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Gunnery Chess

This page contains one or more presets for playing a game online with Game Courier, an online server for playing Chess variants by correspondence.

Normal chess rules apply except for the following. By the term 'piece' I mean all pieces, including pawns. Any pawn situated on the same file as a friendly piece, with zero or more empty squares in between, can leap forwards over the latter and land on an enemy piece standing on the same file, provided that there is just one friendly piece in between. The pawn can land on all enemy pieces on the file, but not on empty squares. However, enemy pieces positioned behind an enemy pawn (or yet another friendly piece) cannot be reached, although the enemy pawn, in itself, can be captured. When the pawn lands it behaves like a cannon shell and "explodes", that is, it is removed together with the enemy piece.

This piece movement functions similarly as a cannon. It opens up interesting tactical and strategical possibilities during all phases of the game. One such possibilty is to exchange a pawn on the same file in order to open the file for continued attack. Pawns that fulfil the requirements for making a jump are referred to as "cannons".

According to the dictionary the term gunnery refers to the use of guns; esp: the science of the flight of projectiles and of the effective use of guns.

Note! A more thorough explanation of the rules, with exemplifying images, can be found here.

The following preset makes only a scarce validity check of cannon moves. Moves are automated, including castling, the 'en passant' move, and the emptying of the destination square at cannon moves. Pieces can be moved by pointing and clicking. When promoting a pawn, it will automatically turn into a Queen. Should you prefer another piece then you must type it manually (e.g., add N a8; capture a7). Use small piece-letters for black. E-mails to your opponent are generated, but you can play online by intermittently pressing the browser's update button. Note that you must watch out for cannon pawn checks, because it's easy for the inexperienced to miss them.



Gunnery Chess (big graphics)

Gunnery Chess (small graphics)



You can also download a Zillions implementation here.

See also my other Game Courier presets.





This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.

By M Winther.
Web page created: 2006-07-03. Web page last updated: 2006-07-03