3 <title>Gothic Chess</title>
7 <table cellpadding="20"><tr><td>
10 <h3>Initial setup</h3>
22 c1, c8, h1, h8: Bishop
24 b1, b8, i1, i8: Knight
29 <table cellpadding="5" border="1"><tr><td>
36 Moves (<a href="Betza.html">Betza notation</a>)
48 Can castle with Rook, moving 2 steps towards it
118 Promotes to Q, R, B, or N on reaching last rank
120 <h3>Pawn peculiarities</h3>
122 <li>Pawns capture differently from how they move (straight move, diagonal capture).</li>
123 <li>Pawns can move two squares ahead from their initial position, provided they are not blocked.</li>
124 <li>On the move immediately after such a double push, they can be captured en passant by another Pawn,
125 as if they had only moved 1 square ahead.</li>
126 <li>Pawns promote to another (non-royal) piece of choice when they reach last rank.</li>
130 A King that has not moved before can move two squares in the direction of a Rook that has not moved before,
131 in which case that Rook is moved to the square the King skipped over.
132 This is only allowed when the King is not in check, on the square it came from and would not be in check on the square it skipped over.
134 <h3>General rules</h3>
136 <li>It is not allowed to expose your King to check.</li>
137 <li>The game is won by checkmating the opponent's King.</li>
138 <li>Stalemate (no legal moves, but not in check) is a draw.</li>
140 <h3>Differences with FIDE</h3>
144 <h3>Strategy issues</h3>
146 It is not possible to force checkmate on a bare King with just a single Bishop or Knight (in addition to your own King).
149 Bishops are confined to squares of a single color.
150 Having Bishops on both colors compensates this weakness, and is worth an extra 0.5 on top of their added value.
153 As Chancellor and Queen are nearly equal in value to Queen, under-promotion is very common.