The task of bringing checkmate upon a lone King with only a Knight and Bishop has always been a good exercise to learn coordination of the minor pieces. Capablanca highly recommends it in his Chess Fundamentals, bemoaning the fact that many otherwise excellent players cannot corral his King in the required 50 moves (no pawns to move). This ending translates somewhat to the 10x8 board, however, it seems to me that the time it takes to achieve the mate is longer than on an 8x8 board, assuming good play by the lone King, although 50 moves seems to be sufficient. It is more challenging to force him into the wrong-color-corner (the standard preliminary position) while eliminating his recourse to the long side, but it is possible to do as far as I can see. I would like to see this question explored empirically, for the fact of what works is the final test in this game. If the enemy king can slip out to the 10-square side, he is then able to somewhat double the number of moves required to mate. If he does escape once to the 10-square side, it looks like he can be somewhat contained at the opposite, wrong-colored-corner, inasmuch as prevented from doing the same thing again, for if he could repeatedly escape, the knight and bishop would be then incapable of winning, regardless of the number of moves. This second containment appears to have something to do with the coordination of the offensive pieces, and especially the pattern of the knight moves. A student of this ending will quickly discover that while the knight has some usefulness while located on a square opposite in color to the bishop's squares, the highest power is always obtained when the knight and bishop are on the same color squares. There are several consequences to this doctrine.

If there is anyone else as interested in this exercise as I am, I would suggest that perhaps a tournament could be set up using only these 4 pieces on a 10x8 board. A win for Black (or White?) would consist of escaping checkmate for 50 moves, while a win for White (or Black) would be achieving checkmate. We could call it the "Capablanca Memorial Endgame Tournament," because he pronounced the value of its rigorous study to improve chess at large, and he was given to dabble in 10x8 format. I would be interested to see how other players handle this ending.

It is my sincere hope that the question of whether or not the 50-move limit is sufficient to secure checkmate does not pose a problem for keeping control of the patent on gothic chess. We could find out that it takes a more skilled player to win in this larger format, but that does not necessarilly mean that the rules of the game need to be changed, for new rules would mean a new game, and a new game would not be covered by the current patent.

There is much to be gained by toying with this ending, and I would like to share my own fascination with gothic chess fans, if they are interested. /FX/