Existing Chess Variants

C. van Gog, 19 October 2021

Here are some existing chess variants I found interesting:

Bidding Chess

Before each turn, players have to bid for the right to move!

Somehow we decided that alternating moves was boring—too predictable. Some moves are clearly worth more than others, and the game would be much more interesting if you had to pay for the right to move. Enter Bidding Chess.

Circular Chess

What if the board is circular? The roots of this variant go back to Muhammad ibn Mahmud Amuli, who in the 14th century described two forms of circular chess with Shatranj pieces.

Double Chess

I like the extra “space”. Apparently, former world champion Capablanca found the game “remarkably interesting”. Would also be interesting if the goal is to capture both kings (like in Ferz & Wazir).

Drawbridge Chess

Saw this on Reddit the other day, it’s a beautiful design and the drawbridge makes for some interesting dynamics. A lone king may survive against king, queen, and two rooks!

Haft Schroedinger Chess

A really cool variant where pieces start out in a “quantum superposition”. Would work even better in combination with 2 Crowded, so that pieces can get re-entangled!

What if players themselves can determine where the pieces start out? – though this would work better with Chess960 castling rules (and with castling being allowed iff the king starts is placed between the rooks).

S-chess

Possibly my favorite chess variant of all when combined with Chess960. The elephant and hawk add tons of interesting dynamics to the game!

Kung Fu Chess

Too violent of a game over the board, but the slow-motion version offered by the Kung Fu Chess website seems promising!

Making Draws Less Safe

As a bonus, here are some rules to make draws less safe and Armageddon more fair.

Draw Offer Swap

I think Levon Aronian once mentioned this: a player receiving a draw offer may optionally swap colors and play on. This makes offering draws much more risky!

Armageddon with Auction

This doesn’t necessarily exist, but goes back to an idea by top Xiangqi player Hu Ronghua: in an Armageddon game both players auction off the right to play black. Who makes the lowest bid in terms of time on the clock gets to play white (e.g. 2 minutes and 40 seconds vs. 5 minutes).

Decisive draws

Upon drawing, a coin is flipped. Heads, White gets the point, tails, Black gets it (though for rating purposes, the draw still counts as a draw). Makes drawing riskier in a tournament context.