Forchess Question

I recently stumbled across Forchess, an interesting chess variant, but I'm not sure how the "token" move is played when a king is in check.

Does anyone here know how to play the Forchess "token" move, or better yet, where I might find a copy of the rule book (Forchess: The Ultimate Social Game)?

Note that I have repeatedly reached out to the author without success. I placed an order for the book on his website, but I haven't received confirmation and his site looks fairly dated. I'm not sure he is even maintaining it any longer.

Thanks very much!

Well, it is the first time I see this variant (thanks for the link!), but the way I interpret is that 'token move' is just a name describing the move is done in a certain situation, like 'check evasion'. And not that it is a special kind of move (like 'castling'). The situation it describes is that you cannot move out of check; you would be checkmated if it were not for the possibility that your partner might rescue you. In this variant checkmate does not end the game, (or the player's presence in it), you have to really capture the King. Nevertheless the first obligation you have is to move out of check. If you cannot, the restriction applies that you cannot move your King at all, and have to leave it where it was checked. So you have to do a move (the 'token move') with another piece. The tricky question is whether any pseudo-legal move will do, or whether you can also do a token move with a pinned piece, creating an extra attack on your own King. The rules explicitly say you are not allowed to put yourself in check, but if you already were in check, creating this extra attack did not really 'put you in check). The reason I lean to this interpretation is that the rules in no place state that you have to reduce the number of attacks on your King as much as you can. If you can decide to leave your King twice attacked with a token move after a double check, while you could have resolved one of the two attacks (but not both), then it also should not matter if you created that second attack yourself. Apparently once checked is as good (or bad) as twice checked. I assume the rule that you can never put you partner in check still applies, however.

Thanks very much HG!

I suspect you are correct. I am hoping I can find a hard copy of the Forchess book (or an electronic copy) to reference for scenarios like you describe above. I ordered some wild colored pieces (lime green, pink, purple, and orange) to play the game with my family this weekend.

It should be interesting!