Capablanca chess vs the normal chess

Well, you can play here:

http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/

But it doesn't have a GUI for Capablanca.

Chu Shogi, yes.  Capablanca, no.

 Thanks for reply qixel,. Yes I know about that site (played Shogi, and Chu Shogi), but would love to find some with graphical interface.

AMcHarg you got a really funny vesion chess there LOL =]

I believe the chancellor would be 9 points just like a queen...If you think about it the Queen is a combination of a Rook and a Bishop and as Bishop is equal to a knight and chancellor is a combination of a rook and a knight, it's fairly logical.

I'm not sure for the Archbshop but I can make a guess and say that it should be worth 7 points. That conclusion arises from different ways of thinking. For example: the difference between him and the queen or the chancellor is the 2 points that a rook is worth more than a bishop or a knight. Or there's another way of getting there. The queen is worth 5+3=9(!) so the archbishop should be worth 3+3=7.

I guess that the pawns can promote to whatever they want just as in real chess and A would suit archbishop and C would fit for Chancellor.

I really like playing variants. And I guess this one would be fun but it's difficult to find a chessboard like the one it needs. With these new pieces we could give up our queen or chancellor for an archbishop and say that we made an exchange sac! lol...

Who's Capablanca?

Some Cuban bloke, I think he had something to do with the Revolution in Cuba.

lol

 Ed Trice's Gothic Chess uses the same pieces and board with a different set up. His site (www.gothicchess.com) puts the archbishop at 6.5 pawns, and the chancellor at 8.25 pawns. His boards are also set up with algebraic notation, just using two extra files (i + j).

Speaking of which, does anyone know where you can get one of Trice's plastic gothic chess sets? His site isn't accepting orders and his email is full and not accepting messages. I'd like to try it out, and it looks like a good way to try out Cabablanca chess as well, but I haven't been able to find any sets for sale.

 On House Of Staunton, they have a board that has all of the ten files of Capablanca Chess (they call it a different name, though). I must warn you, it is very expensive, but I'm sure it might be worth it if the variant became more popular. :P

The chancellor is considered less powerful than the queen, somewhere between 8 and 8.5 (remember knights are 2.5 which is not a whole number), since the combo of (rook and) knight power is less effective than the combo of (rook and) bishop power (such as what the queen has). 

Ironically, even though the archbishop, generally valued between 6 and 7, is the only piece able to checkmate the enemy king all alone (with no support), nonetheless, it is considered less powerful than the chancellor due to the rook power of the latter, which in potency forms an impenetrable wall against the enemy king.  It seems that in popular play, the bizarre ability of the archbishop to change from light bishop to dark bishop in one move (that of a knight), is a most appealing attribute for such an "underdog" piece (less than a queen).  I have seen players say this attribute is something like "a dream come true."

It seems to me that Capablanca-variant chess might be more popular if someone wasn't always trying to make money on it IMHO.  The decision to call it "gothic chess" seems a bit unfortunate, for even now, many years later, it's not getting wide distribution.  Check it and see by typing "gothic chess" in a search engine -- and you get a string of creepy-looking nonsense playing pieces that have nothing to do with Capachess.

The games tend to progress very quickly and there is rarely time for any pawn to make it to the 8th rank for promotion.  Capachess games generally end around 20 moves, and checkmate is usually in the middlegame and sometimes in the opening (with even less clarity in division between opening and middlegame than in Classichess), but very rarely does 'gothic' or Capachess get into any endgame -- which is very ironic, seeing as how J.R. Capablanca was the chief pioneer into modern endgame strategy.  He was without question unbeatable in the endgames, and it was only because of his opponents' power plays in the early or middlegames that they were ever able to beat him.  If they let the game get to into the ending they would face the unstoppable endgame Master.

The chess variant Capa introduced was "unbalanced" which is another irony because Capa was anything but "unbalanced" himself.  He had a very long-term vision, to the point where not only the culmination of each game as an endgame was his focus, but he also wanted to ensure that chess in general would never face its own endgame, as it were. 

The modified re-arrangement of the initial opening positions of the pieces in "gothic" chess seems to have solved the problem of "imbalance" in the Capablanca chess starting position arrangement.

I just registered and I'm surprised this topic seems to have died 5 years ago.  What happened???    

Capa had just about as much to do with "the revolution in Cuba" as the Romanian and Hungarian refugees post WWII had to do with Communism.  These were real people like you and me, who lived under a wicked government that was bent on destroying the longstanding state of order because it was not conducive enough to wickedness. 

The world power was cruel to Capa, but he managed to live a normal life nonetheless.  He had a devoted wife, which is an enormous blessing for anyone.  In his last years, he became a radio broadcaster and had a brief show on playing chess that he structured something like a child's introduction to the game, which would be equally attractive to even seasoned players.  He had a gift for communication, whereby he would tell you enough, but not be redundant, and he would expect you to do your own thinking.  So his radio show was interesting to those who had never played chess as well as to those who had.  It garnered a wide appeal. 

When he first started the show, he asked his wife one day if she knew where a chess set could be found in the house, and she did not.  It had been a few years since he had played at the time.  I find this hard to imagine that someone whose life had been so centered on chess would stop playing in his latter years.  But it is true, it happened to him, and again most ironically, his animus, Alexander Alekhine, had died "with his boots on," as the reigning world champion.

There was a deep bitterness in his loss of the world title, for he would sit back and watch the publicized games of the regular world title tournaments and couldn't tell anyone about the mistakes he would see in the top level play, especially in the endgames where the world champion was his inferior.  So I suppose it wouldn't be too surprising that he did not have a beautifully carved ivory and ebony Cuban style chess set on permanent display in his home.  He may have been saddened by the reminders of foul play at the highest levels.  His last years were directed to making peace with his God and with the history of the game, and not dredging up the sordid past, which would have been no small inclination for anyone in his shoes.  In some ways you can say he's one of the unsung heroes of chess. 

Capa's final book, "Last Lectures," is derived from this radio program (the audio of which appears to have been lost to time passed), and it is IMHO unparalelled as a first introduction to chess for anyone even today.  Many authors try, but very few attain their goal of teaching a sincere LOVE for the game of chess, but that is the foremost achievement of Capa in his legacy of writings.  It's surprising to me that some are out of print.  And now with BOOKS IN GENERAL going into the dust bin of history, I am wont to recall the fact that I had had a favorite copy of that book, that I had checked out from the local public library for several years while I was learning the game in the early 1960's, and then later, when I had found the library had moved, I also found out much to my dismay, that the new location did't have my favorite copy in the card catalogue anymore, the one where my signature had been all the way down the page in the checkout card inside the front cover.  That's when I wished that I had told the library that I had "lost the book" the last time I had checked it out.  But that wouldn't have been true, and I would never have dared of course, to propogate such a fable.  It's a little sad to me that I could have kept the checkout card that proves I was the lone fan of Capa in my small town during those years. Because otherwise, maybe you won't believe me!

It's also a bit sad to me that I never took the initiative to go and meet his widow, who for many years took visitors from all over the world, people that came to her to say how much they appreciated her husbands great service to mankind in general and to chess in particular.  There were hundreds of such visitors, but alas, I was not among them, when I could have been.

I could have paid for the "lost book" and had kept it, at least it would have gone to someone who appreciates it instead of to the shredder, where it probably did in fact go. 

J.R. Capablanca was also renown for simultaneous blindfold exhibitions, most of which he always won.  He didn't require a set of triple-weighted pieces with billiard felt bottoms to remember what their positions were on the board, nor did he have to move the physical pieces to analyze variations.  He did all that in his head.  It was easy for him.  But it was not easy to teach that particular skill to his students. 

When he was asked if it was of any use to memorize board positions that precede a brilliant combination he would reply, "You can never know too many of them."  Take a look at such a book as "1,001 Chess Exercises for Beginners" by Franco Masetti and Roberto Mesa.  Capa didn't need to draw diagrams because he could remember them all, including whose game it was, where it was played, what the move number was, whose turn it was to move, and how many moves would remain in the game.

The chess set that he eventually obtained for use in his radio show (not because he needed one but because he had guests who needed to see one) was one day put away into the leatherette box it came in, and Capa closed the lid.  After he died, his wife would say about that box, that no one would ever open it again, because the chess pieces inside retain the touch of her dear husband's fingers, something she wanted to preserve.

This was most interesting to me, for she valued something that no one could quantify or verify or assess.  It seems to me that she may have learned this skill from Capa himself, who was able to find value in things that no one else could understand.  And that was also one reason that so few people understand him:

Tricklev wrote:  "Some Cuban bloke, I think he had something to do with the Revolution in Cuba."

That truly is a shameful thing to say.  I hope you didn't really mean it, Tricklev.

The only variant of chess I like the sound of is something I believe Capablanca also suggested : swapping over the initial positions of bishops and knights. This I believe is true to the original concept of chess and would allow the development of a vast body of new opening theory.

I should think that a "special challenge" or a "setup position" could be arranged by which the initial positions of the knights and bishops could be exchanged. 

Have you ever tried playing that way?  Was it fun? 

One problem I can see off the bat, is that after developing your bishop, castling would result in an awkward pawn structure:

I think the chancellor would show up better if the 'rook' embattlements would be on top of the knight's head instead of below at the base, and the bishop's miter could also go on top of a shorter 'horse head' for the archbishop's avatar and playing piece.

There is now a website for Capablanca chess. https://pychess-variants.herokuapp.com/7QW7DzCW