Bill Angel ((email removed contact us for address) s.cais.com) adapted the GNU chess program to play Capablanca's chess, (a chess variant on an enlarged board with two new types of pieces). Below, you find the message he wrote explaining the variant and how to utilize his computer program that plays it. This program runs under DOS. The program.

A GNU CHESS Implementation of the Capablanca Deviation

What is the "Capablanca Deviation"?

...to introduce in the game new forces which would necessarily throw the players on to their own resources, and give much greater scope to the imagination and to the creative power of the individual player.
My own suggestions involve the introduction of new pieces upon the board: the Chancellor, combining the moves of the bishop and knight; and the Marshall combining the moves of the rook and the knight. This means to say that the Chancellor may be used either as a bishop or a knight for any move according to the will of the player, while the Marshall in the same way can be used as a rook or a knight. The introduction of the two pieces would of course mean a [larger] board and two extra pieces on each side. But it would not entail any alteration of the rules.
The great advantage which this proposal has....is that it infinitely increases the chances of sacrificial combinations; that it tremendously multiplies the few mysteries left in chess....thus making the game once more... a pastime in which there is always something to be learned and in which not memory only but foresight, imagination, resourcefulness are in constant demand. [end of excerpt]

Invoking the program

The output of the program is in the form of ANSI standard graphics commands. This means that the line "device = ansi.sys" has to be present in the DOS config.sys file.

After entering, when asked, a timing selection, the board and pieces are displayed. At the prompt "Your move is?" typing "help" will invoke the help screen. This screen explains how to change parameters.

Some pointers:

The default search depth has been set to 6 ply. A larger value might be in order for an (80386) machine with a search time per move of 15 minutes or longer.

A search can be interrupted (the move forced) by typing some key (the space bar works well) while the computer search for a move is progressing.

The program can create and use a "persistent transposition table". To create it, first invoke the program with the "-t" option. The will produce a file "HASH.DAT", which is about 78 kbytes in size. Only for fast machines and/or really deep searches will it be used; it does not have to be created.