Free Castling Rule
An interesting chess variant is Free Castling Rule.
The Dictionary of Modern Chess indicates that this was played in 17th Century Rome.
Rules
- When castling, the King may be placed on any square up to & including the Rook's square and vice versa.
- The King & Rook must still end up to the right of the Rook in Kingside castling (and the left of the Rook in Queenside castling).
- Check may not be given by castling.
Examples
![](freecastling1.gif)
Here white may castle Queenside and black may castle Kingside.
![](freecastling2.gif)
This is one possible way white and black may castle under these rules.
The most popular Kingside castle in Free Castling involves moving the king to the h-file and the rook to the f-file.
![](freecastling3.gif)
Shown is yet another way white and black may castle.
There are many more possibilities.
Sources
Dictionary of Modern Chess, Byrne J Horton 1959.
Diagrams were made with Chess Captor.
Written by Roger Cooper. HTML conversion by Chuck Moulton.
WWW page created: December 1, 1999.