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[jp]

I guess you meant to say "(but NOT the only one possible)". Now everything makes sense

Oh, yes, there's a typo. Sorry!

My p.4 comment does not suffer from that typo:

The generalization is not unique. But there's only a small number of simple generalizations (around three or four) that we can think up.

Chess480 castling (K moves two squares) also seems a reasonable generalization, but some people don't like the K moving to the centre from e.g. g1 to e1.

[Ovyron]

Yeah, so I guess it's a problem with chess itself, that the King should always end two squares from the edge of the board after castling, my problem is with asymmetric castling but if that is fixed then we don't have to count how many moves the king makes because castling would be like teleportation to the end squares, and then a generalization that does this would work.

[jp]

saying "your argument is bogus" (without explaining why) or "you just don't like Chess960 and this is emotional" are just fallacious.

Your "Millennium-Bug argument" was bogus, and I did explain why. That does not logically imply that all of your arguments, including unstated future ones, must also be bogus.

[Ovyron]

Weird, I don't remember ever saying anything about the "Millennium-Bug", I must be getting old

[jp]

As you know, "Millennium-Bug argument" is the name I have given your (first) bogus argument. This name serves to remind you of the explanation why it is bogus.

Your later comment about "dropping pieces on the board that you hid in your pockets" is so bad it doesn't even count as an argument.

[Ovyron]

It is, let's recapitulate why it is. Look at this position again:



The question is, is it a chess position?

If the answer is "yes", then the white king can't castle.

Conversely, if the king can castle, say, to the kingside, moving from c1 all the way to g1, with the h rook moving to f1, then it's not chess. This is what I call "retarded castling."

Nobody in the world that has learned chess, that doesn't know about Chess960's retarded castling, would say that the king can castle in that chess position.

If it's not a chess position, and the king can in fact castle like a retard, then it could be any other game, including one where white can drop a pawn on b6, or move the H-Rook somewhere and make an Archbishop appear on h1, or anything you can imagine. We just don't know, because if it's not chess, it could be anything else.

In other words, there's a long list of illegal moves that could be played in the board on the picture I posted, but the list of white chess moves is so short I can list it here:

Legal pawn moves:
a4, a3, b3, e5, f5, g4, g3, h4, h3.

Legal Bishop moves:
(Light) Bxa6, Bb5, Bc4, Be2, Bf1.
(Dark) Bxf6, Bh6, Bh4.

Legal Knight moves:
(Light) Nb6, Nxb4, Nxc7+, Nc3, Nxe7, Ne3, Nxf6.
(Dark) Nb5, Nb3, Nc6, Nxe6, Ne2, Nf5.

Legal Rook moves:
(Light) Rd1, Re1, Rf1, Rg1.
(Dark) Rb1.

Legal Queen moves:
Qd1, Qe3, Qe2, Qf2, Qf1, Qg4, Qg3, Qh5, Qh3.

Legal King moves:
Kb1, Kd2, Kd1.

See how O-O is missing? O-O-O is also missing. It means those aren't chess moves, so any Chess960 game that leads to this position where O-O and O-O-O are legal isn't chess.

Just like @b6 (pawn drops on b6), Rd1@Ah1 (Rook to d1 dropping an Arbishop on h1) and an innumerable amount of moves are illegal chess moves (so they're not chess), castling and long castling are in the same category. The reason they're allowed on FRC (generalization of castling or otherwise) doesn't make them chess moves.

[jp]

See how O-O is missing? O-O-O is also missing. It means those aren't chess moves, so any Chess960 game that leads to this position where O-O and O-O-O are legal isn't chess.

All you're saying, in an extremely longwinded way, is that there is only one allowed starting position in traditional chess. We already know that!!

Obviously, if the King is not on e1, then in traditional chess it must have moved and therefore cannot castle, but in Chess960 it may have been on its original square all along, which is the relevant part of the castling rules here.

I'm amazed you think you have an argument there. Again, it's just coming back to different initial conditions, which is the main feature of the generalized game.

Your argument is really just saying that 959 initial conditions are in your words "illegal" in traditional chess.

[Ovyron]

Your argument is really just saying that 959 initial conditions are in your words "illegal" in traditional chess.

If that was my argument I'd be contradicting myself, I have already said that there are 48 positions out of the 960 that are also chess, and that if Chess960 got rid of retarded castling all the others would be as well (because, you see, players can move their pieces and get rid of castling and reach a starting position without castling and it never stops being chess.) Except that half of them would just be the others mirrored, so that's why I suggested that for those you can just mirror one of the sides (so Kings face enemy Queens) and you're back to 960 positions that are chess.

It's not just an argument, it is right. Evident, even.

[jp]

Your argument is really just saying that 959 initial conditions are in your words "illegal" in traditional chess.

If that was my argument I'd be contradicting myself, I have already said that there are 48 positions out of the 960 that are also chess

Okay: Your argument is really just saying that 912 initial conditions are in your words "illegal" in traditional chess.

The exact number is not the point. The point is that your supposed "illegality" is purely about the starting positions. That's all. It's not more of an argument than just declaring: "There should be only one initial condition, and it is this one." As I said, the relevant part of the castling rule is that the K and R have not previously moved.

[Ovyron]

The exact number is not the point. The point is that your supposed "illegality" is purely about the starting positions.

Nope, because this isn't about the starting positions, as I've said also, as soon as both players get rid of retarded castling (i.e. after they have moved both rooks or their king) the game is back to being chess, when I suggested that those positions should just disallow castling the only reason was for them to start as chess from the get-go.

I could organize a Chess960 thematic tournament where if the players get a starting position with the king in a weird spot, I'd auto-maneuver their pieces for them so they can't play any of the castles and then they'd start from a position that was chess. The game could be inserted into any chess database (starting from a chess FEN), all chess engines that play chess would be able to analyze those games, and anybody in the world that knows how to play chess could follow, unlike now, that someone that hasn't heard about Chess960 would think "oh, I thought it was chess, but apparently not" as soon as a king castles like a retard.

This is clearly superior to the mess that FRC currently is, where no chess engine can play them unless people beg the author to implement something that would be auto-implemented if FRC was chess.

But this isn't about starting positions, it's about illegal moves being allowed so it's no longer the original game. You can't really argue against this argument (unless YOUR argument is that any game that allows people to play illegal chess moves is still chess, if so, I'll nickname this argument... "Flat-Earth" argument - hopefully you'll remember why this is bogus.)