Hey, all. Quick question regarding the rules of chess: when castling, obviously providing the king and rook have been untouched and the knight has been moved out of the way, does it matter what side of the board one castles? Or can a player castle on side they want?
Thanks! - Freewill39.
This site gives the rules, but you can castle in either direction.
Note that when castling, the king moves only two squares over, no matter which direction the castling occurs.
Yes, you can castle to either side, provided the pieces haven’t been moved and there are no pieces in the way, and you don’t “pass through” check or end up in check. Move the king two spaces towards the rook, and place the rook on the other side.
You can castle on whichever side you please. A lot of people feel the better general strategic move is to castle king-side (I think) in order to allow for better protection of the king.
RR
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
This site gives the rules, but you can castle in either direction.
[QUOTE]
Here’s a situation not covered in those rules. King has never moved in the game. The squares directly in front and two in front of the king are not attacked. A pawn has move the entire length of the board and underpromotes to a rook on the K8 square. Can the king castle with this rook? It seems to be a semantics argument about whether this rook has moved during the game. It moved but not while it was a rook.
I’d think this question would have to be explicitly addressed in the rules to prevent degeneration into semantics arguments. OTOH I’m not sure why one would do this except just to be the first to do so. Oh Sure I guess I might be able to construct a board set up where promoting to a Queen would stalemate the opponent.
How could the king castle with the rook if, as you describe, the rook is on the opposite side of the board?
You also can’t castle if your king is currently in check.
Because technically,
and none of those conditions are present in the situation described by OldGuy. However, it does say later that
which seems to rule out that situation.
Besides the fact that it would probably never come up, and if it did, the player probably wouldn’t even want to do it if it were legal.
Not instantly or by itself. Although the queen is the only piece that can force stalemate by itself, in those situations the enemy king is always in a corner and the queen is a “knight-move” away (i.e. one space over, two spaces up). If the king was at A1, for example, a stalemating queen would have to be at B3 or C2, and not on the edge of the board, as a freshly-promoted pawn would be.
If other pieces are involved, then the following scenario would work:
Black has no pieces but the king, on A7.
White promotes a pawn to queen by moving it from C7 to C8.
Black’s only move is to B6, but assume a white knight or rook already occupies that square, and it is protected from capture by a third white piece elsewhere on the board. Black is stalemated.
I would have said the pawn wasn’t replaced by a rook, but became a rook, so the rook had moved previously. But I agree the rules don’t EXPLICITELY rule out that case. But I feel fairly sure it is against the rules.
I reiterate Bryan Ekers’ point: if you have promoted the pawn to a rook, it is on the other side of the board. You can’t castle with it. In addition to the “haven’t moved” requirements, both pieces must be in their original squares. The new rook isn’t.
This situation came up before (a long time ago, don’t remember exactly when). Someone once composed a problem where the solution was to promote the pawn to a rook and then to castle with this rook to deliver mate. FIDE has long since updated the Laws of Chess to define castling as a king and rook move made “on the same rank.”
Well, the pawn is promoted to rook. It’s still arguably the same piece, just as a soldier promoted to corporal is still the same person, albeit with increased duties and responsibilities. And since that piece has moved, it’s not eligible to participate in castling.
Rulebooks say a pawn can move forward. Most don’t say a pawn can’t move backward. The “explicit” standard is a shaky one.