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King's Leap Chess. Variants with Chancellors (Knight+Rook) and old Russian Queens (Knight+Queen).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝David Paulowich wrote on Wed, Mar 30, 2005 11:50 PM UTC:

(count-condition (total-piece-count 2)) ; is an old attempt to add an 'automatic draw rule' to Zillions. But I found that it can create problems in Zillions chess games, and decided not to implement it. Here is an example with 4 pieces set up on an empty board:

diagram

VariantName=Chess (Black Queen c1) (Black King a2) (White King b4) (White Rook d3) 

1. Rook d3 - a3 
1. King a2 - b2
2. Rook a3 - b3
2. King b2 - a2
3. Rook b3 - a3
3. King a2 - b1
4. Rook a3 - b3

Apparently Zillions was worried about the sequence 1... Queen x Rook check 2. King x Queen 'automatic draw'. I have not seen Zillions actually play an illegal move when the count-condition line is added to a ZRF, but this example does show Zillions failing to win a game because it reacts to the apparent threat of a future illegal move. This lack of a command to automatically end a game of chess when only the two kings remain is a minor inconvenience. But there is a (MAJOR) problem with the 'bare king rule' in every Shatranj related ZRF that I have tested. See the Shatranj Page Comments for more details.