On the other hand, I think there should be another slight modification to the rules of chess that I think is consistent.

The "en passant" rule says that if A's pawn moves two sqaures from the home rank, attacking B's pawn, and on the next play, B moves the attacked pawn one square forward to avoid capture, that A, on the next move, can capture B's pawn in the same rank as if A's pawn had moved only one square on the earlier move. But that same logic would apply to any piece that moved next to A's pawn in the same rank on the move following the A's two-square move. I argue that it should be possible to capture any piece en passant.

This would make pawns potentially more deadly than any other piece on the board, because they would threaten not only the squares that pieces landed in, but also the squares that they pass through. Also, if you grant this power to pawns, why not grant it to every other piece as well, to be consistent? Unfortunately, this would allow rooks and queens to project impassible barriers all the way across the board. What makes the en-passent capture rule special is not the virtue of the capturing pawn, but rather of the captured pawn, because it moves twice instead of once. If one is to extend the en-passent capture rule, it makes more sense to allow any piece to capture a pawn en-passent, rather than the other way around. (This is not to say that your suggestion is not an interesting one, but as I mentioned above, it would make the game VERY different, and would have to be studied carefully.) -- Mark D. Niemiec <mniemiec@interserv.com>