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Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Dec 19, 2022 02:44 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 02:08 PM:

Ok, I think we are all on the same page now.  Yay!  So we have three different options to choose from.  The difference is what powers of movement a Joker is considered to have when it is the other player's turn.  This only matters for purposes of deciding if that player is in check, or moves through check when castling.

Option 1: The Joker is "reinitialized" each time the owning player moves, returning to its initial state of having no moves at all.  This is how ChessV currently works, and I think the Game Courier preset as well.  Personally, I consider this a reasonable option, but it seems others do not, and it has the unfortunate consequence of meaning that King+Joker cannot checkmate a bare King.

Option 2: The Joker retains the move capabilities of the last piece moved by the opponent.  Therefore, both Jokers always have moves (except on the very first move of the game), and the two Jokers will not necessarily have the same moves.  This is consistent with the description on the Apothecary Chess Modern page.  But I don't think the description on Wikipedia is sufficient to distinguish between this and:

Option 3: The Joker imitates the last piece moved by either player.  This is how the Interactive Diagram currently works and is consistent with the description of the 'I' atom in XBetza.  (That said, I assume there is still ambiguity in the XBetza definition because of questions like whether it imitates the two-space pawn move, can capture en passant, castling, or any other game-specific rules.)

[Edit]: The diagram I posted is a checkmate in both options 2 and 3, but a stalemate in option 1.  The situation H. G. posted is a checkmate in option 2, but a stalemate in options 1 and 3.

Personally, I have no strong preference between these options.  Option 2 is slightly harder to implement but I can still do it if that's the concensus.


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