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Latte Chess. Alternative starting position, with each player having 4 rooks/bishops/knights, 1 king and queen, and 8 pawns. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Sep 25, 2015 07:46 AM UTC:

I think both proposed methods of 3-piece castling miss the most important point of this array: the natural places to hide the King are not b1/g1, but b2/g2. The King not protecting the Pawn shield tremendously weakens the King fortress, and on b1/g1 it would furthermore be susceptile to diagonal attacks through the center.

Castling in orthodox Chess was invented to solve the problem of the Rook getting trapped by King and Pawns in the shield. This array (which is almost Makruk-like) does not have that problem at all. The King could move to b2/g2 without a worry, and leave the Rooks to roam the 1st rank.

So if an extra King double-move would be needed here to speed up development, it would be much more logical to make that a one-time sideway Knight jump, as in Chaturanga or Cambodian Chess (Ouk). That would put the King directly on g2. Note that a Rook on the f-file is not necessarily better than on the g-file; usually it has to be moved after that. Conventional castling only served to prevent its trapping, it doesn't really develop it.

You could make a King double move to c2/g2 subject to the squares d1 or f1 not being under attack, or perhaps f1 and f2 (or c1 and c2) not being both under attack, apart from the usual conditions of not being in check and not having moved before.