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 to the rules, but these suggestions have been substantially ignored by the gaming community, which continues to play by the 1962 rules. Since the rules for Baroque were first laid down in 1962, some regional variation has arisen, causing the game to diverge from Ultima.
Chess strategy is the aspect of chess play concerned with evaluation of chess positions and setting of goals and long-term plans for future play. While evaluating a position strategically, a player must take into account such factors as the relative value of the pieces on the board, pawn structure, king safety, position of pieces, and control of key squares and groups of squares. Chess strategy is distinguished from chess tactics, which is the aspect of play concerned with the move-by-move setting up of threats and defenses. Some authors distinguish static strategic imbalances, which tend to persist for many moves, from dynamic imbalances, which are temporary. This distinction affects the immediacy with which a sought-after plan should take effect. Until players reach the skill level of "master", chess tactics tend to ultimately decide the outcomes of games more often than strategy does. Many chess coaches thus emphasize the study of tactics as the most efficient way to improve one's results in serious chess play.
The pawn (♙,♟) is the most numerous piece in the game of chess and, in most circumstances, also the weakest. It historically represents infantry, or more particularly, armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins a game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces.
The rules of chess are rules governing the play of the game of chess. While the exact origins of chess are unclear, modern rules first took form during the Middle Ages. The rules continued to be slightly modified until the early 19th century, when they reached essentially their current form. The rules also varied somewhat from place to place. Today, the standard rules are set by FIDE, the international governing body for chess. Slight modifications are made by some national organizations for their own purposes. There are variations of the rules for fast chess, correspondence chess, online chess, and Chess960.
Circe chess is a chess variant in which captured pieces are reborn on their starting positions as soon as they are captured. The game was invented by French composer Pierre Monréal in 1967 and the rules of Circe chess were first detailed by Monréal and Jean-Pierre Boyer in an article in Problème, 1968.
A fairy chess piece, variant chess piece, unorthodox chess piece, or heterodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems. Fairy pieces vary in the way they move. Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, the same piece can have different names, and different pieces the same name in various contexts. Almost all are usually symbolised as inverted or rotated icons of the standard pieces in diagrams, and the meanings of these "wildcards" must be defined in each context separately. Pieces invented for use in chess variants rather than problems sometimes instead have special icons designed for them, but with some exceptions, many of these are not used beyond the individual games they were invented for.
Andernach chess is a chess variant in which a piece making a capture changes colour. For instance, if a white bishop on a2 were to capture a black knight on g8, the end result would be a black bishop on g8. Non-capturing moves are played as in orthodox chess. If a pawn captures on eighth rank, it is promoted first and then changes colour.
Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999. It is played with Icehouse pyramids on a chessboard. To play with a number of players other than two or four, a non-Euclidean surface can be tiled to produce a board of the required size, allowing up to six players.
Makrukpronounced [màːk rúk]), or Thai chess, is a board game that is descended from the 6th-century Indian game of chaturanga or a close relative thereof, and is therefore related to chess. It is classified as a chess variant. The word "ruk" in Thai is thought to derive from "rukh" which means "chariot" in the Persian language. The Persian traders came to the Ayutthaya kingdom around the 14th century to spread their culture and to trade with the Thai kingdom. It is therefore possible that the Siamese Makruk, in its present form, was directly derived from the Persian game of Shatranj via the cultural exchange between the two people in this period. This is because the movement of Makruk Thai's queen, or the "seed", is essentially the same as the ferz in Shatranj.
Vernon Rylands Parton was an English chess enthusiast and prolific chess variant inventor, his most renowned variant being Alice chess. Many of Parton's variants were inspired by the fictional characters and stories in the works of Lewis Carroll. Parton's formal education background, like Lewis Carroll's, was in mathematics. Parton's interests were wide and he was a great believer in Esperanto.
In chess and other related games, a double check is a check delivered by two pieces simultaneously. In chess notation, it is almost always represented the same way as a single check ("+"), but is sometimes symbolized by "++". This article uses the latter convention for clarity.
Promotion in chess is a rule that requires a pawn that reaches the eighth rank to be replaced by the player's choice of a bishop, knight, rook, or queen of the same color. The piece chosen cannot be another king nor another pawn. The new piece replaces the pawn on its square on the same move. The choice of the new piece is not limited to pieces previously captured, thus promotion can result in a player owning, for example, two or more queens despite starting the game with one.
Knight Relay chess is a chess variant invented by Mannis Charosh in 1972. In this game knights "relay" their power to friendly pieces.
Hexagonal chess refers to a group of chess variants played on boards composed of hexagon cells. The best known is Gliński's variant, played on a symmetric 91-cell hexagonal board.
The grasshopper is a fairy chess piece that moves along ranks, files, and diagonals but only by hopping over another piece at any distance to the square immediately closest. If there is no piece to hop over, it cannot move. If the square beyond a piece is occupied by a piece of the opposite color, the grasshopper can capture that piece. The grasshopper may jump over pieces of either color; the piece being jumped over is unaffected.
Minichess is a family of chess variants played with regular chess pieces and standard rules, but on a smaller board. The motivation for these variants is to make the game simpler and shorter than the standard chess. The first chess-like game implemented on a computer was a 6×6 chess variant Los Alamos chess. The low memory capacity of the early days computer required reduced board size and smaller number of pieces to make the game implementable on a computer.
Monochromatic chess is a chess variant with unknown origin. The initial board position and all rules are the same as in regular chess, except that pieces that begin on a black square must always stay on a black square and pieces that begin on a white square must always stay on a white square. This would mean that knights can never move, but The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants says that knights make a double jump. It has been suggested that a knight be replaced with a (3,1)-leaper (camel).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chess:
2000 A.D. is a chess variant created by V. R. Parton which employs fairy chess pieces on a 10×10 board. Parton published the variant in his 1972 monograph My Game for 2000 A.D. and After.
