List of chess variants

A chess variant is a game derived from, related to or similar to chess in at least one respect. The difference from chess can include one or more of the following:

• Different board (larger or smaller, non-square board shape overall or different spaces used within the board such as triangles or hexagons instead of squares).
• Fairy pieces different from those used within chess.
• Different rules for capture, move order, game goal, etc.

National chess variants which are older than Western chess, such as chaturanga, shatranj, xiangqi, and shogi, are traditionally also called chess variants in the Western world. They have some similarities to chess and share a common ancestor game.

The number of possible chess variants is unlimited. D.B. Pritchard, the author of Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, estimates that there are over 2000 chess variants, confining the number to published ones. In 1998 Zillions of Games software program was created. It enables non-programmers to design and playtest most types of chess variants using an AI opponent. As a result a large number of chess variants were implemented for Zillions of Games.

Glinski's hexagonal chess. One of many chess variants.

In the context of chess problems, chess variants are called fantasy chess, heterodox chess or fairy chess. Some chess variants are used only in chess composition and not for playing.

Chess-derived games

These chess variants are derived from chess by changing the board, pieces or rules.

Chess with different starting positions

In these variants, the starting position is different, but otherwise the board, pieces and rules are the same. The most important motivation for these chess variants is to nullify established opening knowledge.

• Chess960 (or Fischer random chess): the placement of the pieces on the 1st and 8th rank is randomized.
• Displacement chess: some pieces in the initial position are exchanged, for example, white's king and queen.
• Patt-schach. Both sides are set up in a stalemated position (shown below). Note, white pawns move up in the diagram and black pawns down. Since both sides have no legal moves, the game is started with an illegal move. This first move can't be a capture or check. The game can start, for example, 1. Nab5 Nhb4?? 2. Nc3 checkmate. Pawns can only promote to the pieces already captured by the opponent. If there are no such pieces, pawns can't move to the last rank.
• Transcendental chess: similar to chess960, but the opening white and black positions do not mirror each other.
• Upside-down chess. The starting position looks very much like standard one, but the pawns are actually one step before promotion. The game can start, for example: 1. Nc6 Nf3 2. b8Q g1Q etc.

a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h Patt-schach

a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h Upside-down chess

Chess with different forces

Some chess variants use different number of pieces for white and black. All pieces in these games are standard chess pieces, there are no fairy chess pieces.

• Dunsany's chess (or Horde chess): one side has standard chess pieces, and the other side has 32 pawns.
• Handicap chess (or chess with odds): variations to equal chances of players with different strength.
• Pawns game. In starting position the white doesn't have a queen, but has additionally 8 pawns (see diagram below). The game was played by such old masters as Labourdonnais, Deschappelles and Kieseritsky.
• Peasant's revolt by R.L.Frey (1947). White has a king and 8 pawns (the peasants) against king, pawn and four knights by black (the nobles).
• Weak!. White has usual pieces, black has king, 7 knights and 16 pawns. This game was played at Columbia University chess club at 1960s.

a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h Pawns game

a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h Peasant's revolt

a b c d e f g h 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f g h Weak!

Chess with different boards

E	D	C
B	A
Raumschach, Starting position.

In these chess variants the same pieces and rules as in chess are used, but the board is different. It can be smaller or larger, non-square overall or based upon triangle or hexagon spaces (instead of square spaces). The movement of pieces in some variants is modified to account for the unusual property of the playing board.

• Alice chess: played with two boards. A piece moved on one board passes "through the looking glass" onto the other board.
• Circular chess: played on a circular board consisting of four rings, each of sixteen squares.
• Cylinder chess: played on a cylinder board with A and H files "connected". Thus a player can use them as if the A file were next to the H file (and vice versa).
• Doublewide chess: two or four regular chess boards are connected (for a 16x8 or 16x16 play surface) and each player plays with two complete sets of chess pieces. Because each player has two kings, the first king can be captured without ending the game.
• Flying chess: This is played on a board of 8x8x2, giving a total of 128 cells. Only certain pieces can move to and from the additional level.
• Grid chess: the board is overlaid with a grid of lines. For a move to be legal, it must cross at least one of these lines.
• Hexagonal chess: a family of chess variants played on a hexgrid with three colours and three bishops.
• Los Alamos chess (or Anti-Clerical chess): played on a 6x6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program.
• Millenium chess: similar to Doublewide chess. Two boards are connected side by side; however, in this variant the middle files are merged, making a 15x8 board.
• Minichess: a family of chess variants played with regular chess pieces and standard rules, but on a smaller board.
• Three-dimensional chess: several variants exist with the most commonly known being "Tri-D chess" from the television series Star Trek as well as an easily playable 3x8x8 variant known as Millennium 3D chess™.

Chess with unusual rules

These chess variants have the same pieces and board as chess but some rules for moving, capturing, etc are changed. The game goal can be also different from that in chess.

• Andernach chess: a piece making a capture changes colour.
• Atomic chess: any capture on a square results in an "atomic explosion" which kills (i.e. removes from the game) all pieces in any of the 8 surrounding squares, except for pawns.
• Benedict chess: pieces are not allowed to be "captured". If a piece when moved could capture an opposing piece in its next move, that opposing piece changes sides.
• Bughouse chess: Similar to Crazyhouse; has four people and two boards; captured pieces can be dropped by a player's teammate
• Checkers chess: normal rules of chess are followed. However, pieces can only move forwards until they have reached the far rank.
• Checkless chess: players are forbidden from giving check except to checkmate.
• Circe chess: captured pieces are reborn on their starting squares.
• Colour chess: A family of alternative chess games that uses the same moves as traditional chess but changed from a competitive to a cooperative game.
• Crazyhouse: captured pieces change the colour and can be dropped on any unoccupied location. There are two variations of this chess variant, known as Loop chess and chessgi.
• Extinction chess: A player must capture all of his/her opponent's pieces to win.
• Guard chess (or Icelandic chess): allows captures only when a piece is completely unprotected by friendly pieces. Checkmate occurs when the piece forcing the mate is protected and therefore cannot be captured.
• Ghost Chess: variation in which the black Queen (Ghost), faces the white ranks (Paradigm), and each side has a variety of special moves.
• Knight relay chess: pieces defended by a friendly knight can move as a knight.
• Legan chess: played as if the board would be rotated 45°, initial position and pawn movements are adjusted accordingly.
• Madrasi chess: a piece which is attacked by the same type of piece of the opposite colour is paralysed.
• Monochromatic chess: all pieces must stay on the same colour square as they initially begin.
• Patrol chess: captures and checks are only possible if the capturing or checking piece is guarded by a friendly piece.
• PlunderChess: the capturing piece is allowed to temporarily take the moving abilities of the piece taken.
• Replacement chess: captured pieces are not removed from the board but moved by the capturer anywhere else on the board.
• Rifle chess (Also known as Shooting Chess or Sniper Chess): When one piece captures another, it remains unmoved in its original square, instead of occupying the square of the piece it has captured.
• Suicide chess (also known as Giveaway chess, Take Me chess, Loser's chess, Antichess, Must Kill): capturing moves are mandatory and the object is to lose all pieces.
• Three checks chess: you win if you check your opponent three times.
• Jedi Knight Chess: Knights may move three spaces diagonally or horizontally or both, depending in the rules accepted.More.

Chess with incomplete information and/or elements of chance

A card from Knightmare chess.

In these chess variants, luck or randomness sometimes plays a role. Still, like in poker or backgammon, good luck and bad luck even out over the long-term with clever strategy and consideration of probabilities being decisively important.

• Dark chess: you see only squares of the board that are attacked by your pieces.
• Dice chess: the pieces a player is able to move are determined by rolling a pair of dice.
• Knightmare chess: played with cards that change the game rules.
• Kriegspiel: neither player knows where the opponent's pieces are but can deduce them with information from a referee.
• Penultima: an inductive chess variant where the players must deduce hidden rules invented by "Spectators".
• Schrödinger's chess: each player's minor pieces are concealed in such a way that the opponent does not know what they are until they are revealed. When covered, pieces move in a restricted way.
• Brinksmanship chess: players try to outguess eachother, moving simultaneously after privately recording intended moves and anticipated results. Incompatible moves, for instance to the same square with no anticipated capture, are replayed. Play ends with capture of king.

Multimove variants

In these variants one or both players can move more than once per turn. The board and the pieces in these variants are the same as in standard chess.

• Avalanche chess: each move consists of a standard chess move followed by a move of one of the opponent's pawns.
• Kung-Fu chess: a chess variant without turns. Any player can move any of his pieces at any given moment.
• Marseillais chess: after the first turn of the game by white being a single move, each player moves twice per turn.
• Monster chess (Also known as Super King): white has the king and four pawns against the entire black army but may make two successive moves per turn.
• Progressive chess: (also known as Scottish chess) the white player moves once, the black player moves twice, the white player moves three times, etc.
• Zonal chess: board has triangular wings or "zones" on either side of the main 8x8 board. Queens, bishops, and rooks that start from one of the squares in either zone may change direction and keep going on the same move. A queen, for example, could zig around an obstruction and attack a piece in the opposite zone. Note that the power to change direction only applies when a piece's move _starts_ from a zonal area. It is possible (using the queen and rook) to cross the board from one zone to another, but any piece entering a zone cannot make use of the extended move.

Multiplayer variants

Bughouse chess, the game in progress.

These variants arose out of the desire to play chess with more than just one other person.

• Bosworth: A four player chess variant played on 6x6 board. It uses a special card system with the pieces for spawning.
• Bughouse chess: (also known as Double chess, Exchange chess, Siamese chess, Swap chess, Tandem chess) two teams of two players face each other on two boards. Allies use opposite colours and give captured pieces to their partner. The 2-player version of the game, played with only one board is Crazyhouse.
• Djambi: can be played by four people with a 9x9 board and four sets of special pieces. The pieces can capture or move the pieces of an adversary. Captured pieces are not removed from the board, but turned upside down. There are variants for three players or five players (pentachiavel).
• Enochian chess: a four-player variant with magical symbolism, associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
• Forchess: a four-person version using the standard board and two sets of standard pieces.
• Four-handed chess: (also known as chess 4 and 4-Way chess) can be played by four people and uses a special board and four sets of differently coloured pieces.
• Three-handed chess: family of chess variants specially designed for three players.

Chess with unusual pieces

Most of the pieces in these chess variants are borrowed from chess. The game goal and rules are also very similar to those in chess. However, these chess variants include one or more fairy pieces which move differently than chess pieces.

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Anti-king chess. The anti-king is shown as an inverted king.

• Anti-king chess: uses an anti-king. This piece is in check when not attacked. If the player has an anti-king in check and unable to move it to the position attacked by the opponent, the player loses (checkmate). Anti-king can't capture opponent's pieces, but it can capture friendly pieces. King doesn't attack the anti-king of the opponent. The anti-king doesn't check own king. All other rules are the same as in standard chess, including check and checkmate to usual king. The game was invented by Peter Aronson in 2002.
• Baroque: (also known as Ultima) pieces on the 1st row move like queens, and pieces on the 2nd row move like rooks. They are named after their unusual capturing methods. For example, Leaper, Immobilizer, and Coordinator.
• Berolina Chess: Which uses the Berolina Pawn instead of the normal pawn, all other things being equal.
• Chess with different armies: two sides use different sets of fairy pieces. There are several armies of approximately equal strength to choose from including the standard FIDE chess army.
• Dragon chess: uses three 8×12 boards atop one another, with new types of chess pieces.
• Duell: dice are used instead of pieces.
• Gess: chess with variable pieces, played on a go-board.
• Grasshopper chess: is a chess variant in which the pawns can promote to grasshopper, or in which grasshoppers are on the board in the opening position.
• Hex chess (Square-Spaced): after the first turn of the game by white being a single move, each player moves twice per turn. It features a large variety of sliders, some unique, with royal queens.
• Maharajah and the Sepoys: black has a complete army, white only one piece - Maharajah (Queen + Knight).
• Omega chess: played on a 10×10 board with four extra squares, one per corner. Also, two fairy chess pieces are used, the Champion and the Wizard. Both can jump other pieces like the Knight.
• Pocket mutation chess: player can put a piece temporary into the pocket, optionally mutating it into another piece.
• Stealth chess: played in the fictional Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild from the Discworld series of books; played on an 8×10 board. The fairy piece is the Assassin.

Bishop+knight and rook+knight compounds

There are a numbers of chess varaints, which use bishop+knight and rook+knight compound pieces. Several different names have been given to these pieces. Rook and knight compound (R+N) is named chancellor, marshall, empress etc. Bishop and knight compound piece (B+N) is called archibishop, cardinal, janus etc. To adapt two new pieces the board is usually extended to 10x8 or 10x10 with two additional pawns added.

• Capablanca chess: a chess variant by the former world chess champion, José Raúl Capablanca. Played on a 10×8 board with chancellor (R+N) and archbishop (B+N).
• Capablanca random chess: by Reinhard Scharnagl (2004). A generalization of all possible variants of Capablanca chess with random starting positions following a method similar to that used in Chess960.
• Embassy Chess: by Kevin Hill (2005). Played on a 10×8 board with marshall (R+N) and cardinal (B+N). The starting position is taken from Grand chess.
• Gothic chess: a commercial chess variant by Ed Trice (2002). Played on a 10×8 board with chancellor (R+N) and archbishop (B+N).
• Grand chess: by Christian Freeling (1984). Played on a 10×10 board with marshall (R+N) and cardinal (B+N).
• Janus chess by Werner Schöndorf (1978). Played on 10×8 board with two januses (B+N).
• Seirawan chess: invented by grandmaster Yasser Seirawan in 2007. Played on standard 8x8 board with elephant (R+N) and hawk (B+N).

Games inspired by chess

These chess variants are very different from chess and may be classified as abstract board games instead of chess variants (by restrictive, proper definition).

• Arimaa: A game inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat by chess computer Deep Blue. This game is easy for people to understand but difficult for computers to play well.
• ChessWar: complex strategy game played with chess pieces and board.
• Martian chess: played with Icehouse pieces.

Chess-related national games

Shatranj set, 12th century.

Some of these games have developed independently while others are ancestors or relatives of modern chess. Nonetheless, they are potentially definable as chess variants (with some possible difficulties). The popularity of these chess variants may be limited to their respective places of origin (as is largely the case for shogi), or worldwide, as is the case for xiangqi which is played by overseas Chinese everywhere. These games have their own institutions and traditions.

• Chaturanga - an ancient Indian game, presumed to be the common ancestor of chess and other national chess-related games.
• Chaturaji - four handed version of Chaturanga, played with a dice.
• Shatranj - an ancient Persian game, derived from Chaturanga.
• Tamerlane chess - a significantly expanded variation of Shatranj.
• Xiangqi - China.
• Jungle (or animal chess) - China.
• Banqi (or Chinese Half chess) - China.
• Shogi - Japan (see also shogi variants).
• Janggi - Korea.
• Makruk - Thailand.
• Sittuyin - Burma.
• Shatar - Mongolia.

Chess variants software

Some program authors have created stand-alone applications that are capable of playing one, many or an unlimited number of variants.

• Zillions of Games - supports an unlimited number (but not types) of chess variants. One can write his/her own rule files to create and play most chess variants.
• ChessV - supports around 50 chess variants, including such popular variants as Grand chess, Shatranj, Three Checks chess, Ultima.
• SMIRF - supports all FRC variants upon the 8x8 board and all CRC variants upon the 10x8 board.
• Gothic Vortex - plays Gothic chess.
• Sunsetter - Normal Chess, Crazyhouse and Bughouse chess engine (opensource).
• Sjeng - besides Crazyhouse and Bughouse chess, supports other chess variants.

See also

• Fairy chess
• Fairy chess pieces

External links

General

• The Chess Variant Pages
• The Chess Variants wiki
• British Chess Variant Society
• Variety of Chess in ancient world
• The Chess Family - History and Useful Information
• Variant chess database - contains games for atomic chess, suicide chess, losers chess and "wild" variants.
• Chess Variant Applets

Collections

In addition to individual chess variants with popularity, large collections (generally acknowledged to be of respectable quality) have been created by several inventors:

• Zillions Chess Variants |Karl Scherer
• Games Gallery |Fergus Duniho
• Board Game Page |Peter Aronson
• Chess Variants |João Pedro Neto
• Chess Variants (Zillions) |Mats Winther
• Variant Chess Games |George Jelliss
• Chess Variants |Jean-Louis Cazaux

Internet servers to play chess variants

• ItsYourTurn.com
• GoldToken.com
• BrainKing.com
• Cowplay.com
• Game Courier
• SchemingMind.com - International Correspondence Chess Server & Chess Variants.
• XYMYX The Evolution of Chess
• An Online Four Player Chess Game
• ChessBoss.com