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Thread: Chess variants

  1. #1
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    Default Chess variants

    Here's a number of links for those curious about chess variants. First, a wiki giving a list of many of them, then a wiki about various kinds of fairy chess pieces, followed by a link to arguably the world's chief chess variant website (free membership; members can play variants by an email system which includes diagrams of positions on the website itself). Note that there are wikis out there devoted to single chess variants, or to a single kind of fairy chess piece:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_variants

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chess_piece

    http://www.chessvariants.com/
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  2. #2
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    Here's one of my own most recent chess variant inventions, called Hannibal Chess. It's played on a 10x8 board and has 2 extra pawns and two extra elephant-like pieces per side. At least some people that play like it, and some consider it might be prototypical of whatever might replace chess in terms of popularity some day, if that ever needs to happen:

    http://www.chessvariants.com/rules/hannibal-chess
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

  3. #3
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    I'll give now links re: what I consider some particularly promising/interesting/fascinating chess variants. The first is for shogi (Japanese Chess), which features drops (the way to tell which side a piece belongs to is by the direction it points away from, on the rectangular cells of the 9x9 board). The second is for xiangqi (Chinese Chess), which has mostly weak pieces compared to chess, but on the other hand the kings are confined to relatively small palaces. Both games are massively popular, particularly the latter, which is closer to chess in global popularity than shogi at the moment. Next is (4 player) bughouse, then crazyhouse (the latter might best be played online at the moment, as an extra or special set is needed to play it). Rounding out relatively quite popular variants I list here is Fischer Random (aka Chess960), and to some extent Seirawan Chess, perhaps. A cool variant that follows is Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, featuring a 91 cell board, with 3 colours of cells; then follows Circular Chess (played on a 64 cell round board), which also has some degree of popularity, particularly overseas. One fairly popular 10x10 variant is Grand Chess, next; another game of this board size, with some less powerful pieces added than in the former game, follows (Shako) - it is played online, at least, and has fans. Then there's a 10x10 game of my own invention (Sac Chess), which has many powerful pieces, and can be played on the website of its link (chessvariants.com) - it's currently in the top 50 played on that website, of over 1200 games that can be played at the moment. Next, Capablanca Chess, a 10x8 variant that may finally be gaining in real popularity. Finally, Maxima, one example of a wonderfully weird and complex chess variant, invented by a mathematician, which has some degree of popularity online (on chessvariants.com at least):

    https://www.chessvariants.com/shogi.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/multip...ir/tandem.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/crazyhouse.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/diffse...r/fischer.html

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seirawan_chess

    https://www.chessvariants.com/hexago...hexagonal.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/shape.dir/circular.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/freeling.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/shako.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/sac-chess

    https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/capablanca.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/dpiece...ma/maxima.html
    Last edited by Kevin Pacey; 01-10-2019 at 01:44 PM.
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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    Here's 11 more weird and wonderful chess variants: The first (Alice Chess) is a sort of odd 3D chess, played on 2 chessboards, one empty at the start. The second (Altair) has a weird board, movements & tactics, and was again invented by a mathematician; The third (Backlash) is another sort of 3D chess played on two chessboards, each with the chess armies, plus four pockets off the board, for drops, that can allow a potential backlash from any captures one might make, since the opponent gets a demoted version of a captured piece to drop, on the other board, provided the pocket in question is not first stuffed by yet another piece. The fourth is called Chaturanga - Four Kings - Double Mate, and it's a twist on the ancient 4 player Chaturanga game that uses 4 armies (each of the two sides gets 2 of them in the more modern version), each of 8 pieces each, on the 64 squares. Chess with Different Armies allows for the pitting of two of any of a number of unlike armies (including the one called Fabulous FIDEs [i.e. as in chess]) against each other in a way that always seems to make for a pretty even battle. The sixth game is Clockwork Orange Chess, where captured pieces are dropped by the player losing them, but pieces when initially captured become docile in that when dropped they neither can capture nor give check (if the opponent then captures them, they revert to less docile pieces that can be dropped, too). Knightmare Chess is chess played with a special deck of cards, in a way that takes more skill than luck. The eighth game is Kriegspeil, where 3 boards and a referee are used - each player must deduce where his opponent's pieces are, as he cannot see his opponent's army, but gets information from the referee after a move attempt instead. Pocket Mutation Chess is chess with 2 off-board pockets that the players can put a piece into, or drop on the board from, one of, after deciding whether to change the piece (perhaps a fairy chess one) into something of roughly equal value; however, sometimes pieces can become frighteningly powerful fairy chess pieces if the game goes on long enough. The tenth game is Rococo, a game that's played on a special 'Ring-Board', as sometimes pieces can jump over enemy ones to take them, and can end up on the outer ring, but there's several types of fairy chess pieces as well. Storm the Ivory Tower is a cute game that uses the arrows on the squares to determine which direction the pieces move in (sort of a Chinese Chess version of the old commercial game Smess):

    https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/alice.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/dpieces.dir/altair.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/backlash

    https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/...gs-double-mate

    https://www.chessvariants.com/unequal.dir/cwda.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/other....orkorange.html

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightmare_Chess

    https://www.chessvariants.com/incinf...riegspiel.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/large....tmutation.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/rococo.html

    https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/ivorytower.html
    Last edited by Kevin Pacey; 01-22-2019 at 02:19 AM.
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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