New Chess Variant

All Things Chess
1

I realize that the world is overflowing with chess variants, and many people probably groan just thinking about the introduction of yet more variants. In fact, I have yet to find a single chess variant that I personally enjoyed better than just the standard version of chess. However, I have thought of a new chess variant that I believe (although I am surely biased since I thought of it) is an improvement over standard chess. Perhaps a version of my variant already exists but if so I have not seen it.

We all know that in traditional chess, not only do the pieces have different strengths and weaknesses, but the same also holds true for the squares - i.e. the center squares are traditionally recognized as crucial factors in most chess games played. My idea is to keep the rules of chess almost exactly the same, keep the same number and type of pieces as in standard chess, but to make “territorial” and positional decisions even more important than they are now.

My idea is to have a 10x10 board as is used in Capablanca chess and several other variants; however, each side will still only have 8 pawns and 8 pieces set up in the standard manner in the central 8 files of the board with the a and j files initially devoid of pieces or pawns. The important difference in my variant is that the board contains “holes” that no piece may occupy or travel through although knights may jump over the holes just as they can jump over pieces. The holes can be marked either with x’s or by making them a different color than the white and black squares and these “hole” squares are located at a1, a10, b4, b7, d6, g5, i4, i7, j1, and j10.

Except for these holes, the 10x10 board, and the limitations these holes will have on the pieces’ movements, none of the rules of chess are changed. All the pieces are the same, their manner of moving is the same, castling is the same, en passant, etc. The only change is the introduction of the “holes”.

These holes will have several consequences in the game. Pawns will be unable to advance past a hole they encounter unless they take another piece. The bishop’s power should be reduced by the change, however, knights will become more important. The rooks’ and queens’ powers will obviously also be greatly affected. However, the most important consequence of the change, and my intent in creating this variation, is that squares will intrinsically have far different “values” now. I have not played enough to know exactly what will happen, but these holes may cause some squares to be great weaknesses while the holes themselves may serve well as forts or blockades.

Also with this variant, I expect tactics to be much more complicated, again the knights will probably prove more potent than ever, but back rank mates and “long range” attacks will prove far more difficult. Instead, attacks will perhaps require more careful maneuvering and positional considerations. A queen sitting in the center of the board will certainly radiate far less power than in traditional chess.

I have not done much testing with this variant and hope it will in fact be a good game and will not be severely flawed. I have two main fears of this variant being flawed. The first is that the holes will cramp things up too much and blockaded pawns will cause “traffic jams” although that may in fact just become another necessary strategic consideration. The other main fear I have is that the variant will cause attacks to lose too much power making the game too drawish - I do not expect that fear to be realized but only testing will confirm or disprove that fear.

Please let me know what you think of this variant and whether it already exists. Also, if you think it may have some potential of being an interesting game, I would appreciate it if some of you try it out and let me know what happens.

Thanks.

2

Are the pieces placed initially on ranks 1, 2, 9, 10, or on ranks 2, 3, 8, 9? In other words, are the edge ranks initially vacant, as the edge files are?

If on 1, 2, 9, 10, may a pawn on rank 2 move either 1, 2, or 3 squares? And if so, may a pawn on rank 3 move either 1 or 2 squares? What various ways are there of capturing en passant?

Bill Smythe

3

The pieces are on ranks 1,2,9 and 10. The pawns on b2, b9, i2, and i9 may only move 1 square their first move since they will be blocked by a hole, but the rest can move 2 squares their first move like normal. The en passant rule is unchanged from regular chess. The rules are completely unchanged from normal chess except that you cannot occupy a hole and only a knight can jump over a hole.

4

OK, here’s another one. Since a10 and j10 are holes, does a pawn reaching a9 or j9 promote immediately? Or must it first capture on b10 or i10?

Bill Smythe

5

As in standard chess, a pawn must reach the back rank to promote. A pawn on a9 or j9 (a2, j2 for black) is stuck unless it captures. Fortunately, no pawns start on the a or j files so a player will not have to worry about a pawn being stuck one square from the queening square unless a pawn captures a piece on the a or j files.

6

This creates some interesting possibilities (as do the holes, of course).

For example, if each player has just three a-pawns, three j-pawns, and a king, then the game is immediately drawn (dead position, no help-mate possible).

An interesting variant on your variant would be to allow a piece to move into a hole (but not to pass over a hole, except the knight). Doing so would cause the piece to immediately disappear. In effect, a player could capture his own piece just by moving it into a hole.

A player might want to do this in order to create a stalemate. If the player has only one piece that can move, and he moves that piece into a hole, then he will be stalemated on the next move, unless the opponent can find a way to free one or more of the player’s other pieces.

Moving the king into a hole would presumably be illegal (the king can’t be captured). Or, maybe it should be legal, and would ensure at least a draw, because the player could never be checkmated.

Moving a pawn from b2-b4 (b4 is a hole) would make the pawn disappear, but the opponent could resurrect it (and then kill it again) by c4xb3 en passant.

As QuickDraw McGraw once said, “What do you think of that idea, Baba Looey?” Of course, Baba Looey responded, “I thin’ we should forget the whole thin’”.

Bill Smythe

7

That would indeed be interesting; however, I have attempted to avoid such rule changes since they cause the game to deviate further from standard chess. I do not wish for the variant to have lots of new rules to learn, in fact I wanted as few rule changes as possible. That is because I do not wish to create a new game here, but to simply make “chess” itself more interesting. What I currently like about the variant is that there is essentially only one change from standard chess, i.e. the board itself. However, as I said your idea is interesting, and I welcome innovation especially since innovation is what makes chess special as a game.

8

What if you randomized the placement of the holes?

9

If they fell on a normal starting square for a piece then would that player play the game down that material (immediate loss if f1 or f10 had a hole - draw if both)?
I guess that would point to a limited randomization.

If the entire third rank had holes then the opponent would place knights on a4 and j4 and eventually pick up the b2 or i2 pawn - maybe both - or (better yet) place them on h4 and f4 to take the g2 pawn and then the queen, though it still looks like an easy draw for white after removing half of the pieces that can actually reach a square that could attack the king (a knight taking the h2 or d2 pawns to check the king would be captured by the bishop or queen, with that capture giving the king a flight square and making it impossible for black to use a single knight to attack two adjacent squares).

10

I in fact considered the random placing of the holes (inspired by Fischer Random); however, it did not take me long to discard the possibility. As already mentioned care would have to be taken not to allow a hole to exist where a piece initially begins. However, there are other issues as well. Clearly no holes should be placed on ranks 3 or 8 because then pawns would be stuck at the very beginning of the game, which I do not believe if fair, especially if the opponent does not have a hole there. This argument also leads to the issue that any random placement of holes may provide one player an advantage. I carefully considered the current location of the holes, and decided the current hole locations do not give either player any significant advantage over the other. Perhaps a few “equal” holes positions could be determined and one chosen from those, but since these changes affect the board itself, this would only be practical on computers (although conceivably just moveable squares or some other marking object could just be placed on the holes). Therefore, I do not believe any form of random assortment of the holes would be an acceptable change to the game.

With that being said, I am not absolutely sure that the current locations of the holes are optimal. If anyone can offer good evidence that a different number of holes and/or the location of the holes would be an improvement over the current configuration please let me know. However, I spent considerable time weighing the different options and feel fairly confident that the current configuration is optimal.

11

I think the holes should randomly move during the game. :slight_smile:
That solves the blocked pieces issue. And the fairness issue for that matter.
And if you wanted to make it work on a physical board just use a timer and dice.

12

A changing landscape would indeed be interesting. However, this change would likely cause chaos in many of the games. Furthermore, frequent randomization of the squares would introduce a large amount of luck in the game - a change of hole position could easily turn a dominating position into a crushed position in one swoop. In light of this, I do not believe movement of the holes throughout the game would be at all acceptable if one desires to keep strategy an integral component of the game.

13

You can keep the strategy by having a predetermined timing and location of the changes. Maybe every 15 moves the corner holes move one square on the file towards the opposite side and the other holes shift one square on the rank towards the i-file (a i-file hole wrapping around the board to the b-file). Boxing a king into a soon-to-be-holed square could be one way of winning.

14

There have been quite a few suggestions as to how to alter the variation I suggested. However, most of these suggestions would profoundly change the variation. I intend for for this variation to remain relatively unchanged - slight details may be changed if a need for change becomes apparent; however, making a major change simply creates an entirely new variation. I believe this variation is already well defined. If you would like to offer your own variation of chess you are more than welcome to; however, as I said, I wish to keep this variation very similar to standard chess. Please also realize that this is not “my” game, but simply a suggestion of a chess variation for all of you to try play and enjoy. You are welcome to (and I would be happy if you did) create an computer version, your own boards, etc. You are also welcome to make any changes you like when you play; however, I would like the skeleton of the variation to remain unchanged. Think of it like Linux - you are welcome to create your own distribution, but I intend for the basis of the variation to remain unchanged except for cleaning up a few details so that anyone who plays chess can learn the variation quickly and easily.

15

Yup – just as your “original variation” would.

For me, this variation is fun simply because it provides fodder for these posts, both mine and others’. It’s great to be able to laugh while I am reading and while I am writing.

Here’s another: how about secret holes? At the start of the game, each player writes, on an index card, the locations of five holes, and keeps the index card hidden from the opponent throughout the game. A player is not allowed to step into, or cross (except with the knight), any of his own holes. But if you step into an opponent’s hole, you lose that piece. Of course, when your opponent grabs that piece off the board, you will now know where the hole is.

If you attempt to cross a hole, your opponent will say “illegal” and you’ll have to make a different move. In this way you might discover that there is, for example, a hole somewhere on the d-file between d3 and d7. You might then want to nail down its location by chucking pawns into it, keeping your queen away from the scene until the hole’s exact location is determined.

Similarly, if you put your rook on f3, and holler “check” because you are apparently checking your opponent’s king on f10, and he says “no it isn’t” and doesn’t move his king, you can conclude that there is a hole somewhere between f4 and f9 inclusive.

The possibilities are endless.

Bill Smythe

16

I think the reason that Smythe-Dakota asked about a possible pawn 3-step is because on a 10-rank board, the opposing pawns may not come into contact in the opening for quite some time. Indeed, when Jose Capablanca and Edward Lasker tested out Capa’s proposed 10x10 chess “improvement,” Lasker says that they had to grant the pawns a 1-2-or-3 option to get things rolling.

Now, this could lead to interesting openings, like a hyper-French Defense, wherein White pushes the king pawn three squares, Black pushes his only two, folllowed by both queen pawns moving three squares. Or openings with two levels of pawn support on each side.

Probably wouldn’t be chess any more, though!

17

I nominate the name of this variation as Black Hole Chess. :slight_smile:

18

Here’s one similar to what the original poster was suggesting:

riverhorse.eu/shuuro.htm

[size=85]“Shuuro is the core of a new system of abstract war gaming, where you are in command of armies of chess pieces. Differently from traditional chess, you are not forced to field a given set of pieces on the board, but can choose which pieces to field, based on your skill and tactical preferences. The innovative gaming board features terrain elements that change position every time you play, so that each game introduces a different challenge.
Shuuro is a game for two players, which merges the precision and rigour of chess with the creativity and variety of war-gaming.
It does so by attaching a points value to each traditional chess piece and allowing the players to spend a predetermined amount of these points (say, a total of 800 points) to select the chess ‘army’ that they think makes the best use of the points. This creates a feeling of ‘ownership’ towards the particular combination the player thinks is the most effective.
The ‘battle’ will then take place on a large chess board of twelve by twelve squares. This board, however, also introduces a new and unique element to the game. Each of the four six-by-six quadrants of the board contains two plinths that block the movement of the pieces. These plinths are placed randomly at the beginning of every game with the help of a dice, ensuring that every game will be different and present unique challenges. The plinths also help in balancing the game, restricting the movement of Queens, Bishops and Rooks, while at the same time allowing Knights to land onto them and using them as defensive positions (as only an enemy Knight can take them while they’re there).”[/size]

19

Thank you for letting us know about this variant. It is indeed similiar to the one I suggested. Additionally, it also involves the randomization of the holes as someone here suggested. Being able to select whatever army you want is also quite an interesting idea. The main downside is the added level of additional starting complexity i.e. the time it takes to choose your army and determine where the holes will be. Also, as I believe I mentioned earlier, I am not a fan of the idea of randomizing the holes, as I believe it may provide an unfair advantage to one side. However, it certainly is an interesting variation similiar to the one I suggested, and I appreciate you sharing it with us.