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Archchess. Large chess variant from 17th century Italy. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Daniel Zacharias wrote on Fri, Nov 27, 2020 09:04 PM UTC:

the rook moves one or more squares towards the original position of the king; the king moves one or more squares towards the original position of the king.

Shouldn't the last word there be "rook"?


Parker KH wrote on Sun, May 22, 2022 05:05 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Fri Nov 27 2020 09:04 PM:Good ★★★★

i think so


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Wed, Oct 19, 2022 12:49 PM UTC:

For those interested in history, the move of the Champion of Arciscacchiere invented by Piacenza is clearly only crossing empty squares when "travelling" two squares as Rook or Bishop (p118). So, the Centurion cannot leap occupied squares as Alfil or Dabbaba. Piacenza insisted on this point several times in his description. (ex p119,p123). In Betza notation it is NnAnD. The Centurion is not a Squirrel.

However, Murray did not understand correctly and described the Centurion as a jumper in the eight directions. Pritchard repeated that definition given by the English historian and added the Knight’s leap that Murray had forgotten. He had forgotten it because Piacenza explains to have added the move of the Knight only few pages later. (The presentation of the rules by Piacenza is a bit messy).

So few pages later (p120), Piacenza confessed to have spoken with a certain Mr. Fantone which would have allowed him to have seen a chess book in which a Centaur also had the Knight’s power. Piacenza decided to adapt this idea in order to allow his new piece to reach any square on the board (otherwise the Centurion would have been color-bound and limited to half the board).

So, Piacenza’s Centurion jumps when moving like a Knight but does not leap on the rows, columns and diagonals.

In my opinion, the CVP would be inspired to give the genuine rules and not the wrong ones.

Piacenza's book is findable on the Internet. I can provide the photographs of those pages if someone is interested.

Last word for HG: there is nothing about a specific en-passant rule in that description of Arciscacchiere by Piacenza. So your implementation is not incorrect in my opinion. The description of this variant being at the end of Piacenza's technical book about chess, it is possible that this peculiar restriction was given for the orthodox chess that was presented by Piacenza. Then, someone would have extrapolated to the large chess variant as well. Again, we are not obliged to follow this as it is not written.


H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Oct 19, 2022 07:42 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 12:49 PM:

Since you seem to know this game, what about the castling? The description in the CVP article was totally confusing for me. So I only implemented the Dababba leap that was mentioned, as an initial move.


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Wed, Oct 19, 2022 08:52 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:42 PM:

Yes indeed, I had not noticed how unclear is this page! There is not a word about castling at this variant in the original Italian text. It safely can be supposed that castling, pawn's promotion, etc. were following the standard chess rules that Piacenza was playing with. In my book with Rick K we wrote the following:

"Piacenza did not provide other rules specific to this game. It may be supposed that they follow those he gave for regular chess.i Castling is free according to the Italian fashion of the time in which the King may move to any of the vacant squares between King and Rook, and the Rook moves around the King to any spot up to the King’s square of departure. Pawns promote only to Queens."


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