[Retros] En Passant Chess

[peufe at tin.it]

> Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:48:28 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Noam Elkies <elkies at math.harvard.edu>

> Subject: Re: [Retros] En Passant Chess

> To: peufe at tin.it, retros at janko.at

> Message-ID: <200703191948.l2JJmSH21123 at abel.math.harvard.edu>

>

>> I would share with you all my idea about a variant chess I invented.

>> [...] I call it:" En Passant Chess ".They are like normal chess,

>> except that all pieces (King too) and pawns are allowed to capture

>> (next move) an enemy piece, just moved, which traversed a square

>> under its control.

>

>> Examples:

>> 1 e4,e5 ;  2 Bc4, Bc5 ; 3 Qf3, Nc6 4 Qxf7 isn't mate because:

>> 4...,e5xQf4  or  4...,g7xQf6    or   4....,NxQf6

>> or  4....,QxQf6 and if 4 Bxf7? then  4...d7xBe6.

>

>> [...]

>

> Interesting.  This could be nice for non-retro fairy problems too.

>

> If the piece being captured just made a capture itself, is the captured

> piece restored?  If so, can 4 Bxf7+ be answered also by 4...Kxf7,

> and then if 5 Qxf7 then (say) NxQf6 restoring the Kf7?

>

> --Noam D. Elkies


Hi Noam, thank you for your idea of restoring captured pieces.
It makes En Passant Chess more interesting and complex.
In order to decide if we can allow to restore pieces we must give
practical meaning to "captures" in Chess.
In normal Chess we can think that every piece has a "steel weapon", so it
can
"kill" the enemy only reaching its square.

In En Passant Chess every piece has also a long range laser it can activate
along his
line of action when it sees an enemy piece moving, so the enemy piece could
be
wounded when it arrive in the square where is the piece it captures using
its steel weapon,
but the piece captured can't be restored because it was "killed".

In your variant of En Passant Chess allowing restoring of captured pieces,
we could think of pieces just like billiard balls.Whenever a ball is moving
toward an
enemy ball to knock it, another enemy ball starts to move in order to knock
it before,
stopping its journey, so the "captured " piece can be restored.
What do you like to choose?

What about multiple captures? They are really crazy.....
As example:
2b2q2-8-8-8-B6R-8-8-R5r1

En Passant Chess:  1.RxRg1, QxRf1  2. RxQf4, BxRg4  3. BxBd7

En Passant Chess( Restored pieces): 1. RxRg1, QxRf1-restore rg1
2.RxQf4- restore Rg1, BxRg4-restore qf1 and rg1 3. BxBd7- restore Rf4, Rg1
and remove qf1.

Too funny or too fuzzy?
Could we imagine situations that could make possible cyclic paradoxical
captures?
All this makes me think to Time-Travel paradoxes.......

bye,  Franco