Schoolbook is for people who like 19th century tactical chess. Placing the archbishop in the center results in having the archbishop pawn undefended when moved forward two squares. This results in the kind of intensly tactical games that Morphy or Anderssen played. 1. d4 in FIDE chess was very uncommon (Morphy only opened with 1. e4 and always responded to 1. e4 with 1. ... e5); this setup hopefully avoids what Morphy once called "uninteresting games and dreary analytical labours".
The name "Schoolbook" comes from the recent tradition of naming 8x10 chess variants after fonts.
Q: Queen. Identical to a chess queen.
N: kNight. Identical to a chess knight.
B: Bishop. Identical to a chess bishop.
K: King. Moves a a Chess king; object is to checkmate this piece. The only difference is how this piece castles.
A: Archbishop. Has the combined moves of a knight and bishop.
M: Marshall. Has the combined moves of a knight and rook.
Here is a table of four different derived values for the pieces, obtained from three different chess variant playing computer programs and one other source.
Piece | ChessV | SMIRF | Zillions | Aberg |
Pawn | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
Knight | 2.500 | 3.056 | 2.362 | 3.000 |
Bishop | 3.250 | 3.690 | 2.859 | 3.300 |
Rook | 4.700 | 5.604 | 4.262 | 5.000 |
Queen | 8.750 | 9.558 | 7.060 | 9.000 |
Archbishop | 6.500 | 6.838 | 5.127 | 6.800 |
Marshall | 8.250 | 8.832 | 6.659 | 8.700 |
The ChessV numbers were obtained by looking at the source code for ChessV. The SMIRF values, derived by Reinhard Scharnagl for his SMIRF chess computer program, were obtained from this web page. The Zillions of Games' values were obtained by looking at the values of pieces by right-clicking on them after loading a fresh Schoolbook zrf file, and before moving any pieces. Aberg's figures come from the Chess variants server.
All four agree on the following:
The name of the rook + knight piece in Schoolbook is called the "marshall". The name of the bishop + knight piece in Schoolbook is called the "archbishop". Pawns may promote to become a rook, knight, bishop, archbishop, marshall, or queen, regardless of the number of pieces already on the board.
The notation used for this game is standard algebraic opening, where the lower left corner is square a1, the upper right corner square j8, and 'A' signifies the Archbishop and 'M' signifies the Marshall. When no piece name is specified, a pawn is assumed to move. For example, f4 is the move that moves the King's pawn to the forth rank. When castling, only the King's move is noted, such as "Kh1" to signify that the king has moved to h1 and the rook to g1. In order to minimize the confusion between "i" and "j", the I file is always upper case in notation.
The rules are otherwise as in FIDE chess.
While this change removes many of the opening traps enjoyed in FIDE chess, this is offset by the increased power of the pieces in Schoolbook chess.
Black's goal is to stop this kind of opening setup. Considering the tactical power of all of the Schoolbook pieces, Black has many options to try and equalize.
For example, the following moves stop 1. f4 from being followed by 2. e4: Nd6, Af6 (Problem: blocks Black's f pawn), Ad6 (Blocks black's best developing square for his queenside Knight), f5 (the King's pawn opening Schoolbook-style), d5 (Schoolbook's version of the Sicilian), and Ng6 (Schoolbook's version of the Alekine).
Since Schoolbook has a higher branching factor than FIDE chess, rote memorization of openings is not as fruitful in Schoolbook as it is in FIDE chess. Since the general themes in Schoolbook are the same, players who understand the concepts behind a good opening in FIDE chess will feel right at home playing Schoolbook.
David Paulowich found the following 4-move mate that mates with a bishop: 1. e4 g6 2. f4 Kg7? 3. Bf2 Kh6?? 4. Bi5#
I have also made a Game Courier preset which is available on the chessvariants server.