accasta notation

the board

An Accasta board uses the following coordinate system:

Figure 1: Pieces are placed on the intersections of the lines. There are 37 cells in total. Horizontal ranks are labeled a to g. Each position is then counted from the left to the right (white player's view); e.g. there are 4 cells on rank a and g, and 7 cells on the middle rank d.

Rank a is always on the white player's side.

Pieces and Moves

Shields, Horses, and Chariots are identified by the letters S, H, and C, respectively.

Moves are indicated by - for moving to an empty space, + for landing on a friendly piece, and × for capturing.

Notation of a complete move starts with the origin space, followed by a colon. Then the submoves follow, separated by commas. Each submove is written as

piece(s) move-type target-space

One's own pieces are written upper case; enemy (i.e. captured) pieces lower case.

Example

1. a1:C+b2,HS-c1

Figure 2: An opening move: The head on a1, a Chariot, lands on the adjacent friendly stack on b2, and the remaining pieces, a Horse leading a Shield, move to c1.

Short Form

There is also a short form of the notation. Here all punctuation is optional, thus the standard notation

a1:C+b2,HS-c1

can be reduced to:

a1Cb2HSc1

Even more, if all (remaining) pieces of a stack are moved, pieces can be omitted. In our example:

a1Cb2c1

Another example is a1c1, which means: a complete stack on a1 is moved to c1.

Please note: Richard's PBeM Server displays moves in the standard notation, but you are allowed to enter short form notation.