Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jul 16, 2008 11:28 AM UTC:
What exactly is this supposed to add to the game compared to orthodox castling? It seems to me it would be strategcally foolish not to castle to a square one step away from the corner. Standing in the corner is in general a weakness, as your King defends one less Pawn, and has fewer escape squares. Standing further away from the corner leaves a gaping hole n the undefensible side of the King. If in a certain position it is not allowed to castle the maximum distance, because you would castle through check, it would be suicidal to castle in that direction in the first place.

So the only application I see of a variable King destination is that in Q-side castling one now will always go to b1/b8 in stead of c1/c8. But to get that, the much simpler symmetric castling rules as in Janus Chess would suffice.

The variable Rook destination might have some use, although this is largely spoiled by the fact that we are not allowed to give check. (After all, this would be the main reason why you need the Rook immediately in a certain position, rather than allowing an extra move for it.) Usually castling is done in a game stage where there are no open files yet, so the position of the Rook is rather indifferent. So why not put it always next to the King?

It seems to me that this adds very little to Chess, other than complexity we could do without.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Free Castling Rule

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.