Chess Variants

Introduction

Gliński’s hexagonal chess is the most popular of the hexagonal chess variants. It had around half a million players at its prime.

Chess variants are a family of board games derived from chess. These variants can involve only a slight modification to the rules of chess, or can involve more drastic changes. There are lots of chess variants - the number is in the thousands. The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, a chess variant catalogue created in 1994 by chess player David Pritchard, has around 2,000 chess variants listed in its catalogue and notes many more variants were considered too trivial for inclusion.

History of chess

If one wishes to delve into the world of chess variants, it will be a good idea to understand how chess originated and evolved. The most common theory of the origin of chess states that the game originated in India in the sixth century CE, under the name chaturanga. Chaturanga was a strategy game simulating a war between two Indian factions, with pieces representing the four arms of the ancient Indian army - the infantry (pawns), cavalry (knights), elephants (bishops) and chariots (rooks) - as well as two pieces for the king and his advisor. Much like the modern game, the goal of chaturanga was to checkmate the enemy king, although at the time stalemate was also considered a win for the player delivering the stalemate.

Around 600 CE chaturanga spread to Sassanid Persia, where the name became shatranj. Following the conquest of Persia by Islamic forces, the game spread throughout the entire Islamic world, which served as the springboard for shatranj to reach Europe by the 9th century, spreading throughout the entire continent by 1000.

At the same time, shatranj and chaturanga were spread by trade along the Silk Road to East Asia, giving rise to chess's Asian cousins - xiangqi in China, janggi in Korea and shogi in Japan.

Back in Europe, chess went through further development. Some of the pieces were reinterpreted in Catholic eyes - the piece representing the Indian elephant was recast as a Catholic bishop, and coinciding with the strong female leaders arising around this time, the king's advisor was recast as a queen. During this time the Church remained sceptical of games, warning against devoting too much time to them, and chess was even briefly banned in France under Louis IX (St.Louis) in the 12th century as an anti-gambling measure.

Another major development occurred in Germany, also in the 12th century, where a chess variant known as Courier Chess was created, which introduced the chess-playing world to the diagonal move used by the modern bishop (which in Courier chess was used by that game's titular piece). This move was swiftly granted to the bishop on the 8 by 8 board to speed up the game, and in around 1475 the queen was granted her modern powers (previously, she could only move one square diagonally), creating a variant known as "Mad Queen Chess".

By the 15th century, a few more modifications had been made to the rules of Mad Queen Chess, such as the pawn double-step, castling and en passant, creating the game of chess as we know it today.

Types of variants

There are many different types of chess variants, and variants are usually created with the standard game as a starting point. Variant creators often create chess variants to fix an issue they perceive with the standard game or to create new games of interest for chess players.

Here are some ways in which chess variants differ from the standard game:

Some ways in which chess variants differ from the standard game:

Difference from standard chess:	Example:
    Board differences
Board with a different size or shape	Chess on a 12 by 12 board - As its name suggests.
Board with a different topology	Cylindrical chess - uses a cylindrical board.
Board with a non-square lattice	Gliński’s hexagonal chess - Uses a board made up of 91 hexagon-shaped cells.
Board with more than two dimensions of movement	Raumschach - Uses a 5 by 5 by 5 board.
Multiple boards	Alice chess - Pieces switch between two boards when they move.
    Movement differences
Different basic piece movement rules	Push chess, Simultaneous chess, and Quantum chess - Very different movement rules.
Different castling rules	Shafran's hexagonal chess - Four different types of castling.
Different pawn promotion rules	Balbo's chess - Piece replacement types available depend on the file the promoted pawn is in.
Different piece capture/restore rules	Circe chess - Pieces taken from the opponent are resurrected on their starting square.
Non-standard pieces	Almost chess - The queens are replaced with chancellors, which can move like a rook or a knight.
    Player differences
More than two players	Four-player chess - Four players play on a cross-shaped board.
Non-identical setup for both players	Dunsany's chess - Black has a regular chess army, while White has a horde of 32 pawns.
Players cooperate	Cooperative chess - The players play for a mutual win.
    Win/lose rule differences
Different check/checkmate rules	3-Check chess - The first player to put the other in check 3 times wins.
Different victory conditions	Losing chess (also known as suicide chess, antichess or giveaway chess) - The objective is to lose all of one's pieces.
    Information differences
Incomplete game information	Kriegspiel - Players cannot see each other's pieces.
    Randomness differences
Random starting position	Fischer random chess (a.k.a., Chess960) - Starting configuration is randomly selected from among 960 possible options.
Use of cards	Knightmare chess - Players are dealt cards that can be used to change the rules of the game.
Use of dice	Dice chess - Dice rolls determine which pieces can move on a given turn.

Some chess variants have sub-variants of their own - for example, Dunsany's chess has a subvariant named Horde chess.

Playing chess variants

There are many chess variants that can be played with standard equipment, but there are also many variants that require special computer software to play (perhaps because they use non-standard boards or pieces). Some of those variants (such as Gothic chess) have been made into commercially available products, however. Also, the two most notable chess websites online, Chess.com and lichess.org, both offer support for a handful of variants. There are also softwares that have been made specifically to play chess variants, such as Chess Remix, Zillions of Games, Fairy-Max and ChessV.

A catalogue of variants

The variants in this catalogue are sorted by whether or not they use a standard board, pieces and rules.

Standard Rules, Board and Pieces

• Dice Chess
• Dunsany's Chess
• Fischer Random Chess

Standard Rules, Variant Board, Standard Pieces

• Balbo's Game
• Chess on a 12 by 12 Board
• Circular Chess
• Cross Chess
• Cylinder Chess
• Double Chess
• Grid Chess
• Hexagonal Chess
• Infinite Chess
• Los Alamos Chess
• Masonic Chess
• Minichess
• Raumshcach
• Triangular Chess

Variant Rules, Standard Board and Pieces

• Atomic Chess
• Avalanche Chess
• Beirut Chess
• Checkless Chess
• Circe Chess
• Crazyhouse
• Extinction Chess
• King of the Hill
• Knightmate
• Losing Chess
• Marseillais Chess
• Monster Chess
• Progressive Chess
• Racing Kings
• Three-Check Chess

Variant Rules, Standard Board, Variant Pieces

• Anti-King Chess
• Almost Chess
• Berolina Chess
• Chess with Different Armies
• Grasshopper Chess
• Maharajah and the Sepoys
• Musketeer Chess
• Pocket Mutation Chess
• Tutti-Frutti Chess
• Ultima

Variant Rules, Variant Board, Standard Pieces

• Alice Chess

Variant Rules, Board and Pieces

• Capablanca Chess (and other 10x8 variants)
• Chancellor Chess
• Chess on a really big board
• Eurasian Chess
• Grand Chess
• Modern Chess
• Omega Chess
• Wildebeest Chess

Multi-Player Variants

• Bughouse Chess
• Four-Player Chess
• Three-Man Chess

Historical Variants

• Chaturanga and Shatranj
• Courier Chess
• Tamerlane Chess

Related Wikibooks

• Chess provides an introduction to the standard game.