Hostage Chess - a variant with a free program

[Hal Bond]

An old friend of mine developed "Hostage Chess" back in the 90's and has since moved to Victoria. John Leslie is a retired prof. from the University of Guelph. He is a decent Go player and prefers Shogi to chess. His variant "Hostage Chess" is somewhere between Shogi and Bughouse for Two. Recently he has offered a free download of playing software. Definitely my favourite chess variant. He asked me to pass this message along:

HOSTAGE CHESS COMPUTER PROGRAM---FREE
A powerful computer program that plays Hostage Chess can
now be downloaded, free, from
www.hostagechess.com

In Hostage Chess, releasing an imprisoned man ("a
hostage") allows you to rescue a man from the enemy prison.
You then "drop" the rescued man onto almost any empty
square. Games hardly ever end in draws!

"..With only a few rule changes, Hostage Chess creates
a marvelously exciting variant on the classical game":
Lawrence Day, International Master.
"..I believe Hostage the most interesting, exciting
variant that can be played with a standard chess set":
Grandmaster Larry Kaufman.
[ ..MESSAGE FOR "BUGHOUSE" ENTHUSIASTS: You could think
of the game as One-Board Bughouse. Ray Kaufman's experience
with Bughouse "drops" helped him do well against GM Larry
Kaufman.]

The computer program wins over half its games against
experienced Hostage players whose rating at standard western
chess is FIDE 2000 (Expert), even when they give it just ten
seconds per move for its thinking.

Originally "SWAT" but now renamed "HostageMaster", the
program is the creation of Paul Connors, skilled both at
western chess and at Shogi.
Shogi is chess as played by millions in Japan. Captured
men change sides, then parachute back onto the board to
fight their former allies. Imitating Shogi with the western
board and pieces, Hostage avoids the mad violence found in
other imitations. [Shogi men are mostly weaker than western
chessmen, and there are more of them. A man can change
sides, therefore, without much altering the strengths of the
battling armies. Try that with western chessmen and mad
violence is what you get. In Hostage, however, changing
sides never happens. You instead acquire paratroops by
handing over prisoners of equal or higher value, putting
them on the enemy "airfield". To get a knight to "drop", you
may sometimes supply the airfield with a droppable queen.]

Paul has commissioned a book from me, title "Hostage
Chess". TO JOIN THE FOLK WHO'LL BE TOLD WHEN THE BOOK IS
PUBLISHED, just e-mail me and ask to be added to the list.
The book might still have room for a few more games. If
you've recorded any specially good ones, please e-mail or
post them to me. Similarly with ones you play against the
computer program.

The book already includes games by Grandmaster Kevin
Spraggett playing FIDE Master Robert Hamilton; Grandmaster
Larry Kaufman playing his son Ray, an International Master;
Lawrence Day, another International Master; and David
Pritchard. David played chess for England in the days before
International Master titles were awarded for such feats. His
"Popular Chess Variants" (a Batsford paperback) gives an
entire chapter to Hostage.

You can read how these experts react to Hostage when you
go to www.hostagechess.com to download the free computer
program.
To install the program, it's simplest if you say you want
to RUN the download. Then, when reaching the screen that
asks what additional icons you want, put a check mark in
both boxes. The Hostage chessboard and controls will
afterwards always be reachable quickly. The HostageMaster
icon (a red knight) will appear on the screen you see
whenever you start up your computer. Just click on it.

At www.hostagechess.com you'll also be told how Hostage
is played. Then I recommend the menu command "Computer plays
both sides" so that HostageMaster battles against itself.
Watch how prisoners come parachuting back into the fight.
After that, begin your first game, but you'd best set the
computer to one of its lowest strengths.
"Undo move" lets you take back blunders or investigate
variations. Clicking it repeatedly allows you to reverse
through a game. Then you can move forward again with "Redo
move", writing down each move if you want to make a game
record.
[Warning: Make sure you understand the rule about seventh
rank pawns! They can step forward only if able to promote
by changing places with imprisoned pieces. If that's
impossible, they can't even give check. Forget what this
rule implies, and you'll wrongly think the computer is
cheating you. (1) Perhaps, when a pawn seems to check the
computer's king, it won't do a thing about it. That's
because the situation will in fact be "pseudocheck".
There'll be no "promotion piece" with which the pawn could
change places. (2) Again, the computer may answer a check
by turning it into a pseudo-check. It gets rid of a
promotion piece through exchanging hostages. (3) Also, it
may stop you making a capture which would create a promotion
piece. Your king, instead of continuing in pseudo-check,
would be being checked genuinely if you made the capture.]

The computer program's strength depends on how long you
allow it for thinking, from "1 second" to "5 minutes" per
move. Take as long as you like over any move, but think
twice before setting that strength to anything above "10
seconds". Hostage is a game of great skill! Yet -- which
keeps things exciting even when beginners play experts --
weak players can hope to win when they attack at the right
moments. Having the attack can be far more important than
being ahead in material. And Hostage has so many tricks that
you should almost never resign.

For the back cover of my book David Pritchard (who listed
hundreds of alternatives to standard western chess in his
"Encyclopedia of Chess Variants") calls Hostage "probably the
most remarkable variant of the last fifty years". A chess
professional of near Grandmaster strength wanted to call it
"a deeper game than standard western chess". I wouldn't let
him say that on the book cover, for fear of offending many
folk. Still, Hostage does capture the spirit of Shogi, and
that's a game beyond western chess in depth. When prisoners
can come parachuting back onto the board, the tree of
possible moves branches much, much faster.

The forests of Hostage will often be too thick for you
to see far through them. However, that's true for everyone
who plays it, so beginners sometimes ambush champions. And
win or lose, Hostage is fun.

"..In Hostage Chess creativity and imagination flourish":
Peter Coast, former Scottish Chess Champion. "..Beautiful
roads keep branching off in all directions": FIDE Master
Robert Hamilton. "..Fascinating, exciting, extremely
entertaining": Grandmaster Kevin Spraggett. Try out Hostage
to find why it's praised like this, and PLEASE SPREAD THE
NEWS BY FORWARDING THIS E-MAIL TO YOUR FRIENDS.
Thanks in advance: John Leslie
( johnlesl@uoguelph.ca or 2066 Gourman Place, Victoria,
British Columbia V9B 6E1, Canada )

P.S. Maybe you'd like to see RULES and NOTATION:
-- RULES OF HOSTAGE CHESS, as given in my "Infinite Minds"
(Oxford University Press) when I discuss whether chess
variants could be infinitely complex:
Western rules, except these. Each player owns two areas
at the side of the board---a prison for captured men, near
the player's right hand, and an airfield near the left. In
each turn you (i) move normally, or else (ii) rescue one
man from the enemy prison by transferring one of equal or
higher value from your prison to the enemy airfield, then at
once parachuting the rescued man onto a vacant square, or
else (iii) parachute one man from your airfield. [Values
run from PAWN upwards to KNIGHT-OR-BISHOP, then ROOK, then
QUEEN. Pawns cannot parachute onto first or eighth ranks,
but parachuting can place your bishops on squares of the
same colour. Pawn jumps from the second rank and acts of
castling can involve parachuted men.] A seventh rank pawn
can move forwards, give check, or prevent castling, only if
able to be promoted by changing places with a piece in the
enemy prison.
-- NOTATION FOR RECORDING HOSTAGE CHESS:
Normal chess notation with these additions. N*c7 means
a knight from an airfield parachutes onto c7. (R)N*c7 means
an imprisoned rook goes to the enemy airfield and a knight
is thereby rescued, the knight then at once parachuting onto
c7. gxf8=R means a pawn on the g-file captures on f8 and
promotes to rook by changing places with a rook in the enemy
prison. f8=B means a pawn steps forward to f8 without
capturing anything, then promotes to bishop by changing
places with a bishop in the enemy prison.

Once again: PLEASE FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO YOUR FRIENDS.

[David McTavish]

Re: Hostage Chess - a variant with a free program

did you get that GM title for Larry Kaufman?
His FIDE is well under 2400. no minimum of 2500, at least?
w/ three norms?

[Paul Bonham]

Another variant: Super En Passant Chess

Hal, thanks for this post, I will definitely check this out.

I've become very interested in chess variants and have written up documents on variants of my own (which perhaps have been previously invented).

Here's one that I believe makes a lot of sense. In regular chess, we have the En Passant rule, which allows a pawn on the 5th rank to have the option of capturing an opposing pawn that moves 2 squares past it on an adjacent file. The logic is that the opposing pawn is briefly on a square that is a capture square of the 5th rank pawn. The 5th rank pawn must make the capture on the immediately following ply of the 2-square move of the pawn it may capture. The capture possibility only exists for that brief moment in the game.

My variant (actually one of many variants of mine) is called "Super En Passant Chess" unless someone comes up with a better name. It is based on the proposition that this en passant capturing shouldn't be limited to pawns.

In short, the rules are the same as regular chess, except that whenever any piece moves more than 1 square in any direction, it is subject to En Passant capture by any opposing piece that attacks a square it is passing over. For example, you move a Rook 4 squares along a file. One of those squares is covered by the enemy Queen. The enemy Queen may make an immediate reply of capturing the Rook on the covered square. As with regular en passant, the capture must be made immediately. Otherwise the opportunity disappears.

A couple of points:

(1) any piece or pawn, including the King, may make an en passant capture (for the King, this means not moving into check in the process).

(2) Knights are immune to en passant captures. They can logically be pictured as "jumping" to their destination squares and thus don't actually occupy any intermediate squares. If Knights were subject to en passant capture, it would mean that every time one moves a Knight, the exact path of the move would have to be specified. That would be annoying. The logical exemption for them is very convenient! It also makes Knights possibly more powerful or valuable than Bishops!

(3) en passant captures may be chained! You move your Rook 4 squares to capture a Knight, the Rook gets en passant captured by the enemy Queen on the first square it passes over (which means the captured Knight is reinstated), but you en passant capture the enemy Queen on a square that the Queen passes over (let's say you have that square covered with a Bishop) to make the en passant capture of the Rook! Which means the Rook gets reinstated WHERE IT CAPTURED THE KNIGHT, and the Knight once again is captured. There is no limit to the chaining of en passant captures. If in this example your Bishop can be en passant captured by an enemy pawn, you opponent may do so, which reinstates his Queen capturing your Rook, which removes your Rook from the board and reinstates the enemy Knight that the Rook originally captured!

As you can see from this, you would have to be very aware of all the squares your pieces cover at all times and be aware of all squares they are passing over in their moves! This game I believe would be very very difficult to master and dominate.