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A chess variant is a game related to, derived from, or inspired by
chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
. Such variants can differ from chess in many different ways. "International" or "Western" chess itself is one of a family of games which have related origins and could be considered variants of each other. Chess developed from ''
chaturanga Chaturanga ( sa, चतुरङ्ग; ') is an ancient Indian strategy game. While there is some uncertainty, the prevailing view among chess historians is that it is the common ancestor of the board games chess (European), xiangqi (Chines ...
'', from which other members of this family, such as '' shatranj'', Tamerlane chess, ''
shogi , also known as Japanese chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as Western chess, '' chaturanga, Xiangqi'', Indian chess, and ''janggi''. ''Shōgi ...
'', and ''
xiangqi ''Xiangqi'' (; ), also called Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. ''Xiangqi'' is in the same family of games as '' shogi'', '' janggi'', Western chess, '' ...
'' also evolved. Many chess variants are designed to be played with the equipment of regular chess. Most variants have a similar public-domain status as their parent game, but some have been made into commercial proprietary games. Just as in traditional chess, chess variants can be played over the board, by correspondence, or by computer. Some
internet chess server An Internet chess server (ICS) is an external server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view the board game of chess over the Internet. The term specifically refers to facilities for connecting players through a variety of graphical c ...
s facilitate the play of some variants in addition to orthodox chess. In the context of chess problems, chess variants are called heterodox chess or fairy chess. Fairy chess variants tend to be created for problem composition rather than actual play. There are thousands of known chess variants (see
list of chess variants This is a list of chess variants. Many thousands of variants exist. The 2007 catalogue ''The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants'' estimates that there are well over 2,000, and many more were considered too trivial for inclusion in the catalogue. ...
). ''The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants'' catalogues around two thousand, with the preface noting that—with creating a chess variant being relatively trivial—many were considered insufficiently notable for inclusion.


Evolution of chess

The origins of the chess family of games can be traced to the game of ''
chaturanga Chaturanga ( sa, चतुरङ्ग; ') is an ancient Indian strategy game. While there is some uncertainty, the prevailing view among chess historians is that it is the common ancestor of the board games chess (European), xiangqi (Chines ...
'' during the time of the
Gupta Empire The Gupta Empire was an ancient Indian empire which existed from the early 4th century CE to late 6th century CE. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 CE, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent. This period is considered as the Gold ...
in India. Over time, as the game spread geographically, modified versions of the rules became popular in different regions. In Sassanid Persia, a slightly modified form became known as '' shatranj''. Modifications made to this game in Europe resulted in the modern game. Courier chess was a popular variant in medieval Europe, which had a significant impact on the "main" variant's development. Other games in the chess family, such as ''
shogi , also known as Japanese chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as Western chess, '' chaturanga, Xiangqi'', Indian chess, and ''janggi''. ''Shōgi ...
'' (Japan), and ''
xiangqi ''Xiangqi'' (; ), also called Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. ''Xiangqi'' is in the same family of games as '' shogi'', '' janggi'', Western chess, '' ...
'' (China), are also developments from ''chaturanga'' made in other regions. These related games are considered chess variants, though the majority of variants are, expressly, modifications of chess. The basic rules of chess were not standardized until the 19th century, and the history of chess before this involves many variants, with the most popular modifications spreading and eventually forming the modern game.


Types of variants

While some regional variants have historical origins comparable to or even older than chess, the majority of variants are express attempts by individuals or small groups to create new games with chess as a starting point. In most cases the creators are attempting to create new games of interest to chess enthusiasts or a wider audience. Variants normally have the same public domain status as chess, though a few (such as Knightmare Chess) are proprietary, and the materials for play are released as commercial products. The variations from chess may be done to address a perceived issue with the standard game. For example,
Fischer random chess Fischer random chess, also known as Chess960 (often read in this context as 'chess nine-sixty' instead of 'chess nine hundred sixty'), is a variation of the game of chess invented by the former world chess champion Bobby Fischer. Fischer anno ...
, which randomises the starting positions, was invented by
Bobby Fischer Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11� ...
to combat what he perceived to be the detrimental dominance of opening preparation in chess. Several variants introduce complications to the standard game, providing an additional challenge for experienced players, for example in Kriegspiel, where players cannot see the pieces of their opponent. The table below details some, but not all, of the ways in which variants can differ from the orthodox game: Variants can themselves be developed into further sub-variants, for example Horde chess is a variation upon Dunsany's Chess. Some variations are created for the purpose of composing interesting puzzles, rather than being intended for full games. This field of composition is known as fairy chess. Fairy chess gave rise to the term " fairy chess piece" which is used more broadly across writings about chess variants to describe chess pieces with movement rules other than those of the standard chess pieces. Forms of standardised notation have been devised to systematically describe the movement of these. A distinguishing feature of several chess variants is the presence of one or more fairy pieces. Physical models of common fairy pieces are sold by major chess set suppliers.


Notable inventors

Several chess masters have developed variants, such as
Chess960 Fischer random chess, also known as Chess960 (often read in this context as 'chess nine-sixty' instead of 'chess nine hundred sixty'), is a variation of the game of chess invented by the former world chess champion Bobby Fischer. Fischer anno ...
by
Bobby Fischer Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11� ...
, Capablanca Chess by
José Raúl Capablanca José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (19 November 1888 – 8 March 1942) was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. A chess prodigy, he is widely renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play. Capabl ...
, and
Seirawan chess Capablanca chess (or Capablanca's chess) is a chess variant invented in the 1920s by World Chess Champion José Raúl Capablanca. It incorporates two new pieces and is played on a 10×8 board. Capablanca believed that chess would be played ou ...
by Yasser Seirawan. Individuals notable for creating multiple chess variants include
V. R. Parton Vernon Rylands Parton (2 October 1897 – 31 December 1974) was an English chess enthusiast and prolific chess variant inventor, his most renowned variants being Alice chess and Racing Kings. Many of Parton's variants were inspired by the fic ...
(best known for Alice chess),
Ralph Betza Ralph Betza (born 1945) is a FIDE Master and inventor of chess variants such as Chess with different armies, Avalanche chess, and Way of the Knight. Invented chess variants * Multiplayer Chess (date unknown) * High-Low Chess (1968) * Strange ...
, Philip M. Cohen and George R. Dekle Sr. Some
board game designers Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, ...
, notable for works across a wider range of board games, have created chess variants. These include Robert Abbott (
Baroque chess Baroque chess is a chess variant invented in 1962 by Robert Abbott. In 1963, at the suggestion of his publisher, he changed the name to Ultima, by which name it is also known. Abbott later considered his invention flawed and suggested amendments ...
) and Andy Looney ( Martian chess).


Play

While chess, ''shogi'', and ''xiangqi'' have professional circuits as well as many organised tournaments for amateurs, play of chess variants is predominately on a casual basis. A few variants have had significant tournaments. Several
Gliński's hexagonal chess Hexagonal chess is a group of chess variants played on boards composed of hexagon . The best known is Gliński's variant, played on a symmetric 91-cell hexagonal board. Since each hexagonal cell not on a board edge has six neighbor cells, there ...
tournaments were played at the height of the variant's popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. Chess960 has also been the subject of
tournaments A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...
, including in 2018 an "unofficial world championship" between reigning
World Chess Champion The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who has held the title since 2013. The first event recognized as a world championship was the 1886 matc ...
Magnus Carlsen and fellow high-ranking Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Likewise
Crazyhouse Crazyhouse (also known as drop chess, mad chess, reinforcement chess, turnabout chess and schizo-chess) is a chess variant in which captured enemy pieces can be reintroduced, or ''dropped'', into the game as one's own. The drop rule resembles tha ...
has seen prize-funded unofficial world championship tournaments with top grandmasters and experts of the game on chess.com and lichess. Several
internet chess server An Internet chess server (ICS) is an external server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view the board game of chess over the Internet. The term specifically refers to facilities for connecting players through a variety of graphical c ...
s facilitate live play of popular variants, including Chess.com,
Lichess Lichess (; ) is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an account to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and ...
, and the Free Internet Chess Server. The software packages Zillions of Games and Fairy-Max have been programmed to support many chess variants. Some chess engines are also able to play a handful of variants, for instance the version of
Stockfish Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks (which are called "hjell" in Norway) on the foreshore. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage lif ...
implemented on Lichess is able to play
Crazyhouse Crazyhouse (also known as drop chess, mad chess, reinforcement chess, turnabout chess and schizo-chess) is a chess variant in which captured enemy pieces can be reintroduced, or ''dropped'', into the game as one's own. The drop rule resembles tha ...
, King-of-the-hill, Three-check chess,
Atomic chess Atomic chess is a chess variant. Standard rules of chess apply, but all captures result in an "explosion" through which all surrounding white and black pieces other than pawns are removed from play. Some variations additionally remove rules conce ...
, Horde chess, and
Racing Kings Vernon Rylands Parton (2 October 1897 – 31 December 1974) was an English chess enthusiast and prolific chess variant inventor, his most renowned variants being Alice chess and Racing Kings. Many of Parton's variants were inspired by the fic ...
. The AI included in Zillions of Games is able to play almost any variant correctly programmed within it to a reasonable standard. Some variants, such as
5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel ''5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel'' is a 2020 chess variant video game released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux by American studio Thunkspace. Its titular mechanic, multiverse time travel, allows pieces to travel through time and be ...
, are implausible or even impossible to play physically and exist primarily as
video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...
.


Analysis and study


Notation

Play in most chess variants is sufficiently similar to chess that games can be recorded with algebraic notation, although additions to this are often required. For example, the third dimension in
Millennium 3D Chess Millennium 3D chess is a three-dimensional chess variant created by William L. d'Agostino in 2001. It employs three vertically stacked 8×8 boards, with each player controlling a standard set of chess pieces. The inventor describes his objective ...
means that move notation needs to include the level number, as well as the rank and file—N2g3 means a knight move to the g3 square on the second level. When fairy chess pieces are used, notation requires assigning letters for those pieces.


Scholarship and cataloguing

Various publications have been written regarding chess variants. ''Variant Chess'' magazine was published from 1990 to 2010, being an official publication of the
British Chess Variants Society David Brine Pritchard (19 October 1919 – 12 December 2005)''David Pritchard.'' The Times (London). Features; p. 66. 17 January 2006. was a British chess player, chess writer and indoor games consultant. He gained pre-eminence as an indoor gam ...
from 1997. This outlined and introduced multiple variants, as well as containing in-depth analyses. A leading figure in the field was David Pritchard, who authored several books on the topic. Most significantly, he compiled an encyclopedia of variants which outlined thousands of different games. Following Pritchard's death in 2005, the second edition of the encyclopedia was completed and published by John Beasley under the title ''The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants.'' A recent overview of historical and some modern variants was published under the title of ''A World of Chess'' in 2017. '' The Chess Variant Pages'' website includes a constantly expanding catalogue of variants.


Computer variant chess

A few chess variants have been the subject of significant computational analysis.
Los Alamos chess Los Alamos chess (or anti-clerical chessAnderson (1986), p. 105) is a chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Labora ...
, a 6×6 variant, was created in 1956 expressly for computers, its simplicity meant that it was possible for the MANIAC I computer to play it, with a victory over a beginner player the first instance of a computer winning a chess-like game against human opposition. Conversely, Arimaa was developed in 2003 to be deliberately resistant to computer analysis while easy for human players, though computers were able to comprehensively surpass human players by 2015. While
solving chess Solving chess means finding an optimal strategy for the game of chess, that is, one by which one of the players ( White or Black) can always force a victory, or either can force a draw (see solved game). It also means more generally solving ''che ...
has not yet been achieved, some variants have been found to be simple enough to be solved though computer analysis. The 5×5 Gardner's Minichess variant has been weakly solved as a draw, and a lengthy analysis of losing chess managed to weakly solve this as a win for white.


Chess variants in fiction

Chess variants have been invented in various fiction. In ''
The Chessmen of Mars ''The Chessmen of Mars'' is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifth of his Barsoom series. Burroughs began writing it in January, 1921, and the finished story was first published in '' Argosy All-Story Weekl ...
'' author Edgar Rice Burroughs describes
Jetan Jetan, also known as Martian Chess, is a chess variant first published in 1922. It was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a game played on Barsoom, his fictional version of Mars. The game was introduced in ''The Chessmen of Mars'', the fifth book ...
which depicts a war between two races of Martian. An appendix fully defines the rules of the game. More commonly specifics of fictional variants are not detailed in the original works, though several have been codified into playable games by fans. An example of this is Tri-Dimensional Chess from ''
Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
''. On-screen play was not conducted to any specific rules, but a comprehensive rulebook has been since developed. Another well known example of fictional chess-like game are the ''
Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has been expanded into various film ...
'' holochess, or dejarik. Chess boxing, a
hybrid sport A hybrid sport is one which combines two or more (often similar) sports in order to create a new sport, or to allow meaningful competition between players of those sports. List ;B * Bossaball – a hybrid sport combining elements of volleyb ...
of chess and
boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined ...
, was depicted in '' Froid Équateur'', a 1992 comic by Enki Bilal and was developed into a real sport in the early 21st century. Fictional chess variants can involve fantastical or dangerous elements that cannot be implemented in real life. ''The Chessmen of Mars'' describes a form of Jetan where the pieces are human beings and captures are replaced by fights to the death between them. The
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...
episode "
The Wedding of River Song "The Wedding of River Song" is the thirteenth and final episode in the sixth series of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', and was first broadcast on BBC One on 1 October 2011. It was written by lead writer and executiv ...
" depicts "Live Chess", which introduces potentially lethal electric currents into the game.


See also

*
List of chess variants This is a list of chess variants. Many thousands of variants exist. The 2007 catalogue ''The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants'' estimates that there are well over 2,000, and many more were considered too trivial for inclusion in the catalogue. ...
* ''Shogi'' variant * ''Xiangqi'' variant * ''Janggi'' variant


References

Bibliography * * * * * {{Chess variants, state=expanded Chess variants