Chess for Android: Quick Castling/En-passant

[abik]

Chess for Android, when connected to an electronic board (Certabo, Millennium, DGT), was a bit restrictive with castling and en-passant moves. It expected the king to move fist, then the rook; likewise, the capturing pawn first, then the removed pawn. I actually implemented it this way on purpose, since these are the official FIDE rules. However, not all users appreciated this decision. Especially in rapid games, moving the pieces "simultaneously" is not uncommon. Therefore, the next release will be much more forgiving with such moves.

[PeterO]

Hi Aart,

nice to hear that the improvement of Chess for Android is going on!
When can we see your next release? Are there other points that will come for sure?

Peter

[Ras]

I actually implemented it this way on purpose, since these are the official FIDE rules.

For castling yes. But for capturing a piece, you can take first the piece and then place your own piece. It's just that the touch-move rule applies, i.e. if you touch an opponent's piece without announcing "j'adoube" or similar, you then have to capture it if a legal capture move exists - but that happens anyway with EP.

Or is my knowledge of the official chess rules outdated?

[abik]

Or is my knowledge of the official chess rules outdated?

No, you are correct. I took the FIDE rule of moving the king first for castling but that decision translated to a restrictive implementation for en-passant as well. For all other captures, the order did not matter even before. The capture would be correctly registered also if the captured piece was taken away first. But in any case, in the next update, this has all become moot.

[Nordlandia]

The rules should be if you touch the rook first then you should not be able to castle regardless. Otherwise one may exploit the castling/touch move privileges. If you let users castle with the rook first then they will continue develop a bad habbit that might be punished in a OTB tournament game.

Castling should only be possible by touching the king first.

[abik]

Castling should only be possible by touching the king first.

Well, if one blatantly moves the rook first, the move registers as a rook move, of course, and any subsequent king move is rejected (the electronic boards I support give no indication of touching a piece). The new implementation is just more forgiving when the rook and king move (almost) simultaneously.

[abik]

nice to hear that the improvement of Chess for Android is going on!
When can we see your next release? Are there other points that will come for sure?

Hard to say at this point. I have a very long todo list, but it is usually just a matter of what peaks my interest when I have some spare time....
In any case, stay tuned for more updates!

[abik]

This change is now available on Google Play (this time around, rolling out took a very long time, not sure why).