaciones

The rules given by Herr Bodlaender are based on the 1913 book 'A History of Chess' by Mister Harold James Ruthven Murray (chapter XVI of the first part, page 349), and the 1968 book 'Chess Variations: Ancient, Regional, and Modern' by Mister John Gollon. The rules given in Wikipedia are based on the same books, but giving more details. The books are themselves based on the 1283 manuscript 'Libro de los Juegos' by King Don Alfonso.

Two Players Four Seasons Chess

This play preset has been created by Mister P. A. Stonemann, CSS Dixieland, Confederate States, in the year 2022.

The preset is for playing the medieval Iberian game of Four Seasons Chess between two players. It does not show legal moves and does not enforce rules, so the players may freely agree to play by the original rules of the Alfonso manuscript, or by other rules of their preference.

In the Iberian Peninsula games with three or more players are normally played in a levogyrate rotation (with players taking turns counter-clockwise). Besides that rule, in this preset players may agree on specific rules for promotion or for other aspects of the game. Not all rules were explained in the original Alfonso manuscript of 1283, several rules were assumed to be known.

Two Players Four Seasons Chess has officers in four colours, though not necessarily the historical colours. The pawns are in two colours, and pointing in the four different directions: up, right, down, left, when seen from the point of view of the first player. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED FOR BOTH PLAYERS TO SET THE ORIENTATION OF THE BOARD AS 'FIRST PLAYER', otherwise the pointing direction of the pieces will be reversed and may cause confusion. Players new to Four Seasons Chess may feel confused with the direction of pawns anyway, and for preventing confusion all pawns are pointing in correct directions. For officers the pointing direction is irrelevant, as they can move in all directions.

The board is chequered, monochrome. Chequered boards were already the usual pattern in the Iberian Peninsula, at least in predominantly Christian lands, though the original Indian, Persian and Arabic boards had been unchequered.

Historically, Four Seasons Chess was intended as a game for four players. It is derived from the ancient Indian game of Chaturaji (according to some authors also called Chaturanga of Four Armies, Four-Handed Chaturanga, or similar names), which is considered ancestor of Chess and of various other Chess-like games formerly played, or until today, in different parts of the World. King Don Alfonso gives credit to India as the region of origin of primitive Chess.

By far the most comprehensive study of varieties of Chess (or games similar to Chess) that has EVER been published is the 'Encyclopedia of Chess Variants', by Mister David B. Pritchard. The edition of 2007 is out of print, but it has been generously made available in electronic form by his daughter Lady Wanda and the Estate of the late Mister Pritchard:

In C. E. R. N. Hyper Text Mark-up Language format:

http://www.jsbeasley.co.uk/encyc.htm

In Adobe Portable Document Format (same content, but more detailed index):

http://www.jsbeasley.co.uk/encyc/encyc.pdf

Another important book giving details on plenty of interesting Chess varieties is 'Chess Eccentricities', written by Major George Hope Verney, published by Longman, Green and Company, London 1885. It is available here in Chess Variants and in the Internet Archive, as photographs of pages from the printed book. The photographs are in high resolution, which facilitates comfortable reading, but which with slow connections also takes time for rendering.

Chess Variants:

https://www.chessvariants.com/chess-eccentricities/index.html

Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/ChessEccentricitiesBook_GeorgeVerney

Undoubtedly the most monumental book detailing the History of Our Noble Game is 'A History of Chess', penned by Mister Harold James Ruthven Murray, published in 1913. Divided in two parts, these are its chapters:

First Part, Chess in Asia

-Introductory (index, conventions...)

-Chess in India (three chapters)

-Chess in the Malay lands

-Chess in further India

-Chess in China, Corea and Japan

-Chess in Persia under the Sasanians

-Chess in the Eastern Empire

-The Arabic and Persian literature of Chess

-Chess under Islam

-The invention of Chess in Muslim legend

-The game of Shatranj (three chapters)

-Games derived from Muslim and Indian Chess

-The modern games of Islam

-Chess in Central and Northren Asia, and in Russia

Second part, Chess in Europe

-Chess in Western Christendom: Its origins and beginnings

-Chess in the Middle Ages

-The mediaeval game

-The early didactic literature

-The moralities

-The mediaeval problem (three chapters)

-Chess in mediaeval literature

-Chessboards and Chessmen

-The beginnings of modern Chess

-From Lopez to Greco

-From Greco to Stamma

-Philidor and the Modenese Masters

-The nineteenth century

Such a treasure of book is available in various electronic formats in the Internet Archive:

https://ia600108.us.archive.org/11/items/AHistoryOfChessHJRMurray/

Four Seasons Chess is described in the XVI chapter of the first part, page 349 of the book written by Mister Murray. The diagramme showing the initial array is inclined at a right angle in the hand-made illustration of the old manuscript, but it is turned axial to the observer by Mister Murray, thus showing the correct initial location of knights and castles.

Offered also by the Internet Archive,  an impressive collection of hundreds of Chess books:

https://archive.org/details/folkscanomy_chess?&sort=titleSorter&page=6

Two reasons justify conversion of Four Seasons Chess for four players into the game for two players presented here:

-It is quite possible that when four players could not be gathered together, just two players could still play a game of Four Seasons Chess, each player controlling two armies in diametrical opposition on the board.

-Game Courier, unfortunately, cannot be used by more than two players per game. It has been a long term project of Mister Fergus Duniho to make Game Courier usable for games where three or more players could play the same game, but so far he has not done it. At present there is no prospect that he might ever do it.

Four Seasons Chess was occasionally played using one die or two dice (either oblong dice of four faces or cubic die of six faces), but normally it was played without dice. The mixing of Chess and dice was a prominent feature of games in the Hindustan Peninsula, but it never took a firm hold in the Iberian Peninsula. The Portuguese, Galician, Basque, Castillian, Catalan, and all the other Iberian peoples use dice until today for various games, but not for playing Chess.

There are players who do not like games where random factors intervene, we prefer games of complete information where reasoning and calculation decide the result, much more than intuition and chance. Games using dice were also often played for gambling, and in some places gambling was forbidden. When Persian Chatrang and Arab Shatranj entered lands where the Islam or Christian religions had a hold, dice were seldom used because those two religions did not approve the practice of gambling.

The elephant of Four Seasons Chess moves as the fil of Arab Shatranj, leaping to the second diagonal square, it cannot move just one square. The chariot moves as the castle or rook of European Chess. The horse moves as the knight of European Chess, and the infants as the pawns of European Chess. Infants can only advance one square at each turn of play. Orthogonal if they do not capture, diagonal if they capture, exactly as in European Chess. Because infants can never advance two squares, there is obviously no capture en passant. And no castling either. All those rules were gradually introduced in Europe, probably from the Iberian Peninsula, in the fifteenth century or later. They were completely unknown in India, and even in Europe, they did not exist yet in the Chess varieties described in the Alfonso codex.

Players can play Four Seasons Chess as they prefer. The original board had two crossed lines connecting the four corners of the board. The cross had double purpose, not explained by King Don Alfonso but known from other games:

-First, it was simply a visual help for moving the infants (pawns) in the correct directions.

-Second, it affected the time for promotion. When an infant raught his last rank of the board, he immediately leapt back to the square crossed by the line at the column where the infant was located. Then the infant had to advance again for promotion, whether in that column, or if capturing one or more opponents, then in a different column. This leaping back happened only one time for each infant. Thus, infants located in a lateral column promoted immediately, without leaping back, while infants located in a central column had to leap three steps back. If the square happened to be occupied by an opponent, then the opponent was captured (if being an opponent king, then the game was lost for the army of that king). If the square happened to be occupied by a friend, then either the leaping infant had to continue his backwards leap until falling on a vacant square, or if no vacant square existed, the promotion could not be made. The infant could not advance to promotion, or advanced but stayed dormant (and capturable) until he had conditions for being promoted. The exact rules for promotion varied from place to place.

That promotion rule was done for balancing the lateral infants with the central ones. Normally the central infants tend to have a higher value, but making promotion immediate for the lateral infants while forcing the central infants to leap three squares back, in some manner made the lateral infants as valuable as, or more valuable than, the central ones.

Players may prefer to ignore the complex promotion altogether, and just promote the infant at the instant of his arrival to the last square of the column, whether being a lateral column, a central column, or any of the intermediate columns.

This interesting medieval game of Four Seasons Chess is one of those cherished traditions that we must preserve...

Below, a richly elaborated set of Enochian Chess, also known as Rosicrucian Chess. This mystic variety of Chess for four players was invented by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which claimed for it historical sources in Ancient Egypt. But in fact, it seems much more based on Indian Chaturaji than on Senet or on another known Egyptian game.

The game was used for initiation of neophytes, teaching them the mysteries of arcane, esoteric, forbidden knowledge. The board is decorated in various colours, with a complex symbolism and with pieces inspired on Ancient Egyptian themes. More information can be found in Wikipedia, here in the pages of Chess Variants, and in other sources.

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_chess

Chess Variants:

http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/enochian.html

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 four_seasons settings file for Two Players Four Seasons Chess, which was made by CSS Dixieland.

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

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017