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I don't know much about Marsellais, I have tried it a few times with a novice status, but I have not analyzed rare situations and fine details. I think this move can NOT be done, en passant movement is a Pawn move in which you capture an enemy Pawn moved INMEDIATELY before the en-passant capture. In your example, after the Pawn move you moved other piece in the second part of the turn. I think it is the same if you move the Pawn twice letting it in a position in which en-passant is permissed, you can't take the Pawn because the last move was not a two-steps move in the same PART of the turn, you moved one square in the second part of your turn, and this is the last move to the effects of the game. This is an interesant discussion, and it must be clarified by experienced players. If we are rigurous with the Chess rules that I suppose are translated to Marsellais, if you move a Pawn two squares and it lands in a position in which it can be captured en-passant, and after that you move other piece, this is the last move, so the Pawn can't be captured en-passant, but if you move first the other piece and after that the Pawn, it is vulnerable to en-passant capture, so order can be important to the effects of the application of this rule. Has someone an 'official' response?.
I've understood the interpretation of en passant capture to mean the capturing player makes the en passant move 'as soon as legally available'. For example, if the initial double-step pawn move results in a discovered check, the check must be dealt with, then, on the next turn, if the player is not again in check, the pawn may be taken en passant, if that move is still available. A series of checks would 'push' the en passant capture along with it. The checks could even be ended by the double capture move originally suggested. If that move, the en passant capture ameliorating check, was available, then it would have to be taken then, or the en passant opportunity would be lost. This could theoretically occur in a FIDE game, no? Anyway, the en passant capture would then be available to the other player during his next move, which would have to be the one-move capture, and not the two-move non-capture. In which case, the situation described would be a serious blunder, or a brilliant sacrifice. This does not hold if Roberto is strictly right, and there is a voluntary pass by the opponent, for, theoretically, the opponent could have, instead, made a voluntary en passant capture between the non-capturing moves.
No, I'm wrong about en-passant rule. It states: 'A pawn that is moved two squares in one move (half a turn) can be taken en-passant, even if the pawn moved in the first half of the turn. The en-passant taking should be done on the first move of the turn. However, when two pawns can be taken en-passant, this is allowed.' I have to see the comment that is going to be displayed in a few hours, because I'm now a bit confused with Antoine's question. Some clarifications are needed about rare cases, I expect that an experienced player can give detailed explanations about it.
Interesting question! I always take 'en passant' by pushing my opponent's Pawn back to the third rank and then capturing it in a normal fashion. The result is the same as if I forced my opponent to retract his two-step Pawn move and then make a different move with the same Pawn. Marseillais Chess rules lead to considerable confusion here. I would be tempted to say that Black may capture the N(c3) in Antoine's example, but may not perform an en passant capture of the P(c4). We may find out that this question has been dealt with before.
This implies that the opponent cannot capture two men with one en passant move.
Thanks to Doug, it answers Antoine's question, and it swhows that my initial interpretation was not wrong as I though: 'My interpretation of the 'two moves per turn' is simple: after you move the first move of your turn, the other player is forced to 'pass', as a permissed (and obligatory) 'move' in this game, and after completing the turn with your second move, the two-moves turn is available for the other player.'
To paraphrase Betza, the Queen's ability to do 'two things at once' makes it worth a Pawn more than a Rook and a Bishop. My last game of Marseillais Chess leads me to the opinion that Q=R+B exactly in this variant, as the two separate pieces can both move in the same turn. The subject of Marseillais Chess piece values deserves further study.
The fact that one of the best chess players of all time (Alekhine) took the trouble to play at least one game of this variant may count for something.
In trying to tentatively estimate the value of the pieces in this variant, I'd guess that the long range pieces may be worth, say, one and a half times what I give them as in standard chess. Thus: P=1; N=3.49; B=5.25; R=8.25; Q=15 and the fighting value of K=4 (though naturally it cannot be traded).
Wow, this rule change makes a big difference to the game of chess!
The sample games were finished in 4, 7, 18, and 13 moves - each move certainly has much more influence on the game play.
I've been trying to think of ways to "add power" to the game "Chess on an Infinite Plane" without adding more or stronger pieces. This might be a good way to do it (but maybe with some limitations).
Is there anyone who would like to try such a game? I'm open to any new and innovative ideas. If you have any favorite pieces, we can try those also (but I'm looking for more than just a mix of new pieces).
The games in play for Chess on an Infinite Plane are going well so far. I'm just interested in a version which might somewhat amplify the game power a little.
A request was made on another thread for games scores and/or analysis of Marseillais. I ran a self-play match with ChessV using about 12 total hours of thinking. Here is the score:
1. c2c4 b7b6,c8b7 2. b2b3,c1b2 b7g2,g2h1 3. f1g2,g2h1 e7e5,d7d5 4. b2e5,d2d4 b8c6,c6e5 5. e2e3,d4e5 a8c8,f8b4 6. b1d2,a1b1 d5c4,b4d2 7. d1d2,b3c4 c7c5,d8d2 8. e1d2,d2c3 h7h6,c8d8 9. b1b6,b6b7 g8e7,h6h5 10. b7a7,a7b7 f7f6,f6e5 11. g1f3,f3e5 e7c6,c6e5 12. f2f4,f4e5 e8g8,f8f2 13. b7d7,d7d8 f2f8,f8d8 14. e5e6,a2a4 d8d6,g8f8 15. h1f3,h2h3 g7g5,h5h4 16. f3b7,a4a5 g5g4,g4g3 17. a5a6,b7g2 d6e6,e6a6 18. c3d3,d3e4 a6d6,d6d2 19. e4f5,f5g4 d2g2,g2g1 20. g4h4,h4g4 g3g2,f8f7 21. g4f5,f5e4 g1a1,g2g1=q 22. e4d3,d3c2 a1f1,f1f2 23. c2d3,d3e4 f7e6,g1g6 black wins by checkmate
Also, there have been 12 games completed on Game Courier. You can find the game logs by following this link.
I expect 23 moves is probably in the neighborhood of what a well-played game of Marseillais should last. Double moves lead to sharper tactics and bloodier games. For example, defending a piece doesn't necessarily accomplish much, since the opponent can use his two moves to take the piece and then move the attacker away to a safe location (a kind of hit-and-run.) Also consider that each move is really two moves, so this game had the equivalent of about 45 moves of conventional chess.
Unfortunately, if you run this test with ChessV it is going to crash. There's a bug I discovered when trying to run this that I first had to track down and fix. The version I recently posted was a "release candidate" to get it out into the wild so I could get people doing more testing and reporting problems. So far about a dozen bugs have been found and fixed. I hope to release an update shortly - possibly this weekend. Then you'll be able to run similar tests. The short explaination is that there was a bad interaction between the double-move and the code that handles en passant.
Why 12 hours? Somewhat arbitrary. The longer you let it think, the deeper it can think. But the time required to reach the next level of depth increased exponentially, and the exponent can be quite high. To reach enough extra depth to make a difference in skill might require a couple of days.
I should also point out that Marseillais is different enough from standard chess that we don't really know how to best program a computer to play it. We are in uncharted waters here. Almost certainly there are changes that need to be made to the standard chess algorithm for proper play of double-move variants, but we do not yet know what those changes are and it will take a lot of study and experimentation to find them. If you're really interested in the details, chess programs have something called Quiescent Search that is very important, but this concept doesn't really work for double-move variants and it is not clear what should replace it. You can read about quiescent search here.
But, all that said, this score is of what is probably one of the highest quality games of Marseillais ever played. Humans don't really know how to play it well either. Every aspect of standard Chess has been studied deeply for hundreds of years. But, as you saw for yourself when you went searching out samples games and analysis for double-move variants, there isn't much available. But stay tuned. This is an area that will hopefully see more development in the future. Now that there is a GUI that can run double-move games, hopefully some other chess programmers will make engines that are capable of playing them.
I ran the game giving each side 8 hours on the clock. Didn't wind up using all the time, though, because the game ended first. You never really know for sure how much time you should use for any given move because you don't know how long the game will last.
Regarding Chess on a 12 x 12 Board, I've played a few games here. You can find the logs on Game Courier. It seems there is definitely a use for "flanking" - going outside and around. You can get a rook moving on the very first move if you want.
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