In Paul Morphy's "Opera House" chess game, Morphy never moves a piece backward. I propose Opera House Chess, with initial position and moves as in chess, except pieces cannot move backward. Is it playable? With victory conditions modified?
If you have no legal move, is that a loss or a stalemate? Endgames will play very differently depending on the answer. Andy On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 9:52 AM David Wilson <davidwwilson@comcast.net> wrote:
In Paul Morphy's "Opera House" chess game, Morphy never moves a piece backward.
I propose Opera House Chess, with initial position and moves as in chess, except pieces cannot move backward. Is it playable? With victory conditions modified?
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DW: "I propose Opera House Chess, with initial position and moves as in chess, except pieces cannot move backward." There's a chess variant called "checkers chess" [Multhopp 1974] in which pieces can only move forwards (and not sideways) until they have reached the far rank.
I also devised this chess variant of "paratrooper" chess. Board and pieces (construed to include pawns) are as in standard chess. Initial board orientation is as in standard chess. The board starts empty. Each player starts with a draw pile including all pieces of his color. Plays alternate with White playing first, as in standard chess. On each play, a player may elect to either move or drop a piece. A move consists of a legal chess move, with the following provisos: - Captured pieces are not returned to the draw pile and cannot thereafter be dropped. - Rules governing check, checkmate, stalemate, forced draws, and pawn promotion are as in standard chess, with a drop interpreted as a move. - Two-rank pawn moves, en passant capture, and castling are not permitted. A drop consists of placing a piece from the draw pile on one of the first four ranks. - The king must be dropped on each player's first play. - The king may not be dropped in check. - A piece may be dropped so as to block check.
=David Wilson A drop consists of placing a piece from the draw pile on one of the first four ranks. - The king must be dropped on each player's first play. - The king may not be dropped in check. ...
Sounds interesting, but I'm wee confused. By "the first four ranks" do you mean A. White and Black must only drop pieces into their "own" side of the board, or B. both players must only drop into "White's half" of the board (ie rows 1-4, with rows 5-8 outside the legal drop zone)? I ask because, although I initially was visualizing variant "A" -- it seems more similar to ordinary chess -- these later rules seem to require the wilder alternative "B", because only in that case is it even possible to drop into check (ie Black drops their king right next to White's king). Amusing idea: you could notate drops as a "capture" of an empty square. So if White has a P at a2, "a3" would signify an ordinary push, but "Pxa3" would drop a new P.
participants (4)
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Andy Latto -
David Wilson -
Hans Havermann -
Marc LeBrun