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Bachelor Chess. Win by mating your opponent, or marrying off your King. (7x6, Cells: 42) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Anonymous wrote on Mon, Jun 24, 2002 05:06 PM UTC:

I think there should be a priest to sanctify these 'marriages'. Require the lucky couple to be adjacent to a bishop in order for the marriage to count.

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 06:27 AM UTC:Good ★★★★

It seems that every way of winning is 'mate' in one sense or another! One query: you say that for the marriage to count the King must not be in check. What if the Queen is under immediate threat of capture?

💡📝Doug Chatham wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 12:37 PM UTC:

Charles,<p> Marriage can occur even if the Queen is in danger of immediate capture.<p> Best wishes,<br> Doug Chatham

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 14, 2003 07:33 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

It occurs to me that this is not merely one good idea, but two good ideas
that work well separately or together.
	The promotion and win-by-marriage rules could also be applied to other
arrays without a Queen - those of Chaturanga, Courier, Shogi, and the
'Kamil' games come to mind. It could even be combined with an idea that
I had called Recapitulative Chess - a 9-rank Chaturanga in which Ferz can
be promoted to Queen, Elephant to Bishop, and Pawn to any modern
capturable piece.
	Conversely your array would be a good one for a form of Kingrider Chess -
a game on which there are never a capturable Queen but the King's move is
extended, usually with restrictions. See King Battler in the Piececlopedia
for an example (and its comments for others) of such a piece.

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Mar 22, 2004 09:58 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Both my Recapitulative Chess and a variant of mine partially inspired by Bachelor Chess, Bachelor Kamil, are now up, and win by marriage also appears as a minor variation in my original 3d variant Tunnelchess. In all three you are credited, and my second 'Excellent' is by way of thanks. While I leave the 'Medinese marriage' question (the one in my comment last April) open, Bachelor Kamil mentions that you prefer it to be a valid means of winning.

Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, Jan 14, 2005 08:34 AM UTC:

Presumably promoting a piece to Queen adjacent to a King which is already in the enemy camp also counts as a marriage.

💡📝Doug Chatham wrote on Fri, Jan 14, 2005 02:09 PM UTC:

Yes, that is correct. If you have a friendly Queen next to your King at the end of your turn and your King is not in check, then you have won by marriage.<p> Charles, your comment has made me realize that rule 3 needs a slight correction to include marriage by pawn promotion.

Josef L wrote on Fri, Jun 3, 2005 03:50 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

Good game Doug!! :-))

H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Oct 21, 2022 01:58 PM UTC:

The challenge in making an Interactive Diagram for this variant was to implement the unusual winning condition (marriage). The Diagram already supported winning conditions on a move with the royal piece to a certain area, by letting the user-supplied JavaScript function BadZone() return the value -1 for a move that goes there. (Where a return value 1 simply forbids the move.) This winning condition is a 'delayed one' (like baring), to ensure stepping into check with it can still be punished in the next ply.

I could have the routine test whether a Queen move lands to the friendly King, but then this mechanism should also be made to work for non-royal pieces. Perhaps this is the most flexible solution. But instead I tried to also implement user-defined 'immediate' winning conditions (like King capture), by having BadZone() return -2, and let King-captures-friendly-Queen return this value. (Forbidding friendly capture of all other piece types by returning 1.)

This also causes the one-ply delay required to test whether the Queen move was legal. But it had the side effect that the win can also be pre-empted by capturing the Queen on the next ply. When I thought about it, this seemed actually more logical. If there is no win when the King is killed before the marriage can be consumed, why should not the same be the case when the Queen dies? In view of the prospect of breeding a successor this should certainly be worse!?

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