Ratings & Comments

I do not understand "tgat". You probably meant that.

Indeed. Hard to avoid typos on these virtual keyboards of Android devices... I corrected it.

I'm not sure I understand what you say, HG!

What is not understandable? Typo! What else.
By the way, details about programming are not clear for most people. How to deal with it?

I did not meant the typo!

By the way, details about programming are not clear for most people. How to deal with it?

I don't think there is any "fix" to this issue.  I am not sure there is any issue at all.  Some conversations are going to involve things other people don't understand.  That said, the talkchess forums are the usual place for these kinds of discussions, but I am happy to have some discussion here as well.  Some people who are not chess programmers may still be interested in whether the new neural-network techniques being applied to orthodox chess can be applied to chess variants.

That sounds plausible.

I don't think the O-O, O-O-O thing scales very well. What about games with an odd number of files and the King starts in the middle?

You could just use O-O for everything along with the king's destination square, like O-O b1. If you want to preserve O-O-O, it could be understood as referring to the left half of the board from White's perspective, while O-O refers to the right half.

You could just use O-O for everything along with the king's destination square, like O-O b1

You could.  But, at that point, I would ask what value the "O-O" is bringing.  Wouldn't the more standard "e1b1" also accomplish that?  Although, I guess this would address the issue with (e.g., Wildebeest Chess) where the King can move a single space and still castle.  Perhaps if either "O-O" or "O-O-O" is followed by the notation of a square, it would mean castling to that square (and there would be no difference between "O-O" and "O-O-O")

To solve the ambiguity problem in 1-step castling (or in other castlings where the castling piece can also move multiple squares on its own, such as that silly 'guarding' of the Queen in Enhanced Omega Chess), the Diagram uses the tilde instead of the hyphen (or nothing) as connecting sign for indicating castlings, like K~d1. But I like to stick to conventional SAN where this is possible.

Well, I'd like to point out the grand apothecary chess games where you may castle in four ways with 2 different pieces!

I think the most general solution is to point out both moves and then add a simple "c" for example.

Hi H.G.:

I didn't change anything for the longest time in the diagrams on the Sac Chess rules page. I assumed the chancellors disappearing might have resulted from something Fergus (or someone else) changed on CVP website, Game Courier or the Diagram Designer. Right now I haven't tried to edit a rules page myself for so long (if that's what needs to be done) that I'm afraid I might make things worse.

I guess the diagrams are generated 'on the fly'. So probably the image file for the chancellor was renamed.

And now that you are here: I have been commenting a Sac Chess game for Jean-Louis' new book, and I noticed that after castling the King is really still very unsafe. Because it is still directly behind the Pawn shield. So castling really seems a bad idea. It seems much better to quickly move out an Amazon to f3/f8 or e2/e9, and then hide the King away on g1/g10. The Rook is then not trapped, and can get out once the minors are developed, and the Sailor can be moved to i2/i9 to protect the Pawn Shield. The Judge, Archbishop and Chancelor can then get out over h1/h10, g2/g9 and h2/h2, respectively.Leaving the King behind an enormous 'wall of power'.

Does that make sense?

I'd hoped that castling would often come in handy, but there have been a couple of games, so far, where my opponents have dropped their K back a rank against me (likely after an Amazon move to third or second rank - one possible drawback might be if said Amazon ever has to retreat somewhere with loss of time). Castling kingside followed by shifting my K sideways one more square is something I often do, though maybe out of habit from chess (somewhat unrelated, Play Tester recently championed the idea of quickly charging the pawn in front of his Sailor on the kingside, even before either side may have castled).

The more space you have control of on a side of the board, the safer it is to castle there, I suppose. If Black plays a French Defence analogue, for example, then kingside castling seems nice enough for White. Not only that, but if a centre file is about to get opened early, castling may be a good idea. Sac Chess is still relatively unexplored, of course. I thought I'd sensed some unexpected defects to its design (compared to chess, at least) since inventing it, but at least it's being played more often again lately (though I'm always one of the players). Bishop(s) (and later Missionaries) flying out to the edge of the board, especially of the queenside, for example (the Sailor pawn charge may be another).

I'd also hoped when designing the game that the Judges (Centaurs) on the wings would help to guard a castled K for a long time. Castling queenside seems like it's usually quite unsafe, even compared to chess. The K is still likely unsafe in the middle for a couple of moves at the least. I'd secretly hoped to be the first one to castle queenside in a Sac Chess Game Courier game, but Fergus beat me to it when playing someone else. It's also easier to discourage or prevent castling queenside in the first place than in chess, it seems.

Testing the game first with actual play, say using a preset on this website's Game Courier, would give players and viewers much clearer ideas about how any complex strategies might unfold in typical games.

Because the game is not played on a board that uses plain graphics (like a chess board), you (or someone else) may need the help of a CVP site editor or the webmaster to get the graphics of the board onto this website, for subsequent use on Game Courier when you (or someone else) will go about making a preset.