Circular Capa Chess

Circular Capa Chess is circular chess with added Archbishops and Chancellors (my idea was to make the game a round board analogue to 10x8 rectangular Capablanca Chess). The game is played using a 5x16 round board of 80 cells (with 5 ranks and 16 files).

A Game Courier preset page for play is available here. Note that links to Circular Chess and Capablanca Chess are provided in the Notes section further below.

Setup

Pieces

This game uses two unorthodox piece types:

The Archbishop moves like a knight or like a bishop.

The Chancellor moves like a knight or like a rook.

Rules

Most rules for Circular Capa Chess are as in standard chess, with archbishops and chancellors included (as in 10x8 Capablanca Chess on a rectangular board), but as in Circular Chess, there are consequences to playing on a round board:

Pawns move in a specific direction (away from their own king's file in the setup position), and they continue to move in that direction. Pawns promote when they reach the opposite side of the board, i.e. the nearest file on which pieces of the opponent (other than pawns) start the game. Pawns may promote to any piece type in the setup, except for a king. Like for Circular Chess, capturing a pawn by en passant is not allowed in Circular Capa Chess. I originally wished to allow such captures, but I think that not allowing them sometimes permits desirable defensive resources, perhaps even during the opening phase of a game, given the peculiar terrain; this applies to Circular Chess itself, it seems to me.

There is no castling. It is not allowed to make a move with the rook, chancellor or queen that ends up on the cell where the move started. For instance, consider a rook on an empty board. The rook could move entirely around the board to the place where the rook started, effectively meaning that the move didn't change the position. Such `null moves' are not allowed.

Notes

My tentative estimated piece values for Circular Capa Chess: Pawn=1; Knight=Bishop=2.5; Rook=5.5; Queen=9; Archbishop=6; Chancellor=9; King's fighting value=3.2.

Here's a link to CVP site's entry for Circular Chess

A link to CVP site's entry for Capablanca Chess

Last revised by Kevin Pacey.