CAPABLANCA RANDOM CHESS (2004-Nov-26) Proposal

This definition of CRC should cover the following goals:

a) creating an interesting drosophila for chess programmers
b) using Capablancas 10x8 Chess board geometry
c) using Capablancas piece set (incl. archbishop and chancellor)
d) applying rules aligned to Fischer Random Chess
e) avoiding conflicts to any claimed patents

The CRC rules are:

a) creating a starting position (one of 48.000):
1) the bishops have to be placed upon different colored
squares; same rule applies to the implicite bishop pieces:
queen and archbishop (aligned to FRC)
2) the king always has to be placed somewhere between the
rooks to enable castlings (aligned to FRC)
3) use only such positions without unprotected pawns (Chess)

b) describing a method of generating starting positions on
free squares by using a dice or random number generator:
1) select queen or the archbishop to be placed first (2x)
2) place the selected 1st piece upon a bright square (5x)
3) place the selected 2nd piece upon a dark square (5x)
4) one bishop has to be placed upon a bright square (4x)
5) one bishop has to be placed upon a dark square (4x)
6) one chancellor has to be placed upon a free square (6x)
7) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (5x)
8) one knight has to be placed upon a free square (4x)/2
9) set the king upon the center of three free squares left
11) set the rooks upon the both last free squares left
12) this establishes White's first row, the Black side
has to be built up symmetrically to this
13) place ten pawns similar to traditional chess in a row
14) skip this position if it has unprotected pawns or at
least three positions in line 1 similar to Gothic Chess,
this finally gives about 21259 distinct starting arrays.

c) nature of (asymmetric Fischer-) castlings:
1) castlings are (like in traditional chess) only valid
if neither the affected king or rook has been moved, or
there would be a need to jump over any third piece, or
the king would be in chess somewhere from his starting
position to his target field (both included). Therefore
all squares between king and its target square (included)
have to be free from third pieces, same applies to the
way the rook has to go to its target square.
2) the alpha-castling (O-O-O, White's left side):
like in FRC the king will be placed two rows distant
from the border (here c-file) and the rook at the next
inner neighboured square.
3) the omega-castling (O-O, White's right side):
like in FRC the king will be placed one row distant
from the border (here i-file) and the rook at the next
inner neighboured square.

d) performing castlings:
within a GUI try to move the king upon the related rook
or at least two squares into that direction; manually:
1) move the king outside of the board
2) move the rook to its end position (if need to)
3) move the king to his end position

e) extended FEN encoding:
1) the extended FRC-FEN could be used as a base
2) 'a'/'A' are used to identify archbishops
3) 'c'/'C' are used to identify chancellors
4) '9' is used to mark nine empty fields
5) '0' is used to mark ten empty fields
6) if a castling enabled rook is not the most outer one
at that side, the letter of his file has to be placed
immediately following his castling marker symbol, where
'q'/'Q' are used for the alpha-, 'k'/'K' for omega-side.
(Because of the three black fields a1, c1, e1 which are
candidates for the queen's starting position, from White's
view the left alpha-side is more related to the queen
than the right side, according to the naming conventions
within traditional chess, and the majority of starting
positions will have the queen at the left alpha-side.)

f) engine notation rules for castling moves:
According to UCI convention the castling moves should be
written by using both coordinates (source and target field)
of the involved king. But there are castlings, where the
king does only one or none simple step. In that cases the
castling should be distinguishable by appending a 'k', like
already practized in promotion moves to make them unique.
Overmore an engine should accept O-O or O-O-O (no zeroes),
but only use them, when the GUI would demand for such a
less precise notation.