Rated Comments for a Single Item

The game starts with only the pawns on the board. Each Player divides the remaining pieces into five pairs: R+R, N+N, B+B, K+Q, and C+A (using the names Chancellor and Archbishop). White begins by choosing a pair and placing them somewhere on the first rank. Black copies this placement on the eighth rank and then places another pair of pieces somewhere on the eighth rank. White copies and then places another pair. Black copies and then places another pair. White copies and then places the final pair. Black copies on the eighth rank, resulting in an opening setup with every Black piece on the same file as the corresponding White piece. No castling allowed and no need to place the rooks on either side of the King. The only special rule is: Bishops must be placed on squares of opposite color. Naturally this also means you are not allowed to fill all the available squares of one color before the Bishops have been placed. The game should be played with the modern rules for pawn movement and capturing. Promotion to Archbishop, Chancellor or Queen works perfectly. Back on August 18, I discussed the myth of underpromotion in games with this piece set - see the Comments to 'Mainzer Schach'.

Looking at http://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/carrera.html which is
the Carrera's Chess page I notice that both Queens are on a square of their
own colour at the start of play.

Looking at the start up position in the Java applet of
http://chessvariants.com/play/erf/CarreraC.htm I notice that neither Queen
is on a square of her own colour at the start of play.

Does anyone by any chance have access to reproductions of any illustrations
from the 1617 book please so that the matter may be determined historically
please?

I have recently been devising some code point and illustration pairings of
Unicode code points and chess symbols. 

I have now added some more code points so as to include the Champion and
the Centaur of Carrera's Chess.

I have published these in the hope that that might lead to some Unicode
compatible chess founts being produced, perhaps including the Carrera
pieces.

The first document is at the following address.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/chess.htm

The second document is at the following address.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/chess2.htm

Both documents are available from the index at the following address.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/golden.htm

The index page of the webspace is as follows.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo

As I am interested in typography I am interested to know what designs the
1617 book suggested for the Champion and the Centaur (if indeed any).  Does
anyone know please?

William Overington

20 June 2002

Does anyone play Carrera's Chess please?

I like the idea of playing this game simply because it is so old.

I have seen the note in the older feedback which leads to mention of a 19th
Century translation of his book.  Does that book deal with ordinary chess
or with Carrera's Chess, or both, please?

Are there any documented games of Carrera's Chess please, in particular
from the 17th Century?

William Overington

19 June 2002

[email protected]