On Mar 31, 9:35 am, David Richerby
wrote:
RookHouse wrote:
The REAL inventor of theGothicChess piece, the "Chancellor".

http://www.rookhouse.com/blog/?p=164

Well, I sincerely hope that the inventors ofGothicChess don't go
around claiming that they invented the piece. GothicChess is just
Capablancachess with a different initial position.

It's worse than that.

Capablanca Chess is just a game invented by Carrera in 1617 with a
different initial position!

Carerra's version from 1617:
R Pr Kt B Q K B Kt Em R

The Princess was called a Centaur, and the Empress was called a
Campione. The board was 10 by 8, not 10 by 10.

While the location of the Princess and Empress keeps the defense of
the squares in front of the King and Queen the same, the fashion in
Chess with added pieces has instead been to keep the King's castled
position, with the Knight in a compact corner setup, unaltered.

And so, much later, but decades before Capablanca, H. E. Bird took the
same complement of pieces, again on a 10 by 8 board, with this
arrangement:

H. E. Bird's version from 1874:
R Kt B Em Q K Pr B Kt R

He called the Princess a Guard, and the Empress an Equerry. Note that
he puts the weaker Princess on the Kingside, and the stronger Empress
on the Queenside, the opposite of what was done by Carrera and
Capablanca.

And this is Capablanca Chess, from around 1921:
R Kt Pr B Q K B Em Kt R

I would tend to lean towards going with Bird's version, but exchanging
the Guard and the Equerry, as the canonical version of the game with
this piece complement, with Capablanca's and Carrera's layouts as
possible alternates.

John Savard