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Help For Avalanche Chess

Introduction

Welcome to the network Avalanche Chess server. The rules of Avalanche Chess are below. The move notation is a comma-separated list of chess moves. The avalanchechess "challenge" command is described here. Other commands are the same for all pbmserv games.

avalanchechess challenge userid1 userid2 [ -reversed | -balanced | -standard ]
Start a new game of Avalanche Chess between userid1 and userid2.

The standard rules for Avalanche Chess have a large first-move advantage. (because of the opening move 1. e4,c6) Two methods have been proposed to fix the problem, called "Reversed King/Queen Avalanche Chess" and "Balanced Avalanche Chess". -reversed is the default mode for Avalanche Chess.

The "-reversed" option reverses the position of Black's King and Queen.

With the "-balanced" option, white does not push a pawn on his first move only.

The "-balanced" and "-reversed" options may be used together.

The "-standard" option negates the effect of the default -reversed mode, so that neither -reversed or -balanced is in effect.

Rules of Avalanche Chess

All rules from normal chess apply, except that every turn has two parts. First a normal legal chess move, then one of the opponent's pawn is pushed one space forward (towards yourself).

A few extra rules are needed to clarify how certain situations are handled:

  • The first part of the move must be a legal move. You may not place your king in check and then use the pawn push to get out of check.
  • The second part of the move (the pawn push) is omitted if there are no pawns which can be pushed.
  • If a pawn is pushed such that it places the player's own king in check, he loses the game immediately, since his king would be captured on the next turn. This applies even if he mates his opponent on the same turn, since his king would be captured first.
  • If a pawn is pushed onto the last rank, the owner of the pawn decides what piece to promote it to. If the promotion results in check, the game is over according to the previous rule, since the king would be captured.
  • There is no en-passant capture.

Additional Information on Avalanche Chess can be found at:

Avalanche Chess on Hans Bodlaender's Chess Variant Pages.
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