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Comments on Grand Chess. Notes on Grand Chess and a variant. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Jul 20, 2003 08:54 AM UTC:Good ★★★★Having given a rating of good to Grander Chess itself I feel obliged to give one her as well as it is the proposed array change that is the real improvement. As for the rest I care little either way, although I am not keen on inter-rank castling. Your 'masculine' and 'feminine' sides of the board are puzzling as both the Knight compounds are titles of male officers. Indeed Marshal has more suggestion of a feminine side as the first 3 letters derive from mare, a female horse. Still, I can quite see a King prefer his Queen flanked by a celibate Cardinal rather than the secular officer that Marshal (or Chancellor, a rarer name for the same piece) represents!
Another approach to castling might be the following one, used in my Ecumenical Chess (http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/ecumenical-chess.html), of which the large-board arrays have King and Rooks on different ranks. Castling requires that the King has not left the middle two files, the Rook involved has not left its own and the adjacent file, neither has left the back two ranks, and both are on the same rank. The King moves 1/4 of the total number of files (3 in the largest, 2 in the others) towards the Rook, and the Rook moves to be adjacent to the King on the inner side. Note that this takes the King off its group of four squares and so disallows castling with a second Rook.
Grand Chess is a game that is widely played with the stablished rules. I think that castling in any way may be rejected by the majority of players, the central position of King gives a special flavor to the game, and many times you can construct defensive structures using the power of pieces. The game seems to be always in an inflexion point, where you must decide between attack, defense or both, making the game very deep. Surprisingly, attacks are not easy to perform, regardless the position of the King. This game is excellent, and variations are more a curiosity or an attempt to explore new ideas than real improvements.
I agree with both Michael Howe and Roberto Lavieri. To me, Grand Chess is such a great variant that it deserves to stand as it is, unchanged, right up along side Chess, Xianqi, and Shogi.
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