Capablanca chess

Carrera's chess In 1617, the Syracusan priest and chess player Pietro Carrera (1573-1647) published a book Il Gioco degli Scacchi (The Game of Chess), which contained a description of a chess variant played on an 8×10 board, which he appears to be using for the purpose of conserving the classical chess structure while inserting the new pieces. He placed new pieces between a rook and a knight. Carrera called them the campione ("champion", called the chancellor in Capablanca chess) and centauro ("centaur", archbishop in Capablanca chess). The "champion" combines the movement of the rook and knight while the centaur combines the bishop and knight movements.'' His likely primary motivation for the design was either the limitations of opening theory in this time or that he was just following the logic of Pedro Damiano and Ruy López de Segura that already assumed the logic of chess playing out to the game being about the second player’s response to the King’s or queen’s pawn opening, and even deeper, the first player’s response to the second’s immediate defense against them establishing the ideal pawn center, to its inevitable conclusion or that he considered it improper to play with a fairy piece, specifically a royal crowned Knight, merely by way of handicap and he was not as concerned with avoiding structural weaknesses in the new game’s starting position created by a potential new piece standing on a given file, as with the archbishop between the knight and the rook leaving its own pawn unprotected. Carrera used the names Centauro (centaur) instead of archbishop, and Campione (champion) instead of chancellor. Coincidentally, he could have placed the doubleton of Italian or Spanish Draughts, games which he even mentioned in passing in course of discussing the origin of chess, between the knight and the rook and left the new piece’s pawn unprotected from anything but itself, thus improving marginally upon placing the archbishop there. Though he was a good chess theoretician, he appears strangely unconcerned about the theoretical benefits and detriments of each possible setup, and the major theoretical detriment of the setup he chose is that the archbishop is thus mainly important to the opening theory of the game in the negative sense that it is necessary to get it out of the way of queenside castling, that is, when playing his variant adapted to modern rules. Other early variants Another early knighted chess variant was played in 18th century India. This "Hyderabad decimal chess" was first described in a 1790s manuscript from Hyderabad. It was later described in Murray’s 1913 History of Chess (pp. 346-347). The game included three new knighted pieces: one wazir (bishop+knight), one zurāfa (queen+knight) and two dabbābas (rook+knight) and was played on a 10x10 board. The 19th century saw further similar variants with extra pieces developed. Das Schachspiel, seine Gattungen und Abarten (The Game of Chess, its Types and Varieties, 1840) by Ludwig Tressau of Leipzig, the first modern book on chess variants, discusses two similar chess variants with knighted pieces: Kaiserspiel and Sultanspiel. Kaiserspiel was played on a 10x10 board with two additional pieces, one commander (queen+knight) and one adjutant” (bishop+knight). Sultanspiel meanwhile expanded the board to 11x11 and added the marshal (rook+knight). In 1874, the English chess player Henry Bird (known as the inventor of the f4 Bird's Opening) proposed a further variant on Carrera's game in an issue of the City of London Chess Magazine. The chancellor piece also appeared in Benjamin R. Foster's chancellor chess variant played on a 9x9 board. First publicized in the St Louis Globe-Democrat (12 February 1887), which states that the invention "created a furore in the chess world heretofore unknown." Foster published a booklet promoting and explaining the game in 1889. == Capablanca chess ==

The Cuban chess master José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942) also promoted his own "Capablanca chess" (or Capablanca's chess) variant in a series of talks, interviews and articles.'' This concern was also shared by his friend Emanuel Lasker according to Lasker's own Mein Wettkampf mit Capablanca. Capablanca proposed two opening setups for Capablanca chess. His final revision placed the archbishop between the and ; the chancellor between the and . In Capablanca chess, the king moves three squares when castling instead of moving two squares as in standard chess. A pawn can promote to archbishop or chancellor in addition to the regular promotion options in standard chess. Unlike orthodox chess, each king, instead of each queen, starts on a square of its own color (the white king on a light square; the black king on a dark square). Capablanca initially experimented with a 10×10 board size with a different initial setup and where pawns could advance up to three squares on their first move. After some later play-testing however, he also promoted a variant on a 10x8 board. Edward Lasker wrote: ... I played many test games with Capablanca, and they rarely lasted more than twenty or twenty-five moves. We tried boards of 10×10 squares and 10×8 squares, and we concluded that the latter was preferable because hand-to-hand fights start earlier on it. Lasker was one of the few supporters of this new variant and he helped play-test the game with Capablanca. Hungarian grandmaster Géza Maróczy also played some games with Capablanca (who got the better of him). British champion William Winter thought that there were too many strong pieces, making the less relevant. Capablanca's proposition was also criticized by other contemporary chess players in print, including Max Euwe and Siegbert Tarrasch. The debate was carried out in newspapers like the Manchester Guardian. The new piece names archbishop (Spanish: arzobispo, originally named chancellor) and chancellor (Spanish: canciller, originally named marshall, followed by marshal) were introduced by Capablanca himself. These names are still used in most modern variants of Capablanca Chess. == Post-Capablanca variants ==

playing Gothic chess (a version of Capablanca chess) with Ed Trice The knighted chess family continued to add new variants well into the late 20th century. There are different types of knighted chess variants. One class of variants use the regular 8x8 chessboard of 64 squares, while another category uses larger non-standard board sizes or types (10x10 or 10x8). Apart from these changes, most variants do not change the standard rules of chess. There have been numerous attempts to modify and improve on Capablanca chess. Most of these add relatively minor changes, such as changing the starting positions. Various game designers and chess players have commented on how the starting position of Capablanca's original variant leave the pawns on the i file undefended, creating a significant weakness that can be exploited. Because of this, several chess variants postdating Capablanca chess were designed with initial arrangements where all pawns are protected by at least one piece; these include Universal chess, Grand Chess, Embassy chess, Trice's chess, Grotesque chess, Ladorean chess, Schoolbook chess, and Univers chess. The creators of these variants felt that leaving any pawn undefended in the initial setup created an easily exploitable weakness that needed to be resolved. List of standard board variants Variants which rely on the standard 8x8 chessboard include the following: • Neo-chess (1923) by Hugo Legler (on an 8x8 board), replaces the knight on b1/b8 with an archbishop, and the rook a1/a8 with the chancellor. • Coronation chess created by Frank Maus in the 1920s added the knighted pieces by a specific move called coronation which consists of moving a basic piece (rook, bishop, or knight) into the square of another to merge them into a combined stronger piece that unified their powers. Maus coined the terms empress for rook+knight and princess for bishop+knight, names which were adopted by numerous later chess problemists. • Wolf Chess by Von Wilpert (1959) which introduces replaces one rook with a "wolf" (R+N) and replaces both knights with a "fox" (B+N) and a nightrider (a knight slider). It also adds four extra powerful pawns ("sergeants"). • Tutti-frutti chess (1978) by Ralph Betza and Philip Cohen which replaces queen's rooks with empresses (rook+knight), queens with amazons, king's bishops with queens and the king's knights with princesses (bishop+knight). • Seirawan chess (or S-Chess) by Yasser Seirawan and Bruce Harper begins with the classic chess setup, and the extra pieces are retained in hand and introduced as the game progresses and back rank squares are vacated. • Superchess or Exchess (Dutch: Superschaak) by Henk van Haeringen (1999), which introduces several new pieces, including empress, princess, and amazon, and the players agree before hand on the starting lineup by replacing some (or all) of the standard chess pieces with some of the new pieces. Pawns may also be replaced with new types of pawns. • Musketeer chess, which expands on Seirawan chess by allowing players to select two extra pieces from an expanded pool of fairy chess pieces. List of larger board variants Variants which use larger boards include: • Ladorean chess (2005) by Bernhard U. Hermes • Embassy chess (2005) by Kevin Hill which uses a starting position identical to Grand Chess on a 10×8 board • Univers chess (2006) by Fergus Duniho adopts the starting lineup of Universal chess on a 10×8 board • Schoolbook chess (2006) by Sam Trenholme • Capablanca random chess (2004) by Reinhard Scharnagl • Modern Capablanca random chess (2008) by José Carrillo • Gliński–Capablanca Chess, which combines Gliński's hexagonal chess with Capablanca chess Some variants of knighted chess only adopt one knighted piece, not both. One example of this is Chancellor chess, which only uses knighted rook (chancellor) and is played on a 9×9 board. Another example is Puerto Rican chess player Gabriel Vicente Maura's modern chess (c. 1968) which only uses the prime minister (bishop+knight). Large board variants Chess variants played on larger boards have a long history. Examples include the Arabic shatranj al-tamma (10×10) and Courier chess (12×8). Numerous knighted chess variants adopt larger boards following Capablanca's lead. One of these adaptations, Gothic chess (later renamed Trice's chess) was patented in 2002 and promoted by American chess player Ed Trice and saw some commercial development in the early 2000s; specialized chess sets were created. In 2004, the Gothic Chess Computer World Championship was held. Trice claimed to have found the ideal starting position which avoided several flaws in previous variants of Capablanca chess. Hungarian-American grandmaster Susan Polgar played some Trice chess matches, and in 2006 there was an attempt to arrange a match between Fischer and Anatoly Karpov in this variant, but this never took place. An organization for the game was also founded, the Federación Mundial de Ajedrez Moderno (FEMDAM), which had delegates from 16 countries. When notating games in algebraic notation, the letter E is used for the elephant and H for the hawk. If the player places one of the two pieces on the board, it is written after a slash. For example, 1. Nc3/E means that the player moved his knight from b1 to c3 and placed the elephant on b1. The elephant and the hawk are introduced to the game in the following way: whenever the player moves a piece (king, queen, knight, bishop or rook) from its starting position (that hasn't already been moved), one of the pieces in hand may be placed immediately on the square just vacated. One cannot use the placing of an elephant or hawk to block check. If the player moves all his pieces from the first without placing one or both in hand pieces, he forfeits the right to do so. After castling, the player may put one of the pieces in hand on either the king's or the rook's square, but he may not place both pieces in hand in the same turn. Pawns may promote to a hawk or an elephant in this game (in addition to the normal chess pieces). The starting setup is arranged as per Chess960 rules, but also includes the following additional restrictions: • All pawns in the starting positions must be protected by at least one piece. • Bishops cannot start on neighboring squares. • The queen and the archbishop must start on opposite-colored squares. • The starting position cannot be that of Gothic chess. In total, there are 12,118 starting positions in Capablanca random chess. "Capahouse" similarly applies the drop rule from crazyhouse to Capablanca chess. The rules are as in Capablanca chess except the following new rules: • Drops resulting in immediate checkmate are permitted. This includes pawn drops. • Pawns may not be dropped on the 1st or 8th ranks. • Pawns that have been promoted and later captured must dropped as normal pawns. • Dropped white and black pawns on the 2nd and 7th ranks, respectively, may make a two-square move as their first move after the drop. • Dropped rooks cannot castle. == Strategy ==

Seirawan and Harper wrote the following regarding the changes in strategy in their Seirawan chess:the placement of the pieces on squares vacated by the existing pieces changes the game and creates innumerable possibilities which render all existing opening theory open to reexamination and opens up many new possibilities as well. Players who understand the principles of opening play will do well, while players who rely primarily on memorizing variations will find themselves in trouble. == Piece values ==

H. G. Muller suggested the following estimated piece values for 8x10 Capablanca chess pieces: Edward Trice meanwhile gave the following values for the pieces, again on an 8x10 board: These values would be different in variants with different board sizes and configurations however. On larger boards, bishops gain in value, because both of its forward moves become likely to attack the enemy camp. Thus in 8x10 Capablanca chess variants, two bishops are clearly superior to two knights, and closer in value to two knights plus pawn. There is in addition a strong "leveling effect": the strong pieces (archbishop, chancellor, and queen) cannot display their superiority against a large number of weaker pieces, because the weaker pieces can restrict them. For example, a queen attacked by a knight must usually move to avoid capture, and cannot rely on being defended; but a knight attacked by a queen need not fear. Thus sacrificing a strong piece for rook and minor, or three minor pieces, can give significant compensation (greater than a pawn) because it increases the value of one's remaining strong pieces relative to the opponent's. == Programs that play knighted chess variants ==

• ChessV • Fairy-Max • Zillions of Games • Fairy Stockfish • Chess Remix == Web sites that play knighted chess variants ==

• Chess.com • EvoChess • Green Chess • Musketeer chess • Pychess ==References==