Secutor Chess
This page contains one or more presets for playing a game online with Game Courier, an online server for playing Chess variants by correspondence.
Secutor Chess follows the rules of orthodox chess. It is played on the Gustavian board with extra corner squares. The Secutor is a bifurcation piece. It slides on the orthogonals like a rook. It captures by colliding against any piece and then deviating to any of the two adjacent diagonals (in the prolonged movement direction). Thus to capture, the Secutor jumps directly to an enemy piece and lands on it, provided that any intermediate squares are empty. The Secutor's value is 3, that is, the same as bishop or knight (estimate).As it can capture by coordinating with another piece, the Secutor is a highly cooperative piece, something which makes it interesting for the positional player. The structure on the board decides its possibilities. The Secutor loses less power in the endgame than one would expect. Although screens for colliding become fewer, its scope and mobility also increases. Note! The Secutor, if placed on the second or seventh rank, can also bounce against the rim in order to capture a piece on any of the extra corner squares.
The secutor ("pursuer") was, together with the retiarius ("net man"), the best-known type of gladiator in ancient Rome. The secutor wore a rounded helmet with two round eye holes, a short sword (gladius), an arm guard (manica), leg guards (ocrea), and a large oval shield.
Extended castle: when castling the king may jump three squares, but it can also jump two as usual. The rook ends up on its usual square. The extended castling rule makes play on the wings easier to achieve. The king can rapidly take control over the kingside or queenside corner square, and advancement on the wing can occur without putting the king at risk.
The Secutor can move in two legs, the first is a rookslide and the second is a diagonal collision-capture,
which is optional (red = capture).
In the following preset moves are validated and automated, including Secutor moves, castling and 'en passant', but check, etc., are not parsed. Pieces can be moved by pointing and clicking. When promoting a pawn, it will automatically turn into a Queen. Should you prefer another piece then you must type it manually (e.g., add N a8; capture a7). Use small piece-letters for black. E-mails to your opponent are generated, but you can play online by intermittently pressing the browser's update button.
Secutor Chess
(You can also download a Zillions
implementation here.See also related variants Dimachaer Chess and Essedar Chess.)
See also my other Game Courier presets.
This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.
By M Winther.
Web page created: 2009-06-17. Web page last updated: 2009-06-17