nabla:It's allowed and no, the system doesn't show you that you have an enpassant Pawn.  It's worth clicking on the specific square every move, just in case you can move to it.  Personally, I think it's fine that it doesn't tell you it's available.

King Reza: Thank you for the fast answer ! But I still think that it is a wrong implementation. It is the only case when you can't see the whole set of your legal moves by looking at your board, and it requires to do a lot of unnecessary clicks in order to gather an information which should be pushed to the player automatically.

nabla:Well, we think differently!  I think since it's Dark Chess, it can be part of the strategy to choose whn you want to move your Pawn two squares thus giving your opponent an enpassant Pawn.  So if the opponent wants not to miss the oportunity, he has to 'suffer' these extra clickings.  But let the site owner decide!

King Reza: I think it makes sense to show the pawn. Why force the players to try each move, it's a waste of time and achieves nothing.
By the way just because you call yourself King is no excuse for using the royal "we" :)

grenv:By 'we' I meant Nabla and I

King Reza: ok, I get it after re-reading. lol. It depends which syllable you emphasize :)

grenv: Actually I checked the original rules on http://www.chessvariants.org/incinf.dir/darkness.html and it says that en passant is not allowed in Dark Chess. So what we have here may even qualify as a bug.

nabla: But on every site I've played en passent is allowed, so I think these rules have possibly been superceded by usage.

grenv: OK, I didn't know. No problem with me, I like it with en passant too. But with visible pawns, of course !

nabla: I like the in passing rule as implemented here just fine*(see note). I believe the original game was made that way to make it easier to program, but I don't really know their thinking on it. I've seen the two versions on the Chess Variants site and they don't allow Pawns to move two squares! That eliminates the dealing with in passing Pawn captures, but it makes the game not as good. Those versions don't show the Pawn's coverage squares in the same manner either. Plus you can't go back and review the game, nor even gain information from one of your pieces before it's captured if it is captured the next move. As for their version that doesn't allow you to move in check or leave your King in check, I haven't played it. In my opinion those two versions are very inferior to BrainKing's and It's Your Turn's versions. The only difference I know of between here and IYT is how Promoted Pawns and Extra pieces are shown. Here nothing is shown, on IYT they show the Pawn taken off the board and the promoted piece if it makes a second Queen or extra piece.

Though I will on occasion have one Pawn on the fifth row from me, it's unusual to have many more than that during a game. Often times I'll have the squares to either side of such a Pawn covered and will know if my opponent has tried to sneak by my advanced Pawn. Or I'll know there is no Pawn in the file to one or both sides in which case I don't concern myself with the possibility of missing a passing Pawn.

You guys do point out a problem about what to do when my opponent could slide a Pawn by unbeknownst to me. I deal with it as Reza suggests, or I overlook it and my opponent has tricked me. Thems the breaks. It doesn't happen very often in a game and I think it is a good part of the game having it work the way it does here. In the few instances when it is a possibility, I take care. It's just a click on the Pawn. If it moves forward, you know there's no in passing on the turn. If it stays in place then you just hover the cursor to one of the squares or the only square if you have one side covered and see what happens. Same thing if you have a possibilty of more than one capture with this same Pawn. If the Pawn is blocked from moving straight ahead by another piece, it's even easier. Just move the cursor to it and a hand will appear if it can make the in passing capture. And if there's an addition possible capture, it's still just a click away.
*Writing this has me thinking that you have a point about it automatically showing the possibilty of a passing Pawn capture. It would certainly be consistant with the rest of how the game goes having it shown. I guess either way is OK with me. At least playing on a turn based site where I have the time to check. A live version of Dark Chess would be better to have the passed Pawn shown.

And I use dial up. You guys with the high speed connections are trying my patience. :)

Has anybody found a place or a program that will allow me to play Dark Chess at home? One computer hooked to two monitors placed back to back would be the easy way. With only one monitor it'd be too much of a hassle to play and it'd be too easy to spoil the game by inadvertantly seeing your opponent's view. More monitors would allow kibitzers to see all three views of the game while it's being played. I'd certainly like such a program and would be willing to pay the going rate for a video game of similar complexity. What's that between, $7 and $20? I asked Yahoo! to add Dark Chess to their live games site, but all I got back was some form letter that didn't make me feel like they even read my e-mail to them. Dark Chess live would be lots of fun. With a clock running it'd really make for panic near the end of a speed chess or blitz game. Longer timed games would be very challenging.

Walter Montego: If you ever see a live dark chess site or game let me know!

grenv:You can always play it with me live!

grenv: I certainly will! :)

In the meantime, maybe you and a few more people could e-mail Yahoo!? More voices might get them to add it. Once one site adds it and the game gets popular I sure others will follow suit. And there's other sites I might e-mail. One of them ought to do it. Someday Fencer will have live games here and that will change everything.

Being able to play it at home without the internet against a friend would be a good game. I'm sure there's already games that use more than one monitor for multiplayer games. Why not Dark Chess and other games like Battleboats and Stratego? Yeah, those two don't need electricity to keep track of the game like Dark Chess does, but you could certainly have them added in.

grenv:
www.buho21.com is a spanish site which has live dark chess (they call it blind chess), i never really play it so I'm not sure what it does about the en passant rule or what sort of level the players there are. It also has atomic (with slightly different rules) and losers

tipau: I went there. I can't read Spanish unfortunately for me. What is Dark Chess called on their site? In Spanish.

You say the games are played live? I might be able to play once I have located it on the site and join.

tipau: Thanks, I joined (as grenv again)... but I'll need to wait till I get out from behind this firewall to play.

Walter, you need to join first, then a java applet is used to play. I suspect from there you can choose the game type.

grenv:I joined too, as Reza, but I cannot read Spanish and therefore, i don't know where to go to start a new game!

King Reza: lol

Jugar = to play
Ajedrez = chess

Should be just below the "Hola Reza" in the login box. :)

King Reza:
(1) You must register -> "Registro gratuito" means "Register free"
(2) In red required: Nickname, Clave (password), Repetir clave (confirm password), Sexo (sex)
(3)You must connect -> "Usuario:" (Nickname:) , "Contraseña:" (Password) and click in "Entrar" (Come in)
(4) Click in "Jugar Ajedrez" (Play Chess)
(5) Now, a java applet will open in a new window
(6) You have basically 2 options:
[a]  Take a challenge
Click onto a challenge in the main window. If you put the mouse over one challenge then you´ll see the conditions:
Clasico (classic) -> standard chess
Tuerto (one-eyed) -> dark chess
Comepiezas (EatPieces) -> similar to antichess (there are checks and checkends)
Alocado (rash) -> like FRChess
PasaPiezas (PassPieces) -> Loop Chess
Atomico (Atomic) -> similar to Atomic but with checks
[b] Put a challenge
Click onto button "Desafiar" (Challenge)
Tiempo de la partida (Time per game)
Incremento por jugada (Increase per move)
Quien desconecta pierde QDP (If you disconnect then you´ll lose)
Permitir observadores (Let observers)
Partida con rating (Game for rating)
El servidor elige color (The server chooses the colour)
Quiero jugar con blancas/negras (I want to play with white/black colour)
Sin ordenadores (Without PCs)

Ok?

And in the first window "Cerrar sesión" means Logout

Matarilevich:Oh thanks man.  I really appreciate it. 

grenv:  I thank you too.  Let me see what I can do.

Matarilevich: I played three games there after using a translator and your advice posted here.

It's definitely different playing Dark Chess live. I don't like their version of it too much though. Not enough information and you're forced to guess way too much. It doesn't show captured pieces, nor the pieces in front of Pawns. It's still cool and I'm hoping to see the game in other places. BrainKing's or IYT's version would be a very good way to play it live. Thanks again for the link tipau.