Gothic Chess

Initial setup f1, f8: King d1, d8: Queen e1, e8: Chancellor g1, g8: Archbishop a1, a8, j1, j8: Rook c1, c8, h1, h8: Bishop b1, b8, i1, i8: Knight a2-j2, a7-j7: Pawns

Moves at a Glance

Click on a piece below to see its moves

											Sliding capture or non-capture, can be blocked on any square along the ray
											Unblockable leap (capture or non-capture)
											Non-capture only
											Capture only

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Piece	ID	value	Moves (Betza notation)	Remarks
King	K	-	K	Can castle with Rook, moving 3 steps towards it
Queen	Q	9.5	RB or Q
Chancellor	C	9	RN
ArchBishop	A	8.75	BN
Rook	R	5	R
Bishop	B	3.5	B	Color-bound
Knight	N	3	N
Pawn	P	1	mfWcfF	Promotes to Q, R, B, or N on reaching last rank

Pawn peculiarities

• Pawns capture differently from how they move (straight move, diagonal capture).
• Pawns can move two squares ahead from their initial position, provided they are not blocked.
• On the move immediately after such a double push, they can be captured en passant by another Pawn, as if they had only moved 1 square ahead.
• Pawns promote to another (non-royal) piece of choice when they reach last rank.

Castling

A King that has not moved before can move three squares in the direction of a Rook that has not moved before, in which case that Rook is moved to the square next to the King on the other side. This is only allowed if all squares between King and Rook are empty, when the King is not in check on the square it came from, and would not be in check on any of the squares it skipped over.

General rules

• It is not allowed to expose your King to check.
• The game is won by checkmating the opponent's King.
• Stalemate (no legal moves, but not in check) is a draw.

Differences with FIDE

The Chancellor and Archbishop pieces are extra, and the board is expanded to accomodate them. To handle the larger board width, the King moves 3 squares on castling.

Strategy issues

It is not possible to force checkmate on a bare King with just a single Bishop or Knight (in addition to your own King). Two Knights cannot do that either. The Archbishop can force checkmate against a bare King.

Bishops are confined to squares of a single color. Having Bishops on both colors compensates this weakness, and is worth an extra 0.5 on top of their added value.

As Chancellor and Archbishop are nearly equal in value to Queen, under-promotion is very common, and there is virtually never any need to promote to R, B or N.

The super-pieces (Q, C, A) devaluate by the presence of lower-valued opponent pieces. As a result trading Q for R + B is in general a good trade when you still have both J, as the latter gain in value by eliminating the opponent's R and B, which is more compensation than the intrinsic value difference between Q and R + B.