Piececlopedia: Barc
Historical notes
The Barc is a kind of `restricted knight', introduced by Ralph Betza in 1996. The name is the reverse of Crab, and the moves of the piece are precisely the reverse of that of the Crab. Clear from the diagram: the squares the crab can go to are like the pincers of a crab in reverse.
Movement
The barc moves like a knight, jumping across squares, but only in some directions: it can go either two squares vertically backwords and one square horizontally, or one square vertically forwards and two squares horizontally.Movement diagram
The barc can jump to all the squares marked with a circle.
Checkmating
The Barc cannot inflict checkmate on a rectangular board with only assistance of its own King, and is thus a minor piece. Even with a pair of Barcs you cannot force checkmate on a bare King, but paired with another minor this is sometimes possible. But because the Barc is so weak, and can make the necessary manouevre only in two of the corners because of its assymmetry, this succeeds only on small boards, if the partner piece is not stronger than an 8-target leaper. Try it!
This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of different (fairy) chess pieces.
Written by Hans Bodlaender. Slightly modified by Fergus Duniho. AI image added by Fergus Duniho.
WWW page created: June 27, 2001. Last updated: November 22, 2024.