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Alice Chess. Classic Variant where pieces switch between two boards whenever they move. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Feb 16, 2013 04:51 PM UTC:

I made a dedicated derivative of Fairy-Max to play Alice Chess. It uses the method of a single board with 'pedestals', i.e. it uses the same coordinate notation on both boards. This to make it playable in a GUI as if it were normal Chess, when you switch legality testing off. (The GUI will see moves jumping other pieces, that in reality are on the other board, and would not think these were legal...)

The engine can be downloaded from http://hgm.nubati.net/Alice.zip , and can work under WinBoard.

I might some day equip WinBoard with special support for Alice Chess, so that the user can actually see which piece is on which board.

The Alice version of Fairy-Max does not have e.p. capture. It has castling, but I am not sure what it considers 'passing through check', and for Q-side castling also b1 has to be empty. Normally this should not be a problem.

The rules of Alice Chess suggest each move is to be considered a multi-step move, the transfer between the boards being the final step. Otherwise there is no logic in the requirement that you must not move the King to a square that is attacked on the board it came from, but can stay as long as you want on a square that is attacked on the other board. So if there were e.p. capture, I think that it should be possible to capture a Pawn that just moved on the board it came from, even if it did not do a double-push. (And of course you can always capture it on the board it ended up on.) It does not seem that the game was intended to be played that way, however, so it would be logical to forbid any form of e.p. capture.