When the game begins, there are no empty squares for the pawns to
move to. So, the only opening for a pawn is to capture an opponent's
pawn. Where the quoted text says, "the pawn is blocked and cannot
move," it means that the pawn cannot MOVE DIAGONALLY because there is
no empty square there. However, it can CAPTURE an opponent
LATERALLY. I hope I have clarified the issue. If not, it may be
best to look at a sample game. Let me know.

--Mark

--- In forchessonline@yahoogroups.com, "dworks" <dworks@y...> wrote:
> Tom said:
>
> 1) "The pawn can still only move and capture in the forward
direction
> as it does in standard chess, however, the method of moving and
> capturing is different. Instead of capturing diagonally, THE PAWN
> MOVES DIAGONALLY and CAPTURES PIECES LATERALLY to either side..."
>
> Okay, I understand this part. Now it gets tricky.
>
> 2) "If a piece, either opponent or friendly, occupies the square
> diagonally in front of a pawn, the pawn is blocked and cannot move.
> At the beginning of the game, the Forchess pawn can only advance by
> capturing."
>
> First he says you move diagonally, then he says that if the pawn is
> blocked, it cannnot move. From this, I can only conclude that
(from
> #1 above), when the pawn moves, it moves to an EMPTY square.
> However, due to the initial board layout, that simply cannot happen.
>
> Initial layout:
>
> K R N p p B R K
> R Q B p p N Q R
> B N - p p - B N
> p p p p p p p p
> p p p p p p p p
> N B - p p - N B
> R Q N p p B Q R
> K R B p p N R K
>
> What am I missing here?
>
> Ref: http://www.intuitor.com/forchess/index.html
>
> Alternate view of initial layout:
> .---------------.
> |K|R|N|p|p|B|R|K|
> |R|Q|B|p|p|N|Q|R|
> |B|N|-|p|p|-|B|N|
> |p|p|p|p|p|p|p|p|
> |p|p|p|p|p|p|p|p|
> |N|B|-|p|p|-|N|B|
> |R|Q|N|p|p|B|Q|R|
> |K|R|B|p|p|N|R|K|
> `---------------`