Cavalier Chess

Cavalier Chess is, roughly speaking, Chess on horseback. The pieces are more powerful, the dangers and challenges are greater, and new strategies are needed to win. Created by Fergus Duniho, Cavalier Chess is a new Chess variant, and you can play it on your computer with Zillions of Games.

Contact

If you want to contact the creator of Cavalier Chess, I can be reached from:

http://Duniho.Fergus.com/ If you want my email address, replace the first dot in "Duniho.Fergus.com" with an ampersand.

Website

This page comes with cavalier.zip and is also available on the web. If you're not already reading this on-line, be sure to check out the Cavalier Chess website for new mating problems and strategy tips. If you design some problems or write something on Cavalier Chess strategy, you can contact me to put it up on the website. The URL is:

http://www.Duniho.Fergus.com/chess/cavalier/

Download

You will need Zillions of Games, a Commercial Windows 95/98 program, to play Cavalier Chess on your computer. If you have that, and if you're reading this on-line, you can download Cavalier Chess here:

http://www.Duniho.Fergus.com/chess/cavalier/cavalier.zip

Mating problems, which used to be in a separate archive, are now done in a smaller format and are included with the regular archive.

Installation

The files which come with this archive make use of Zillions of Games to play Cavalier Chess and most of the variations and hybrids I've described. If you don't have Zillions of Games, these files won't yet be of any use to you. So if you don't have it, get it before you proceed with the installation. It is available from their website at http://www.zillions-of-games.com.

Cavalier Chess comes with Chess,_Cavalier.zrf, various documentation files, a board image, and a set of pieces. It comes with a complete set of Chess and Cavalier Chess pieces largely based on Armando Hernandez Marroquin's Chess Motif font. The Cavalier and Nightrider are made from the Knights in a couple other fonts of his. If you place these in your /images/chess/ directory, they will replace the pieces which come with Zillions, and you will be able to use them when playing Chess or any other Chess variation that Zillions plays. If that's what you would like to do, place the *.bmp files in /images/chess/ and place Chess,_Cavalier.zrf in /RULES/. The *.gif images are only for use with this file. They are not used by Zillions of Games.

If you don't want to replace the chess pieces which come with Zillions, place all the files for Cavalier Chess in a separate directory.

To play Cavalier Chess, double click on the icon for Chess,_Cavalier.zrf, or load the file from Zillions of Games.

Acknowledgements

John Gollon, whose Chess Variations book sparked my interest in Chess variations many years ago.

Hans Bodlaender, whose Chess Variant Pages recently helped renew my interest in Chess variations.

Armando Hernandez Marroquin, who made the Chess fonts I made my pieces out of, and for his permission to distribute the pieces I've made.

Jeff Mallett and Mark Lefler, whose Zillions of Games program made it possible for me to create Chess variations I could play against my computer right away.

Jose Raul Capablanca (1888-1942), the creator of Capablanca's Chess, which provided some of the inspiration for Cavalier Chess, as well as two of the pieces.

The Chinese, for creating Chinese Chess, whose Knight I borrowed for this game.

T. R. Dawson, who invented the Nightrider.

David Howe, whose design for Xhess, a large Chess variant inspired by Cavalier Chess and Grand Chess, influenced my redesign of the Nightrider and my reselection of colors for the board used with Zillions.


This page was made and written by Fergus Duniho, creator of Cavalier Chess.