Chess variants

[Olivier Tessier]

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[Marcus Wilker]

Re: Chess variants

There was a game being sold in Saint John at the 1988 Chess Festival (hosting Candidates matches). It involved constructing a board with interlocking squares, so that the board could be highly irregular. I forget the name of the game, but I played some games of it.

It's called Choiss - it came to Scarborough Chess Club in the late 80s, too.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Chess variants

Chess960 (aka Fischerrandom) tournament nights happen at least once a year at the RA club in Ottawa (same for specific opening theme tournament nights for standard chess).

[edit: I haven't played in the chess960 tournaments yet, as my previous post might imply]

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Chess variants

Progressive chess - I played in the "World Internet Progressive Chess Championship" some years ago after making it through the preliminaries. The organizer was trying to collect enough data from competent players to prove that it was a win for one side or the other. (no definite conclusion, but a Benoni-type start for Black seemed to give Black a slight edge). It's hard to get a computer to help with your analysis. :-)

Annotated games from the event are at http://users.ics.aalto.fi/tho/wipcc96final.html

More info at: http://users.ics.aalto.fi/tho/chess.html

There is at least one board game (GO MOKU) I play with friends now and then that's described as having a forced (even easy) win (for the side moving first) in at least one book I've been told of, at least when the game is played on a standard 19x19 GO board. However, we play GO MOKU merely as light preparation for other games such as GO itself, Shogi and Chinese Chess.

I imagine a forced win for one side in Progressive Chess might be hard to prove, but proving it wouldn't surprise me nearly as much as proving that the game should result in a draw with error-free play. :)

Partly thanks to computer chess playing programs eclipsing humans, the chess variant that interests me the most at the moment would be double chess, as I've indicated elsewhere. If it or another variant ever replaced standard chess, I'd prefer that the number of legal moves and possible positions far exceeded standard chess, yet still without it having inordinate complexity for its basic rules.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Chess variants

I would also love more Chess 960 or Fisher random tournament.. it would save me from having to comeback from -1.00/-2.00 disadvantage like I have to most of the time..

The ICCF Webserver offers Chess 960 events. It seems they pair an event as soon as they have 5 players who enter. I assume each player plays 2 games with each opponent, one with white and one with black, with each opponent for a total of 8 games. It's correspondence chess if you like that kind of thing.

They allow online entries so I assume they take something like Pay pal but I've never entered anything online from them.

[Alan Baljeu]

Re: Chess variants

There is at least one board game (GO MOKU) I play with friends now and then that's described as having a forced (even easy) win (for the side moving first) in at least one book I've been told of, at least when the game is played on a standard 19x19 GO board. However, we play GO MOKU merely as light preparation for other games such as GO itself, Shogi and Chinese Chess.

Go Moku has a forced easy win if you play "place stones alternately, first with 5 in a row wins". This is why for centuries the first player had some restrictions on opening play. Then it's extremely complex play.

A completely different game for a chess set is Arimaa. Each piece moves one square at a time, but heavy pieces can push/pull light pieces and you get four moves per turn. Winner is whoever gets a rabbit (pawn) to the other side of the board. There's more to the rules than that, but it's extremely complex to play, and appears (surprisingly) to have deeper strategy even than chess.

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: Chess variants

Olivier wrote:

B) Also on a piece of paper you write a square where a mine is. If your opponent step on it he "explodes". It's still your opponent move afterward. You can place your bomb on an other square (Or the same).

Also known as "trap door chess". Look for the video from season 2 (1968) of the TV science fiction series "Land of the Giants", (titled "Deadly Pawn") in which a game of "living" trap door chess is played, and the good guys try to avoid falling through.

Don't forget "Ministers" - a 9x9 board with extra Queens. http://www.ministerschess.com/ (note that a tournament will be held at Chess and Math in Montreal on Oct. 21).

Kriegspiel is another one of my favourites. Leo Williams once played 3 games of it simultaneously - writing his moves/attempts on pieces of paper, and passing them to the referee. I have the gamescores somewhere (1 win; 1 loss; 1 draw).

By the way, draws in progressive chess are very rare.