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Castling Rules in Chess Variants. An investigation of castling rules in chess and chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Nov 11, 2023 02:04 AM UTC:

Aurelian wrote a while back, in regard to my fast castling idea:

"...I think the player should need to put some work into castling because the gain (king safety) is pretty high. That even if regularly fast castling very soon into the game might not be a good idea because "it shows the hand" of that player."

The first sentence reflects my most serious concern about fast castling; on the other hand, it may help reduce the edge/initiative the first moving player (White) has in many if not all CVs - including chess itself, maybe, if fast castling were a rule to be used. Indeed, one chess grandmaster once commented that he knew he could get castled and developed with White in most games, but with Black it wasn't as sure.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 04:34 PM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from 04:22 PM:

Ok, Bob!


Bob Greenwade wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 04:22 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:35 PM:

What I was unsure of is whether I was remembering the (house) rule correctly, that there could be pieces in the way for this kind of Castling.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 03:35 PM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from 02:08 PM:

Ok, so what are you unsure about the intervining pieces?


Bob Greenwade wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 02:08 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 05:09 AM:

Oh! By "intervening pieces," I mean pieces between the King and the Rook.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 07:49 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:40 AM:

@HG, I will still keep it in the back of my mind. It could prove handy someday.


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 07:40 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Wed Nov 1 10:33 AM:

You, HG, have found a case where fast castling is ok because you granted some special blocking power of some pieces towards the otherwise unblockable pieces. That works in those games. But what about 12x12 or 14x14 games that don't have leaping generals? Fast castling is a way to cheap move. I think the player should need to put some work into castling because the gain (king safety) is pretty high.

In variants where the King starts behind multiple rows of pieces, King safety becomes an issue only very late in the game. Unless there are a few jumping pieces and pieces that can block those, which battle on another 'level', where the board is only sparsely populated, and the King is smothered by the normal pieces.

I don't think it would ever be much of a challenge to castle, no matter how many moves it takes to make that possible. The point is that the opponent would have to do it too. E.g. in the case of Shogi, where there is no special castling move, players typically just walk the King to a corner, and surround it with defending pieces, before they even start thinking about attacking. So the major effect of slowing the King's progress towards a safe fortress in the corner is to extend the game with a relatively uninteresting 'prelude'. Depending on your taste you might want to eliminate that, or elevate it to an important strategic decision. I don't see any market for an intermediate case, where you make it just a bit boring and not very important.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 05:09 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Wed Nov 1 05:31 PM:

I meant what you are unsure on the "intervining pieces" part?


Bob Greenwade wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 04:03 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 02:34 AM:

That's OK; sometimes I even confuse myself.

"Swap Castling": The King and Rook trade places.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, Nov 2, 2023 02:34 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Wed Nov 1 05:31 PM:

@Bob, I don't understand what you want to say!


Bob Greenwade wrote on Wed, Nov 1, 2023 05:31 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 02:15 PM:

I'm not sure about the "intervening pieces" part.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Nov 1, 2023 02:15 PM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from 01:30 PM:

@Bob, This seems very easy to code. But the problem is that there is no challenge to overcome before castling. So not much fun added to the game!


Bob Greenwade wrote on Wed, Nov 1, 2023 01:30 PM UTC:

When I was a kid, there was a general misunderstanding about castling in my neighborhood; we always played it where the King and Rook swapped places entirely, whether there were intervening pieces or not. (I guess, in this context, one might call that "swap castling.") Is there a way to code that?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Nov 1, 2023 10:33 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 08:50 AM:

Well, orthodox castling is too cumbersome. After so many moves have taken place the game is probably deep into the middle game so there is not much safety to obtain anymore. On the other hand regular fast castling poses almost no challenge as you have to move only one piece from the king's path to the edge. You, HG, have found a case where fast castling is ok because you granted some special blocking power of some pieces towards the otherwise unblockable pieces. That works in those games. But what about 12x12 or 14x14 games that don't have leaping generals? Fast castling is a way to cheap move. I think the player should need to put some work into castling because the gain (king safety) is pretty high. That even if regularly fast castling very soon into the game might not be a good idea because "it shows the hand" of that player.


H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 1, 2023 08:50 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 08:10 AM:

Well, I don't know. It just seems a complication for little to no benefit. What problem is this supposed to solve?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Nov 1, 2023 08:10 AM UTC:

While I was thinking about designing a collection of new variants I come across an older idea of mine. Let's call it quite fast castling! The idea is about a partial fast casting where one should have a maximum number of pieces to jump and not any number like in normal fast castling. This is a compromise between orthodox castling and fast castling. It can be useful in the context of large board variants where orthodox castling is practically impossible due to the many obstacles, and fast castling is too cheap (or at least that is how I see it)! As the game I design now include musketeer chess style gating regular fast castling is ok as the back row is crowded for a longer time. But large board variants won't have gating or brouhaha squares or anything of the sort as in those cases would be preferable to just push pieces one rank up.

What do you guys think about this?


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sun, Apr 9, 2023 09:47 PM UTC:

I was looking for definitions of other castlings. This page is excellent.


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Feb 2, 2023 10:05 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from Sat Jul 18 2020 09:52 PM:

I added mention of the pO notation for fast castling to the XBetza section, and dressed up the article with two Interactive Diagrams for exemplifying flexible and fast castling.

I also added mention of the K~b1 notation for unambiguously specifying flexible castlings.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jul 18, 2020 09:52 PM UTC:

I finally got around to updating this to incorporate the various suggestions and corrections.

  • Added a section on how castling is described in XBetza notation

  • Added examples where the castling move is preserved, but with pieces other than king and/or rook. In Knightmate, the knight castles instead of the king. In CwDA, the king castles with pieces other than rooks. I also mentioned the exception for castling with a colorbound piece with the Colorbound Clobberers.

  • Updated the first occurrence of Fast Castling to Wide Chess

  • Fixed the text size issue in the History of Castling section by eliminating the HTML table. Did not need to use Flexbox, thankfully, because I have not had time to get my mind around that yet (although it looks interesting.)


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, May 9, 2020 01:29 PM UTC:

I moved this page and its graphics to the /terms/ directory.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, May 6, 2020 04:25 AM UTC:

I have deleted everything in all my fast castling presets (they did not work anyway) and from the regular castling rules for waffle chess. I am sorry for any inconvinience.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, May 5, 2020 03:17 PM UTC:

There is also a waffle chess preset with regular castling that was used for some games.

My thought here is to edit this preset and remove the rule enforcement (assuming the games are complete.)  This way the games will still be available and people can view them, but if people go to create a game with the preset it will give the warning "Uncoded. No rules enforced. No legal moves displayed."


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, May 5, 2020 03:12 PM UTC:

The help I was requiring  was to change the name of those presets. As this is no longer needed nor is the help. Just thank you for clearing what fast castling and free castling means.

About the presets with altered rules I understand why my way is confusing. There is also a waffle chess preset with regular castling that was used for some games. Tomorrow I'll find a way to avoid said confusion.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, May 5, 2020 02:54 PM UTC:

With frog chess and hannibal chess I am deviating from the rules, indeed this is what I want to say.

Please do not do that.  That creates confusion for you to create a rule-enfocing preset that does not enforce the correct rules for the game.  If you want to play-test an alternate version with game courier, but you should either (A) change the name of the game "Frog Chess with Fast Castling" or something like that, or (B) do your playtesting without rule enfocement.

I do not know how to correct these errors. Could you help, please?

I am not sure what you are asking for help with.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, May 5, 2020 02:41 PM UTC:

It seems then I am ok with the fast castling rule. I was in error the second time. 

With frog chess and hannibal chess I am deviating from the rules, indeed this is what I want to say.

I hope that settles things.


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