Chess Variants

Different types of chess (that still use the same pieces and board):

Tournament chess - play using chess clocks, when your time is up, you lose. There are different settings for play times, based on the level of competition. At international level, the official rules are 2 hours for 40 moves.

Lightning chess is a variant using short time settings per game. Some grandmasters consider less than 60 minutes per game per player to be lightning chess. Personally, I feel that 5 minutes per game per player is the most fun.

Suicide chess - the first player to lose all his/her pieces wins. During each players turn, any piece that can be taken must be taken. The King acts as just a piece with a one square move in any direction rather than as the piece you must protect at all costs.

Transfer chess - a really fun variant where two players take on two other players. Two boards are set up side by side with colours alternating (each team has one player playing White and one player playing Black). The fun begins whenever there are captured pieces. Any of your opponent's pieces that you capture, you hand it over to your partner who may then, during his turn, place on any empty space on the board (some players disallow placing pieces on the eighth row). This rule goes for all players, so pieces get recycled into play very quickly on the other board. The game ends whenever any player's King is checkmated, when the opposing team is declared winners. Note: pieces can be placed to block, so checkmates aren't always as easy as they seem for the uniniated. Transfer chess usually requires the use of chess clocks to prevent players waiting incessantly for pieces to place. Lightning transfer chess is really fun.
/dev/joe has informed me that transfer chess is also known as bughouse

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Something a little less conventional perhaps, is Omega chess which requires a whole new board (10x10 with extra 'wizard' spaces) and two extra piece types - the Wizard and the Champion. Read about it at: http://www.omegachess.com/

There is also minister chess, which is played on a 9x9 board with two Queens but the Omega chess stuff sounds sexier.

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Update (July 4th, 2000): I've noitced that, in Shanoyu's writeup, he's forgotten to mention that perpetual check is another way to force a draw.

Another variant of chess is "alice through the looking glass chess" It is played on two boards. A move is made on on board but the piece transports itself to the equvalent place on the second board. Each move results in such a transportation. The King can get out of some tricky situations this way.

There is the famous star-treck chess, rules are available. I have seen rules for chess on an 8X8X8 grid, but never played this. I hvae played on an 8X8X3 grid. The central tier contains the usual pieces, the upper and lower tiers have princes and princesses instead of Kins and Queens. The rooks on these boards can move in 3-d as can the knights and the bishops (they have different names, but I have forgotten them.) The game is won either by mating the King or capturing both princes. After playing a few games of this, regular chess feels limited.

Another variant I have played is a four player game played on the one board. 8X3 grids are added to the four sides of the chess board and four complete stes of different colours are placed there. You can either play in pairs or against each other. The game is fairer when played in pairs as it prevents three ganing up on one.

There are rules available for Klingon chess. The King can be captured, but the player playes on, to the death and for honour. Pawns reaching the eigth rank instead of being promoted get displaced to a random position on the board. If there is already a piece there both are destroyed in the colliison. There are some other modifications in the way pieces can combine when making moves, alltogehter a very chaotic and bloody game.

There are rules for one dimensional chess,

Remember, if you ask someone to play a game of chess it is like telling them that you hate them.

Just as the number of possible games in chess is infinite (almost), there is an infinite number of variants on the game of Chess. Every aspect of the game can be altered. And when I say "every", I mean every. However, not all variations will yield an interesting (or even playable) variant. Here are some common variants of Chess:

• Rule Variants
  The most common type of variants, as they involve the same chess board as regular chess. These include:
  1. Loser's chess - you must try to lose, i.e. be left with a king only, or be checkmated.
  2. Pieces start on different squares. For example, the pieces are all placed randomly, or the kings start in the middle of the board.
  3. Kriegspiel - you can't see the opponent's pieces.
  4. Crazyhouse Chess - when an enemy piece is captured, it becomes yours (changes colour), and you can place in lieu of a turn.
  5. Progressive Chess - white moves one move, black moves 2, white moves 3, etc.

• Shape Variants include:
  
  1. 3D Chess - the most famous of which is Raumschach, played on a 5x5x5 board, with an extra piece - a unicorn.
  2. Hexagonal chess - the board of which is hexagonal. The most famous of these is Glinski's Hexagonal Chess.
  3. Round Board Chess.
  4. Tamerlane Chess - thanks atesh!

• Oriental Chess Variants
  Chess started in the orient, and there are many variations, such as Shogi (Japanese Chess), Changgi (Korean Chess), and Chaturanga an Indian Chess variant, believed to be the first chess variant ever.

• Size Variants
  This is split up into (obviously):
  1. Large Chess Variants - such as Omega Chess, with 104 squares (10x10 and 4 in the corners) and two extra (types of) pieces. Also Gothic Chess (thanks Phssthpok).
  2. Small Chess Variants - played on boards as small as 4x4. These include Minishogi, a small variant on Shogi, and Flip Chess, where pieces can also flip and change type.

• Multiplayer Chess Variants
  Include:
  1. Bughouse Chess - like Crazyhouse, but with 2 teams of 2, and captured pieces go to your partner.
  2. Four Handed Chess, for four players, on a cross-shaped board.
  3. 3 Player Chess, played on a strange 3-sided board.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. These are the better known (and more playable) chess variants. The rest you can find wandering about, or in your imagination.

This node has done an excellent job of detailing most of the variants of intellectual chess play. There is however one variant that is missed. It adds an edge to any chess game and can inject a heavy dose of mirth and merriment into an otherwise somber game. That variant is Cocktail Chess!

The Board

OK, so I admit that I got the idea from walking through a Restoration Hardware store the other day, but there is no reason to give your hard-earned cash to a yuppie store when you can easily assemble your own Cocktail Chess board. You'll need a rather large board; paper is the most obvious choice as it's easy to draw squares on and you can throw it away if you spill to much of the game contents on the board.

The Pieces

Easy enough. Just get all of the same small glasses for the pawns, and then unique pairs for the rook, knight and bishop characters. Lastly, the king and queen should be as unique and ornate as you can find. Depending on your libation of choice, you may want to use shot glasses for all the pieces, but at the very least they make good pawns. Fill up all the pieces and you're ready to get drunk... err, I mean, play chess!

Gameplay

Like most drinking games, the actual play of the game is wide-open to personal interpretation. Depending on if you view the imbibing of a piece as a punishment or reward, the drink can be given to the attacker or defender when a piece is taken. If the attacker has to drink for every piece taken, the game creates a natural handicap for the more skilled player, as they are going to get drunk faster.

Feel free to add as many variations as the game can sustain.

• Is someone bitching out and not taking their requisite drink? Pound that drink for them and institute a penalty where you get to bring one of your players back to life. Be sure to fill them up with game-juice.



• Use different amounts or just plain different alcohols for different pieces. Soon you'll begin to identify the bishop with red wine and the knight with a frosty ale. Put the best drink in the queen as a further reward for taking the coveted most-powerful piece.



• At every check, when someone castles, or when a pawn makes it across the board, it's drinks for everyone! Enjoy a round before continuing play. Beaten in 5 moves or less? Pound all remaining pawns before the next game. I'll let you decide what to do at the moment of checkmate.

Another nice variant of Chess is Atomic Chess. The rules are simple:

1. When a piece captures another, all pieces directly adjacent to that piece (excluding pawns) are also captured, alongside the capturing piece. This makes rooks, bishops, and knights even more deadly. 
2. You can win by checkmate or by blowing up the enemy king.

A couple notes on the effects of this:

-Kings can't capture, as doing so would blow themselves up.

-You cannot capture enemy pieces adjacent to your king, as doing so would blow the king up.

-Moving to a spot that could be blown up (as in, adjacent to a friendly piece that the enemy can capture) will not lead to check, but will probably lead to your king getting blown up.

-If your king is in check, it is your turn, and the next move you make will blow up the enemy king, then you can make that move. In short, if you can get the enemy king first, check doesn't apply.

 

If you have already signed up to chess.com, you can play Atomic here. I suggest a 3 minute time control, or 3|2. This makes the games feel much more compact, and they don't last much longer than that.

 

Helpful tips:

Knights are almost exclusively used to open a game. Usually playing towards the center, a good example is Nf3. Now, if black doesn't play to block any of these moves, white could go Ne5 and then nothing can be done by black but have their king blown up, as they are targeting 2 pieces adjacent to the king. A good counter to that is to move your pawn that is on the same file as the knight forward one square. This blocks the knight from moving forward, and oftentimes makes your opponent seek a different method entirely.

Also, NEVER LEAVE YOUR QUEEN OR A PIECE IN FRONT OF YOUR QUEEN OPEN TO AN ATTACK. This is easy to accidentally do, and will almost definitely result in your king fucking dying.

I'll get some more example games as I play on chess.com and post them here. It's my personal site, hosted by github, and has what's called a PGN viewer, which will let you replay the chess games. If it's not up yet, let me know.

 

Also, I remember seeing an article complaining about how hard it was to use tables to make a chessboard to better illustrate chess-related things here on E2. This is probably your answer.

Writeup on how to host your own website at github.io coming soon maybe, and how to embed the PGN viewer, if people want me to make it.