17.5 KING'S CHESS

The game of King's Chess is a noble one. It has become the favourite game of the intelligensia of Lusternia. It is a fairly simple game, and easy to learn, but contains nearly infinite subtleties. It is a test of cunning, intelligence, strategic sensibilities, and experience.

In order to play King's Chess, you must have a chess board, or be in an establishment that has them available, such as the occassional tavern, or library, or gaming parlour.

Since the rules of King's Chess are so well known, they will not be included here, but in the scroll HELP CHESSRULES.

The commands that are involved with King's Chess are:

PLAY CHESS WITH <whomever>
Starts a new game of chess, randomly choosing who will play the light pieces and who will play the dark pieces.

MOVE <position> to <position>
Moves a chess piece. You may use either algebraic notation (a1, b3, etc) or descriptive notation (q3, kkt4, etc) to designate squares on the board. HELP CHESSRULES will tell you more about chess notation if you are unfamiliar with it.(Castling is done with MOVE 0-0 for king-side and MOVE 0-0-0 for queen-side.)

CHESSLIST
Lists your unfinished chess games. A * before a listing tells you that that is your current game. You may only make moves in your current game.

SWITCHCHESS <id number>
Switches your current game to another of your unfinished games.

CONCEDE <id number>
Concedes defeat in the specified game.

DISPLAY <id number>
Displays the setup of the specified game. You may view other people's games provided you know the id number. If you omit the id number, it will automatically display your current game, if any.

TAKEBACK
With this command, you may reverse the last move of your opponent. This is to be used for the occassion when your opponent has entered an incorrect move and he or she wishes to reverse it, or when your opponent has done something spectacularly stupid, and you wish to allow him or her to rethink.

Lusternia's chess game is a near-exact replica of the standard rules for chess. Unfortunately though, it is missing a few bits of functionality. It cannot tell if you are in checkmate, so it must be left up to the person being checkmated to formally concede the game. Upon advancing a pawn to the last rank, it will automatically be promoted to a Queen. Only in very very rare circumstances would you want to promote it to anything other than a Queen (and then, only ever a Knight, as you cannot have more than one King). The ability to choose Queen or Knight will be added in at some point, and the ability to detect checkmate may be added also. Further, both stalemate and draw by virtue of repeating the same position 3 times are not detected.

Note that playing chess with ansi colour turned on is the preferred way to do things for most people.

See also: HELP CHESSRULES