Check out Modern Chess, our featured variant for January, 2025.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Oct 21, 2017 11:09 PM UTC:

I'm thinking of adding support for Chess-and-a-Half to ChessV, but  have a couple questions/comments...

Castling: What is described here is actually not quite the same as "flexible castling".  In flexible castling, the king moves two or more spaces toward the piece in the corner, but cannot move only one.  The point of this is so that a move can be simply identified/annotated by (from square)-(to square).  If you allow the king to move a single step when castling, you need additional notation to be able to distinguish, and computer programs need additional interface to allow the move to be entered.  For this reason, it's almost always at least a 2-space move.  Wildebeest Chess is the only game I know of that allows a single-space castling move.  Just something to consider; ChessV can handle in either case.

Option capture-by-overtake: The fact that capturing pieces passed over by a cat or star cat is optional will require specification of how these moves are annotated in game scores, and some very-customized UI for any computer interface.  There may be some real game positions where you wouldn't want to capture (for example, if removing the piece opens up your king to attack making it illegal), but I'd still personally recommend making them mandatory because the alternative adds a significant amout of complexity.

Promotions: Is there any particular reason why the non-pawn promotions are optional?  Why would a knight choose not to become a speedy knight, or a cat not become a star cat, or a guard not become an eques rex?  (There might be a reason, but I can't think of any.)


Edit Form

Comment on the page Chess and a Half

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.