Capablanca Random Chess (by Reinhard Scharnagl) is a variant of the former 10x8 chess created by Jose Raoul Capablanca, the ex world chess champion.
As you can see, there are two new pieces which are not used in classic Chess:
Archbishop - has the combined moves of a Bishop and a Knight.
Chancellor - has the combined moves of a Rook and a Knight.
The most significant feature of this variant is the random starting position for each game. This rule is very similar to Fischer Random Chess:
Pawns are placed on their standard Chess positions (2nd or 7th row).
A king must be placed between two rooks. It means that a king's start position will never be in a corner (A or J column).
One bishop must be placed on a white square, the second one on a black square. The same rule applies to the implicite bishop pieces, a queen and an archbishop.
White and black starting positions are symmetrical - the same pieces share the same columns.
All pawns must be protected by a friendly piece at the start position.
The following picture shows an example of such position:
How to castle
Although it can look strange for the first glance, castling is possible in this chess variant. In fact, the target locations of the king and the rook doing the castling move are the same as in standard Chess, but the initial positions can be different, depending on the generated start position of the game. Also, similar additional conditions must be fulfilled:
The king and the rook which are to make a castling did not move since the game had started.
The king is not in a check.
The space between initial and target positions of the king and the rook to be castled does not contain any other pieces.
The king would not cross a square that is being attacked by an opponent's piece or it would not finish its move on such square.
IMPORTANT!
Unlike in classic Chess, the castling move is performed by a slightly different way:
The player click on the king.
The player click on the rook he wants to castle with, instead on the target position of the king.
The player submits the move to finish it.
The reason is that with certain positions the king's initial and target positions are the same.
All other rules are the same as in standard Chess. Play this game
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