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.
A chess piece, or chessman, is any of the six different types of movable objects used on a chessboard to play the game of chess.
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.
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.
Jetan, also known as Martian Chess, is a chess variant with unclear rules. 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 in the Barsoom series. Its rules are described in Chapter 2 and in the Appendix of the book.
Cannon shogi is a modern variant of shogi. It was invented by Peter Michaelsen in February 1998.
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).
Senterej is a regional chess variant, the form of chess traditionally played in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is the last popular survival of shatranj. A distinctive feature of Senterej is the opening phase – players make as many moves as they like without regard for how many moves the opponent has made; this continues until the first capture is made. Memorization of opening lines is therefore not a feature of the game.
Permainan-Tabal is a two-player abstract strategy board game from Indonesia. The game is sometimes referred to as a cross between Alquerque and Draughts. It is essentially Draughts played on an expanded Alquerque board. It is especially similar to Draughts in that the moves of the pieces are strictly forward and sideways until they are promoted to Kings by reaching the other player's first rank. The game is also referred to as Dama.
Dash-guti is a two-player abstract strategy board game from India, specifically from Central Provinces, United Provinces, Karwi Subdivision where it is called Kowwu Dunki which is the same name given to another similar game called Lau kata kati, and it was described by H.J.R. Murray in A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess (1952). The game is related to Draughts and even more so to Alquerque. Pieces are captured by leaping over them. Dash-guti consists of a Lau kata kati board, but with the addition of two line segments connected to the vertex but exterior to both triangles. Dash-guti belongs to a specific category of games called Indian War-games, and the other games in this category are Lau kata kati, Egara-guti, Pretwa, Gol-skuish. All Indian War-games have one important thing in common, and that is that all the pieces are laid out on the grid patterned board, with only one vacant point in the centre. This forces the first move to be played on the central point, and captured by the other player's piece.
Leap Frog is a multi-player abstract strategy board game that was described by H.J.R. Murray in A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess (1898), and attributes its origin to England. Several variants have been created including one by Murray himself which utilizes different colored pieces with different point values. Several players can participate. In the traditional game, players take any piece on the board and use it to hop over and capture other pieces on the board. When no more pieces can be captured, the game ends, and the player with the most pieces wins the game. Murray includes it in the section called Clearance Games which includes the game Solitaire which it does resemble in many ways except that Solitaire is played by only one person. The game is also known to be spelled as one word, Leapfrog.
Dablo is a family of two-player strategy board games of the Sámi people. Different variants of the game have been played in different parts of Sápmi.
High Jump is a two-player strategy board game from Somalia. It is related to draughts and Alquerque as pieces hop over one another for capture; however, pieces move and capture orthogonally and not diagonally. Moreover, the game is played on a 5×5 square board. A feature of High Jump is that the central square offers a kind of sanctuary; a piece occupying the central square cannot be hopped over and captured. The same board is used in the game Seega.
Kotu Ellima is a two-player abstract strategy board game from Sri Lanka played by the Sinhalese people. The game was documented by Henry Parker in Ancient Ceylon: An Account of the Aborigines and of Part of the Early Civilisation (1909); the game was printed as "Kotu Ellima" which is actually a misspelling because his source for the game was Leopold Ludovici's Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1873), and specifically in the chapter entitled "The Sports and Games of the Singhalese", and Ludovici wrote the name of the game as Kotu Ellime or Taking of the Castles. The game is similar to draughts (checkers) and Alquerque as players hop over one another's pieces to capture them; it is more similar to Alquerque between the two since it uses a standard Alquerque board. However, unlike draughts and standard Alquerque, the game is played on an expanded Alquerque board consisting of four triangular boards attached to the four sides of a standard Alquerque board. It closely resembles Peralikatuma and Sixteen Soldiers which are also played in Sri Lanka and other parts of the Indian subcontinent with the only difference being the number of pieces. In Sixteen Soldiers, each player has 16 pieces hence the name of the game. In Peralikatuma, each player has 23 pieces. In Kotu Ellima, each player has 24 pieces, and at the beginning of the game the whole board is covered with them except the central point reminiscent of standard Alquerque.
Nana shogi is a modern variant of shogi ; however, it is not Japanese. It was invented in 1998–2001 by Georg Dunkel of Finland—who calls it the "World's Smallest Shogi Variant"—and it incorporates elements of Unashogi by starting with an empty board. A smaller variant, Gufuu Shogi (2×3), is also introduced by Georg Dunkel, but it incorporates rules considerably different from traditional shogi variants, particularly the concept of shared pieces and unusual rules for giving check and checkmate.
Wildebeest chess is a chess variant created by R. Wayne Schmittberger in 1987. The Wildebeest board is 11×10 squares. Besides the standard chess pieces, each side has two camels and one wildebeest. The inventor's intent is "to balance the number of 'riders'—pieces that move along open lines—with the number of 'leapers'—pieces that jump".
Quatrochess is a chess variant for four players invented by George R. Dekle Sr. in 1986. The board comprises 14×14 squares minus the four central squares. Each player controls a standard set of sixteen chess pieces, and additionally nine fairy pieces. The game can be played in partnership or all-versus-all.
Falcon–hunter chess is a chess variant invented by Karl Schultz in 1943, employing the two fairy chess pieces falcon and hunter. The game takes several forms, including variations hunter chess and decimal falcon–hunter chess added in the 1950s.
Congo is a chess variant invented by Demian Freeling in 1982 when he was nearly 8 years old. His father encouraged him to design a variant using a 7×7 gameboard. Demian was already familiar with chess and xiangqi, and the result blends some features from both. Congo became the second-most popular chess variant at the Fanaat games club in Enschede, the Netherlands.
