Okay, you’re a novice chess player. You’ve seen the board, know the pieces and their moves, played a few times. You and a buddy (or complete stranger or third-hand relative, whatever) sit down to a match. Suddenly, your opponent moves two pieces in one round. “Hey, that’s illegal, you moved two pieces, and the king two boxes to boot!” “Yes it’s legal, it’s called castling.” Suddenly, a fistfight arises.
Okay, if you’ve played chess, you’ve been here - one side or the other. My questions: Where did castleing come from? Who invented it? Why was this considered legal despite breaking conventions? Are there any other unconventional moves, i.e. multiple piece per round or off-nominal piece steps that are legal?
I know there’s probably a chess book on this, but who wants to look for a chess book? I just want somebody to explain it coherently.
No idea about the origins of castling, can’t be bothered to look at the moment, but the move that pisses some novices off is “en passant” capturing of a pawn. Basically, it occurs like this. Say you’re white. Your opponent has a pawn on b4. You have your own pawn on a2. Now, if you move one step to a3, your pawn can be attacked. So you move it two spaces down to a4, since it’s your pawn’s fist move. Too bad. The black pawn on b4 can capture you pawn as if it were standing on b3. It’s notated something like…
15 … b4
16 a4 b4xa3 e.p.
Or something like that. Somebody please verify. Now, this can only be done with another pawn, so, say, a bishop can’t capture that pawn en passant, AND it can only be done on the VERY NEXT MOVE.
That’s about it for unconventionalities that I can think of off the top of my head. Occasionally, (and I mean VERY rarely,) one will promote a pawn to a knight instead of the usual queen, but I think most players are aware they can promote to any piece (except for another pawn or a king, of course.)
has a much more thorough info which is slightly different:
The King’s Leap mentioned above is a move in which the king can move to any third square on its first move provided that it isn’t in check or leaping through a check (as in the rule for castling.)
I don’t have anything to had about castling, but I believe the history of en passant is as follows. Originally pawns could only move one square at a time, this was changed to allow an opening pawn move of two spaces, in order to speed up the game. As a balance, en passant was introduced so that you could still take the pawn just as if it had only moved its customary single square. (En passant can only be done immediately after the pawn makes its two square opening move).
The rules of chess have changed over the times. If you look at a prior link, you will see that the Queen once moved like the King does now. At one time, a pawn could move only one square at a time, even on the 1st move. To speed up the game, it is allowed to move 2 squares on the 1st move. However, to avoid evading capture on moving 2 if it could have been captured by an adjacent pawn if it moved 1, the rule of en passant was allowed.
I agree that ‘en passant’ pisses newbies off but in my experience what really honks their horn is not allowing them to castle through or out of check (out of check is the one that gets them most often). They swear I’m making up the rules as I go along even though I explained it earlier to them. To be fair they had no clue what I was talking about when I explained it but still…they forget so quickly.
Having played both Korean Chess and Chinese Chess for most of my life, I can’t for the life of me figure out what move could be even close to Western Chess castling.
In both Chinese & Korean Chess, the King (General, actually) is restricted to the Fortress, which is the 3 central points on the 3 ranks closest to the player (each side has a fortress). This is marked on the board so it looks like a B&W Union Jack on the board.
In Korean Chess, the King can give check to the other King, but in Chinese Chess, exposing your King to the other King loses the game for you.
It occurs to me that you may be thinking of the Cannon; however, the Cannon can be used numerous times in the game. In Chinese Chess, it moves just like the Rook but captures by leaping over any other piece - it can also leap over or capture the other player’s Cannons. In Korean Chess, the Cannon must leap to move and to capture but may not leap over or capture Cannons.
Unless I’m mistaken, it should be noted that one CAN castle if the ROOK in question is attacked, and that the rook can castle through an attacked square, so long as the king does not (note that the latter is only possible with respect to the queen side rook castling through queen knight one).
Can you castle to give checkmate? I can’t think of anything you could do that a normal Rd3++ couldn’t do, but what if you wanted to really annoy someone?
No, he means R-B1++. You damn people with your newfangled board coordinates will be the death of me. . .
And as for a castle not doing anything that a normal R-B1 wouldn’t accomplish, I think you guys are missing the obvious. Imagine it thus: Black’s King is at QR8 (a1). White has a rook on KR2 (h2), a rook on KR1 (h1) and his king on K1 (e1). White’s only move to mate in 1 is to castle.
Um, huh? How do you figure “R-B1++”. Unless this is some newfangled notation I’m not familiar with (always possible), castling queenside would put the rook on Queen one, which would be “equivalent” to R-Q1 or R-D1.
No, you’re not confused. That’s a “my bad” on the notation. I was just assuming a King’s side castle and wasn’t paying real close attention to what people were actually writing. So, yes, “R-Q1++” is what I should have put.
Thus, yes, the King can move via Castling if the Rook is under attack, but only if it’s the Queen-side Rook and any of the square the King has to travel over is not also under attack. You will also notice that the King is moved two squares regardles of King-side or Queen-side Castling which surprises a lot of novices, who think that the correct move is to place the King next to the Rook and then jump the King with the Rook.
I don’t see where in the rules 0-0 is prohibited if the K-side R is under attack. I know that’s not true. Say, for instance, there is an open h-file (KR file), and your R is on it and it is attacked by an opposing R. You are allowed to castle (so long as the K, of course, does not move thru check or was not in check). If you believe otherwise, please explain what rule leads you to believe that, but I warn you, that’s not the case.
The K is always moved two squares in either 0-0 or 0-0-0, amd the R always goes next to it, on the other side from whence it came. I think we are in agreement on that point.
Quoth pulykamell: “sure ya can [mate while castling]. i doubt the situation would ever present itself, but there’s nothing in the rules against it.”
I did it once, just for the novelty. I was sort of inspired by a wacky chess puzzle that said something like “White to mate in half a move”, and it showed a board configuration in which the King had just moved to castle, but the Rook had not yet been moved.
Although it wasn’t the case in my game, nor was it the case in the puzzle I saw, it is possible that castling will force a mate while just moving the Rook will not. It’s even less likely, but if your opponent’s King is on your first rank, on the opposite side of your King as your Rook, then castling gets your King out of the way, conceivably setting up a mate.