Courier Chess
Encyclopedia
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
in the chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
family. The original form is known to have been played for at least six hundred years, after which it was replaced by a more modern form. It pioneered the modern chess bishop
Bishop (chess)
A bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen...
, and probably played a part in evolving modern chess out of Medieval Chess
Shatranj
Shatranj is an old form of chess, which came to the Western world from India. Modern chess has gradually developed from this game.-Etymology and origins:...
.
The rules
Courier Chess is played on a board of eight ranks by twelve files. Literary and artistic evidence indicate that the boardChessboard
A chessboard is the type of checkerboard used in the board game chess, and consists of 64 squares arranged in two alternating colors...
was checkered from the beginning, but that there was no rule as to which squares were dark. The practice is still unsettled, but the more frequent practice seems to be that the square at each player's extreme right is white.See the Chess Variants website http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/courier.html. Murray 1913, p. 392 (citing Selenus, Gustavus, Schach- oder Königs-Spiel, Leipzig, 1616) gives the contrary rule. The kings
King (chess)
In chess, the king is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that its escape is not possible . If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove the threat of capture on the next move. If this cannot be...
, though, start on squares of their own color, at f1 and f8 by the algebraic notation
Algebraic chess notation
Algebraic notation is a method for recording and describing the moves in a game of chess. It is now standard among all chess organizations and most books, magazines, and newspapers...
. The king moves one square in any direction, but may not be placed or left in check (at risk). There is no castling
Castling
Castling is a special move in the game of chess involving the king and either of the original rooks of the same color. It is the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces at the same time. Castling consists of moving the king two squares towards a rook on the player's first rank, then...
. Next to the king, on e1 and e8, stands the Rath or Mann, the counselor or henchman, which moves one square in any direction, but may be placed or left en prise (at risk). On the other central file, at g1 and g8, stands the queen
Queen (chess)
The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess, able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king. With the chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts...
, who has the move of the fers: one square diagonally. On the queen's other hand, at h1 and h8, stands a piece known as the Schleich (sneak or smuggler) or Trülle (trull) and sometimes depicted as a jester, moving one square along a rank or file. The two flanks mirror each other. At d1, i1, d8, and i8 stands the piece that gave the game its name: the Courier or Läufer, the runner, still the German name for the chess bishop
Bishop (chess)
A bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen...
. Next out, at c1, j1, c8, and j8, stands the Bischof or bishop, also called the "old man" or "archer": the alfil, leaping diagonally to the second square. At b1, k1, b8, and k8 stands the knight
Knight (chess)
The knight is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight . It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, one square from the corner...
, and in the corners the rook
Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
.Bell 1960,1979, pp.62–63
The second rank is filled with pawns
Pawn (chess)
The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...
. These move one square forward, capturing one square diagonally forward, except that at the start of the game each player must move his rook-pawns, his queen-pawn, and his queen two squares forward. Such a two-square leap along a file was called a Freudensprung—English "joy-leap".Murray 1913, p.438 The original rule for pawn-promotion
Promotion (chess)
Promotion is a chess rule describing the transformation of a pawn that reaches its eighth rank into the player's choice of a queen, knight, rook, or bishop of the same color . The new piece replaces the pawn on the same square and is part of the move. Promotion is not limited to pieces that have...
is unknown. The standard medieval rule was that a pawn reaching the farthest rank was promoted at once to (medieval) queen.Bell 1960, 1979, pp.59–60
History
Wirnt von Gravenberg, writing early in the thirteenth century, mentioned the Courier Game in his poem Wigalois, and expected his readers to know what he was talking about. Heinrich von Beringen, about a hundred years later, mentioned the introduction of the couriers as an improvement in chess. Kunrat von Ammenhausen, still in the first half of the fourteenth century, told how he had once in ConstanceConstance
Constance is a female given name that derives from Latin and means "constant." Variations of the name include Connie, Constancia, Constanze, Constanza, Stanzy, and Konstanze.Constance may refer to:-People:*Constance Bennett , American actress...
seen a game with sixteen more men than in the "right chess": each side having a trull, two couriers, a counsellor, and four extra pawns. He added that he had never seen the game anywhere else, in Provence, France, or Kurwalhen
Graubünden
Graubünden or Grisons is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland. The canton shares borders with the cantons of Ticino, Uri, Glarus and St. Gallen and international borders with Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein...
.Kurwal(c)hen / Churwalchen = historic German name for the Romansh-speaking region around Chur
Chur
Chur or Coire is the capital of the Swiss canton of Graubünden and lies in the northern part of the canton.-History:The name "chur" derives perhaps from the Celtic kora or koria, meaning "tribe", or from the Latin curia....
(see also :de:Churrätien)Murray 1913, pp.483–484
Sometime shortly after 1475 someone put the courier on the standard chessboard in place of the old alfil and gave the queen the combined powers of the courier and the rook.Murray 1913, pp.776–777, Eales 1985, p. 72 This game was so much more exciting than medieval chess that it soon drove the older game off the market.Murray 1913, Chapter XI Other improvements were tried out. One was an optional double first step for the pawns. This was at first restricted to the king's, queen's, and rooks' pawns, and then gradually extended to the others.Murray 1913, p.852
In the early sixteenth century Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden , also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch engraver and painter, born and mainly active in Leiden...
, in the Netherlands, painted a picture called "The Chess Players" in which a woman appears to be beating a man at Courier Chess. Gustavus Selenus (Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg) in his 1616 book Das Schach- oder Königs-Spiel, mentioned the Courier Game as one of three forms of chess played in the village of Ströbeck
Ströbeck
Ströbeck is a small village in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, near the town Halberstadt. village and a former municipality in the district of Harz, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2010, it is part of the town Halberstadt. It is famous as the Schachdorf , due to a long historic connection with...
near Halberstadt
Halberstadt
Halberstadt is a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt and the capital of the district of Harz. It is located on the German Half-Timbered House Road and the Magdeburg–Thale railway....
in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. He described it in detail, and gave drawings of the pieces. The names he gave the pieces do not always match the figures in the drawings: the piece called the Schleich is depicted as a court jester. In 1651 Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg
Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg
|align=right|Frederick William was Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia – and thus ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia – from 1640 until his death. A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he is popularly known as the "Great Elector" because of his military and political prowess...
and Duke of Prussia, gave to Ströbeck a playing board with chess on one side and the Courier Game on the other, and a set of silver pieces. These pieces were lent in the eighteenth century and never returned, but there is a set of wooden pieces. In 1821 H. G. Albers reported that Courier Chess was still played in Ströbeck, and that some pieces
Chess piece
Chess pieces or chessmen are the pieces deployed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. The pieces vary in abilities, giving them different values in the game...
had gained more powerful moves, but a few years later other visitors found that it had been abandoned.The Chess Variations website at http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/courierspiel.html mentions H. G. Albers, 1821, and George Hope Verney, Chess Eccentricities, Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1885. In 1883 the local chess club revived it. Playing sets based on Lucas van Leyden's painting are commercially available.at http://courierchess.com; contains a large image of Lucas van Leyden's painting
The modern rules
The starting set-up is the same as for medieval Courier Chess. The king, queen, courier (remember, the German word for a chess bishop), knight, and rook have their modern powers. The bishop (or archer) can move one square diagonally, or leap diagonally to the second square. The fool, standing beside the queen, moves one square in any direction. The sage, standing beside the king, combines the powers of the fool and the knight. The pawn moves like the modern pawn, except that after reaching the farthest rank it must remain there for two moves before taking up its new career as a piece. Castling is permitted, if all squares between the king and the rook are vacant, the king has not been checked, the rook is not en prise, neither has moved, and no square between them is under attack. The king moves to the bishop's square, and the rook leaps over him to the courier's square, in either wing.Verney, p. 154 The rule on stalemateStalemate
Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check but has no legal moves. A stalemate ends the game in a draw. Stalemate is covered in the rules of chess....
has not been preserved; the subject was unsettled in Germany well into the nineteenth century.Murray 1913, p.853