Talk:Dark chess

Fog of War

OK, so this game obviously expresses a concept of Fog of war, but as someone dutifully noted, it was choppily placed. So, can someone put this in? AkvoD3 16:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

En passant

"En passant capture is allowed, even if you do not see that it is possible."

How does this work? I can see a few possibilities:

1. If an en passant capture is available, the enemy pawn that has just moved two squares forward is made visibie.
2. A player with a pawn on its fifth rank, and a vacant square just ahead and to the side of it, can ask if an en passant capture is available into that square. Online implementations might do this by accepting or rejecting the move, and the player would see whether it is allowed before the move is finalised.
3. A player may try an en passant capture. If it is legal then the move is counted, otherwise it must be taken back.

Between 1 and 2, the only real difference is whether the player is automatically told about an available en passant capture or must actively seek to find out about it. This makes no theoretical difference to the game strategy, but might in practice affect gameplay since in the first case the player's attention is drawn to it. But 2 and 3 is a real difference, in that a player cannot find out whether an enemy pawn has just moved two squares to be beside of one of his own pawns but then decide not to actually make the capture.

I suppose this varies between different versions of the rules and different online implementations. Can anyone enlighten on which approaches to en passant are actually used? — Smjg (talk) 01:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

There seems to be a 4th logical possibility: you see the square your pawn would occupy after the en passant capture. So if White has a pawn on f5, and Black just played ...e7–e5, the square e6 would become visible, but the square e5 would not. I'm not sure if it's ever been implemented this way, but it seems to fit better with the idea that you can only see where you can move to. Double sharp (talk) 10:35, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Variant Chess' article (issue 58) on Lao Tzu Chess has a brief description of Dark Chess and makes everything clear: it is as I said in May 2022. The basic rule of Dark Chess is that a player can "see" only the squares that he can legally move to; all other squares are "dark". So, unless another of the player's men can move there, the square immediately in front of a pawn is either empty or dark, and the squares diagonally in front of a pawn are either occupied by a visible opponent or dark (unless the pawn can capture en passant, when an empty square is shown). Pawn promotion is not announced. Checks are announced, but not by what nor from where. (These rules differ from those in force on the BrainKing web site.)

However, one of the inventors (Jens Bæk Nielsen) has an article on The Chess Variant Pages about this game, claiming that en passant is forbidden. (He also has a different rule for pawns: a White pawn on e4, by his telling, can "see" d5, e5, and f5!) Double sharp (talk) 14:55, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Question about the current diagram

How does White know that there are Black pawns on a4 and b4? Banedon (talk) 07:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

White wouldn't know they are pawns. They would be dark squares as neither a4 nor b4 are legal moves.205.142.232.18 (talk) 20:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I've amended the article. Banedon (talk) 02:22, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

This diagram is dead wrong. White Pa2 sees Pa4 unless there is something on a3. I played great many Dark Chess games at the time when it was only played on IYT and Brainking. In fact, I was among the best players on both websites, organized inofficial championships and participated in rules discussions. So I know Dark Chess inside out.
On both websites there was the rule that a pawn in the 2nd row SEES the corresponding square in the 4th row unless there is something blocking the view. When there is something on a4, the player isn't merely informed that the move a2–a4 is impossible. He sees WHAT is on the square a4.
In other words: white Pa2 sees a3, a4 and b3, unless there is another piece on a3; white Pb2 sees a3, b3, b4 and c3 unless there is another pieve on b3, and so on. In the initial position, White sees the rows 1-4 and Black sees the rows 5-8.
That's how the game was played on IYT and Brainking. When a third Dark Chess website appeared (AjaxPlay, I think they were called), they also had the same rule.
In other words: all Dark Chess communities used the rule that the pawns on the 2nd row see two squares ahead, unless there is something in front of them blocking the next square.
I don't know who came up with the idea that Pa2 should only see a3 and b3 and not see what is on a4. It is wrong for Wikipedia to perpetuate a rule that virtually no one uses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.191.135.83 (talk) 08:16, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Seems the above is correct - [1] - so amending the article again. Banedon (talk) 03:52, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

That link seems to contradict what this article states about pawns. The current version of this article states "As an example, it is always clear when an enemy piece is directly in front of a pawn, because that square will be hidden (as capturing it is not a legal move for the pawn to make)" but the link provided states

The squares that are visible to the player must follow one of these conditions:

A player's piece stands on that square.

The player can move a piece to that square. This means that he/she can see empty squares that he/she can move to, or an opponent's piece that he/she can capture.

The square is directly in front of one of player's pawns or it is an adjacent forward diagonal from one of player's pawns.

Which would seem to indicate that you actually can see the identity of the piece in front of a pawn. The article also lists under variations, for the site schemingmind "the player does not see what is in front of their pawns, but knows if the position is occupied or not", which would also indicate that that's a rule specific to that site's version. So, would it be correct to update this article to state that Pawns can always see what's in front of them in the usual rules, and two in front of them from their starting position, if nothing blocks them? XinaNicole (talk) 04:14, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Apparently it depends on what server you play on. The approach that appeals most to me is the chess.com approach, but that's just personal taste. (Because it follows the spirit of "you can only see where you can move" better, methinks: a blocked pawn can't see what's in front of him, since he can't move there, but he knows that there's something in front of him because otherwise he would be able to move there and he'd see the empty square.) I think the game should be described using only the rules that are common to all the servers, and then with the disputed ones listed as variations. Double sharp (talk) 07:34, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Promotion

I can see a few possible ways pawn promotion can work. Let A be the player who has just promoted a pawn, and B be the other player:

1. promotions are not notified to B at all
2. B is informed merely of the fact that A has promoted a pawn, and nothing more
3. B is informed of what piece has been promoted to, but not where
4. B is informed of where a promotion has occurred, but not to what piece
5. B is informed of both the piece promoted to and the square on which it occurs.
6. when A promotes a pawn, the piece is made visible for B's next turn, but if the square would have been visible anyway then there is no special indication (and so, in this scenario, B doesn't know whether the piece has just been created by promoting a pawn).

I play Dark Chess on ItsYourTurn, but can't remember a time when my opponent has promoted a pawn in order to know what happens. Going by the information here, it must be either 2 or 3. The interface shows which pieces each side has lost, but does it change to reflect what pieces a player doesn't have on the board when a pawn is promoted? (If so, it would be interesting to see what happens when a player chooses to have a second queen or a third bishop, knight or rook.) Or does it just remain as indicating the pieces as they came off the board (and the promotion being indicated in some other way)? — Smjg (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

It varies between servers. My personal taste is 1: if you can't see the square, you shouldn't be able to know what happens there. Double sharp (talk) 07:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Article title capitalization

The game may have been named "Dark Chess", so, presumably, the article should be at Dark Chess rather than Dark chess. There is an external link to an article by one of the inventors [2], but it only mentions the name of the game in the title. However, it does refer to it as "Darkness Chess", so perhaps the article should be titled Darkness chess or Darkness Chess. Hyacinth (talk) 10:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Both Pritchard encyclopedias have it as "Darkness Chess". --IHTS (talk) 13:05, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you think it should be moved? Hyacinth (talk) 22:49, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Is there some indication "Darkness chess" is more common? Otherwise, we could just make a redirect to this article. Banedon (talk) 23:30, 18 June 2018 (UTC)