Week 11 Arena

Think you have what it takes to play in the PRO Chess League? Prove it by playing in and winning the eleventh Washington Wasps Weekly Fan Arena. This event will be a mystery arena, where fans will get to choose what the format of the exciting 2 hour tournament will be. The form is available here. Here are the options:

Chess960 (FischerRandom)

Chess960, or Fischer Random, is a variant invented by the late World Champion Bobby Fischer. The rules of the game are the same as standard chess, but in an effort to reduce the impact of opening theory, the pieces have been randomly shuffled on each player's back rank.

• Games end in the traditional ways of checkmate, stalemate and time-out.
• Bishops must still be on opposite colors in the initial Chess960 position.
• The king must be between the rooks to maintain the ability to castle both ways. That means a king can only be placed between the squares b1 and g1 or b8 and g8 for Black.

3-Check

3-Check is a simple variant with one clear task in mind: Check the king as many times as you can! Normal rules apply, but you can also win (or lose!) a game by checking (or getting checked) 3 times in total.

• Games can still end in the traditional ways of checkmate, stalemate and time-out.
• The game can also end if a player checks their opponent's king three times.
• A move that results in a double-check only counts as one check towards the "total check score."

King of the Hill

King of the Hill or "KOTH" is an exciting variant in which the goal is to get your king to the center of the board or "top of the hill". 

• Games can still end in the traditional ways of checkmate, stalemate and time-out.
• The game can also end when a player moves their king to any of the four central squares.
• e4, d4, e5, and d5 are "top of the hill" squares, winning the game on the spot for either White or Black, regardless of the nature of the position.

Crazyhouse

Crazyhouse is a variant which follows most of the normal rules of chess, except that captured pieces can be reintroduced to the board on your turn.

• The pieces move the same way that they do in traditional chess.
• Games can still end in the same way: checkmate, stalemate, and time-out.
• Captured pieces reverse their color and are added to the capturing player's "bank."
• On your turn, instead of making a move ,you may choose to "drop" a piece from your "bank" onto any open square on the board.
• You can drop a piece from your bank to block a check, even in a position that would otherwise have been checkmate (i.e. without the piece from your bank to drop).
• You may drop a piece to both check and checkmate the enemy king.
• Pawns may not be dropped on the 1st or 8th ranks.
• Pawns that have promoted and are then captured go into the bank as pawns, not as the piece they promoted to.

Blitz (3|0, 3|2, 10|0)

Bullet (1|0, 2|1)

Knockout

A knockout tournament is divided into successive rounds; each competitor plays in a match per round. The winners of each match progress to the next round while the losers are eliminated from the tournament. After each round, the number of competitors and matches are halved. The final round, usually known as the final or cup final, consists of just one match; the winner of which is the overall champion. However, most competitors will be eliminated after relatively few matches; a single bad or unlucky performance can nullify many preceding excellent ones.

• 1 hour 5|0 arena followed by a 4 player knockout bracket.
• The top four players advance to a knockout starting five minutes after the arena finishes.
• Matches are best of five.
• If the score is tied after five games, play continues until someone scores a win.
• The higher seed gets White first in both the match and tiebreak (if necessary).

Past Winners: