Conservative Capablanca Chess

Let me be straightforward from the very start guys. There are many chess variations on the board with 80 squares (10 files, 8 ranks) developed directly from the heritage of Carrera, Bird, and Capablanca, and many of them are really great, not just Capablanca's or Trice's Gothic Chess. So which of these variations should we play? All of them? Only Capablanca's? Only Trice's? For me as a big fan of Fischer Random Chess, it was easy to solve this problem and choose. In my humble opinion, Reinhard Scharnagl's Capablanca Random Chess (CRC) is absolutely the best one, but I also love and play Trice's, Capablanca', Bird's, Embassy, and Carrera chess. You can also enjoy playing all of them at PyChess.org. However, not all people like random chess variants like I do, and due to a large number of variations on 80 squares similar to Capablanca's chess, they never became quite popular among people who prefer good old standard chess. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that the positions of traditional pieces are for a taste of conservative chess players, too strange in all existing Capablanca derivatives, and people who love standard chess cannot rely on their knowledge of opening theory. This is exactly why I created a new version of Capablanca chess, or rather just an initial setup, which is much more familiar and friendly for conservative players. Hence the name of this variation - Conservative Capablanca Chess (CCC or 3C). Except for the setup, all the rules are identical to those in Capablanca chess.

Setup

The whole idea is rather simple. Let's imagine a standard chessboard but with the colors of squares switched - the white squares become black and vice versa. Next: let's place all traditional pieces like in standard chess, the white queen is on the white king's left side. Now as we need space for archbishops and chancellors, let's just add two more files, one on the left and the other on the right side. I decided to place the chancellor on the king's side and the archbishop on the queen's side to make a balance because the chancellor is almost as strong a piece as the queen. Of course, we need two extra pawns and voilà, here is the new setup. Just like in Trice's Chess or in Capablanca Random Chess, all the pawns are protected at least once by other pieces but it is not the best thing about this setup.

For players of standard chess, the setup now looks very familiar and of course, they can to a certain extent, rely on their opening theory knowledge from standard chess. But, it can be very misleading, to be quite honest with you. Yes, you can start the game with the openings that you already know, but it probably won't last long. The sole presence of archbishop and chancellor on the board will have a great impact on opening theory and after a couple of moves, and especially after castling, the completely different game of chess will develop. Nevertheless, I give you some examples of standard openings played with this setup of Capablanca chess.

”Italian game”

"Queen's Gambit"

”English Opening”

Notes

Final words: All existing openings from standard chess must be greatly modified after only two or three moves but still, and in general, the way the knights and bishops (as well as other pieces) help pawns to control the center of the board is almost unchanged. I can only hope that this setup will become popular among more conservative players of chess variants.

You can play Conservative Capablanca Chess at PyChess.com Just choose 'Create a game' then under 'Variant' choose 'CAPABLANCA' and finally, under 'Alternate Start' choose 'Conservative'.

Last revised by Davor Vujacic.