From: utzoo!decvax!duke!bcw Newsgroups: net.chess Title: Re: Origin of Castling Article-I.D.: duke.2803 Posted: Sat Dec 4 19:53:07 1982 Received: Sun Dec 5 10:06:38 1982 From: Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University Re: Origin of castling in chess Castling as currently known was only standardized in about the last two centuries. Before that, there were a number of variations on this theme: for example, Chaturanga (the root game from which all later forms of Chess are believed to have originated) allowed the King to make one Knight move per game, whereas others allowed similar types of strange moves (like the versions of Great Chess which allow some piece like a "crown prince" to take the place of the King if it is checkmated, or Timur's Chess in which the King can trade places with any allied piece once during the game in the place of making a move and may additionally have been able to exchange places with a special piece named the "adventitious King" under certain circumstances. To the best of my knowledge, castling in something like the modern form was introduced by the Italian school during the time the ancient game (which had Bishops moving 2 squares diagonally, leaping over the first square; and Queens which moved one square diagonally only) was revised to something approaching the modern game around AD 1500. In the Italian version of the move, the King can move towards either Rook by at least 2 squares (for example, either to KN1, KR1, QB1, QN1, or QR1), and the Rook must move to a square beyond the King (for example, KB1 or K1). This was termed the "free rochade" and is at least partly responsible for the "romantic" school being associated with the Italians - most of those old gambits become *extremely* sound with this rule. The King's Gambit in particular does very well, which accounts for much of its early popularity. Alas, all of this chaos was done away with during the 18th and 19th centuries when the various Chess players in Europe finally agreed on a "standard" game. But you can probably still find remnants of the old game in Turkey, Iran, India, and neighboring countries. If this topic interests anyone, I would suggest the following books: Gollon, John Chess Variations, Ancient, Regional and Modern Murray, H. J. History of Chess Faulkener, Ed. Games Ancient and Oriental and How to Play Them These books describe all of this and much more - indispensable if you like to know why things are the way they are. Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University