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I have a couple of Caslca-related items to add, and then some description of how I got started on the idea, which has taken many years to finalize.
1) The lag, in half-moves, or ply, between players' castling moves MUST necessarily be an odd number.
2) Cascla can't work when there are ILLEGAL moves involving castling.
There was such an example published in En Passant, February 2000, p. 18, in a report on the 1999 World Youth Chess Festival in Spain, by team captain Ole Hellsten. Consider the game Alexandra Benggawan vs Tanya Steiner, G12, with the Canadian Alexandra playing White, which went like this: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Bb4 6.Nxc6 dxc6 7.Qxd8+ Kxd8 8.Bd3, and now ...O-O-O! was played. Black castled Queenside on the Kingside, putting her King on g8 and her h8 rook on f8, after having already moved her King! The move was clearly illegal, and Alexandra called an arbiter, who didn't understand her explanation of the complaint, and thought it was about Black touching her rook first when castling, allowing the move to stand. The game wound up drawn.
Apparently GM Viktor Korchnoi played a game, many years ago, before sensory boards, where he moved his King away from its original square, moved it back, and then castled (which would be illegal). His opponent didn't spot it at the time, or register a complaint then and there, and the game continued. Not sure which game that would have been. Perhaps someone in chesstalk land might know this! Then the great Viktor was in another game, years later, where he tried to do the same thing, but this time the automatic sensory board flagged it as illegal!!
3) How Cascla started:
I got started on the thinking which has eventually produced the Cascla concept when playing through the game Walter Browne vs Jonathan Speelman, Taxco Interzonal 1985, from the book on the Budapest Defence by German IM Otto Borik. This was the same tournament where Canada's Kevin Spraggett, then an IM, became the first Canadian Candidate under the FIDE system. GM Speelman won the game, and in his notes IM Borik stated that the English GM had played a new strategic plan in this line of the Budapest, with Queenside castling. "How interesting", I thought, and wondered how one would possibly be able to search efficiently across the millions of known games for similar examples, or to find cases where castling patterns were untried. I eventually realized I needed something new to characterize this idea, and this became Cascla! I am more than a little amazed that this does, in fact, seem to be a new idea, considering the very many smart people who have played chess across the ages!
Walter Browne vs Jonathan Speelman
Taxco Interzonal 1985
Budapest, A52
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1035576
1) The lag, in half-moves, or ply, between players' castling moves MUST necessarily be an odd number.
2) Cascla can't work when there are ILLEGAL moves involving castling.
There was such an example published in En Passant, February 2000, p. 18, in a report on the 1999 World Youth Chess Festival in Spain, by team captain Ole Hellsten. Consider the game Alexandra Benggawan vs Tanya Steiner, G12, with the Canadian Alexandra playing White, which went like this: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Bb4 6.Nxc6 dxc6 7.Qxd8+ Kxd8 8.Bd3, and now ...O-O-O! was played. Black castled Queenside on the Kingside, putting her King on g8 and her h8 rook on f8, after having already moved her King! The move was clearly illegal, and Alexandra called an arbiter, who didn't understand her explanation of the complaint, and thought it was about Black touching her rook first when castling, allowing the move to stand. The game wound up drawn.
Apparently GM Viktor Korchnoi played a game, many years ago, before sensory boards, where he moved his King away from its original square, moved it back, and then castled (which would be illegal). His opponent didn't spot it at the time, or register a complaint then and there, and the game continued. Not sure which game that would have been. Perhaps someone in chesstalk land might know this! Then the great Viktor was in another game, years later, where he tried to do the same thing, but this time the automatic sensory board flagged it as illegal!!
3) How Cascla started:
I got started on the thinking which has eventually produced the Cascla concept when playing through the game Walter Browne vs Jonathan Speelman, Taxco Interzonal 1985, from the book on the Budapest Defence by German IM Otto Borik. This was the same tournament where Canada's Kevin Spraggett, then an IM, became the first Canadian Candidate under the FIDE system. GM Speelman won the game, and in his notes IM Borik stated that the English GM had played a new strategic plan in this line of the Budapest, with Queenside castling. "How interesting", I thought, and wondered how one would possibly be able to search efficiently across the millions of known games for similar examples, or to find cases where castling patterns were untried. I eventually realized I needed something new to characterize this idea, and this became Cascla! I am more than a little amazed that this does, in fact, seem to be a new idea, considering the very many smart people who have played chess across the ages!
Walter Browne vs Jonathan Speelman
Taxco Interzonal 1985
Budapest, A52
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1035576