Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Very good. It could use a little proof-reading, which I could do later.

I did a little bit of proofreading and did some minor corrections of typos, punctuation, grammar, and word choice.

I didn't add capitalization or ending periods, though I'm wondering if you would like to add them. I noticed that The History of Castling section used a smaller font because you used a table. I have started using flex boxes instead of tables, but I didn't touch your HTML.

When I was programming castling subroutines for Game Courier, I made them agnostic about the identity of the two pieces castling. One game that comes to mind where this is useful is Chess with Different Armies. In that game, a King may castle with whatever piece in its army begins in the corners. Maybe you could add something about games that allow castling with pieces other than rooks or even the king if there are any.

Some remarks:

'Castle' in Xiangqi is really unusual; in almost every description in English I have seen, the 3x3 area is called 'Palace'.

Shogi does not have a castling move, but almost every text on Shogi strategy will tell you that the first thing you have to do in the game is 'castling', and then describe a large number of castle formations, usually with the King in or near a corner. I am not sure if we should refer to this different meaning of 'castling' in Shogi. Perhaps we could add a sentence that a 'castle' is a defensive constellation of pieces around the King near a corner (e.g. after you mentioned that the increased piece power made a centralized King unsafe). And that in Chess moving your King there (either through a special leap or the slow way) would trap the Rook, so that a single move has been provided to get the King in the corner without trapping the Rook in Chess. (In Shogi the corner piece of course is a Lance, which is trapped on the edge file by its own move, and it is usually integrated in the castle.

Fergus already remarked this: in some variants castling with pieces other than Rooks is possible. This should certainly be mentioned.

In the description of Fast Castling you don't mention whether it is allowed if any of the squares the King leaps over is under attack.

Perhaps we should mention something about notation for flexible/free castling (recommend one)?

Since you mention the terminology used in the ChessV option, you could perhaps also mention the XBetza notation for these types: O = castling, jO = close-rook castling, (usually prefixed with 'is' to stress that it is a sideways virgin-only move), the range indicator specifies the number of King steps, for flexible castling all possible castlings are mentioned separately. (XBetza does not support free or fast castling yet. I assume this would have to be done as a different atom, say S, because it is sort of a King-Rook swap. Where free castling would be nS (non-jumping), and fast castling S.)

ChessV's designation 'long' for Janus-Chess castling conflicts with the more common use of "long" for Q-side castling. I usually say 'asymmetric castling' when I refer to Janus Chess, although writing this makes me realize that I might as well call it 'symmetric castling', as the end result is the same K-side and Q-side. Perhaps 'symmetrized castling' would describe it best. In XBetza notation I have to define castling to the left and to the right as separate moves in Janus Chess (irO3 and ilO4). And because the setup is mirror-symmetric, left and right are swapped for black, meaning that the white and black King have different moves. Very annoying! In the Interactive Diagram I added an option castleFlip for this that automatically swaps the meaning of l and r on black castling specifications, so that the Kings can still be considered the same piece type. (Perhaps the meaning of l and r should always be swapped for black pieces in games with mirror-symmetric setups???)

Thanks guys.  I'm back to work so I won't be able to look at this until this evening at the earliest.

H.G., I'm not familiar at all with castling in XBetza but it does seem like something that should be included.  If you don't mind writing up a section on that I'd certainly put it in.

It may be worth noting that the first variant invention of mine that used 'fast castling' rules was my 12x8 Wide Chess creation.

Ok, that's why I didn't see the name "fast castling" on the waffle chess page.  I will fix it.

Greg, fast castling in the waffle chess preset is a mistake of mine. It supposed to be free castling. This mistake appears also in the frog chess and Hannibal chess where I am writing a preset for such a variation of the rules. I do not know how to correct these errors. Could you help, please?

Greg, fast castling in the waffle chess preset is a mistake of mine. It supposed to be free castling.

Why do you think that?  Kevin's page does not describe free castling - it says it does not matter if the squares in between are occupied and the rook always goes to the king's starting square.  This is fast castling, not free castling.

This mistake appears also in the frog chess and Hannibal chess where I am writing a preset for such a variation of the rules.

I do not understand what you are saying.  Frog and Hannibal have Standard castling.  Or are you saying you want to deviate from the rules and make presets with fast castling anyway?

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.)

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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?

@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!

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

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

That's OK; sometimes I even confuse myself.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Ok, Bob!

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.