Community variant
Rookie
This is a user-catalogued casual variant. Technical details such as board size,
FEN, pieces, and hand rules are defined in the Fairy-Stockfish
variants.ini block below.
Generated rule overview
This variant inherits its base rules from `coregal` and overrides the settings shown below.
Board and setup
Pieces and movement
- The piece set used on the board is: custom piece 1 (k), king (r), bishop (b), knight (n), pawn (p) and queen (q).
- The royal piece king (r) uses custom Betza movement `R`.
- custom piece 1 (k) is a custom piece with Betza movement `K`.
Promotion
- The pieces that can promote are: pawn (p).
- Promotion choices are both sides: knight (n), bishop (b), queen (q) and custom piece 1 (k).
Piece movement
These diagrams show custom pieces and known Fairy-Stockfish built-in fairy pieces from White's perspective on a compact preview board. Some special moves, especially hoppers and game-state-dependent moves, can still depend on blockers or game state.
K
R
move
capture
move or capture
initial only
hopper target
Fairy-Stockfish rules
[royal_rook:coregal]
maxFile = 8
maxRank = 8
# 1. DISABLE THE STANDARD ROOK
# We have to disable the base rook slot to free up the 'r' character.
rook = -
# 2. TRANSFER THE ROYAL ROLE
# We explicitly map the engine's internal Royal slot (king) to use the 'r' character.
# We add ':R' so it retains standard Rook movement.
king = r:R
# 3. STRIP THE OLD KING
# We take the freed-up 'k' character and assign it as a custom non-royal piece.
# We add ':K' so it keeps standard King movement.
customPiece1 = k:K
# 4. FIX PROMOTION
# Since 'r' is now a royal piece, we replace it with 'k' in the promotion list
# so pawns can promote into your disposable guards instead of extra targets.
promotionPieceTypes = nbqk
# 5. THE STARTING POSITION
# PyChess will automatically draw 'r' as a Rook and 'k' as a King.
# Castling is disabled (-) because the internal rook class was removed.
startFen = rnbbkbnn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBBKBNN w - - 0 1