Why Hexagons Are Great but Hexagonal Chess Isn't? And Changes To De Vasa’s Hexagonal Chess
I think the future of chess is this:
- Traditional Chess (classical, rapid and blitz, (bullet in online), it will continue to dominate the scene)
- Chess 960 or Fischer Random Chess, but with ideal starting positions
- Blindfold Chess
- Four-Player Chess Teams, why not?
- Chess Solving
Now, I think hexagons are great because:
- Tessellation: They tessellate a plane without gaps or overlaps, optimizing spatial usage.
- Minimal Perimeter: Compared to other polygons, hexagons enclose the maximum area with the minimal perimeter.
- Natural Occurrence: They are prevalent in nature (e.g., honeycombs) due to their structural efficiency and strength.
- Versatility: They are widely used in various fields, from computational geometry to materials science, for their optimal packing and structural properties.
- Structural Strength: Unlike squares, rhomboids, and equilateral triangles which allow entire rows or columns to be shifted without affecting the rest of the grid, hexagons create a more rigid structure where shifting affects the part or the entire arrangement, enhancing stability. This is true for rectangles, L shapes, squared crosses, and other irregular shapes, but hexagons are the only regular polygons that fulfill both tessellation and structural strength requirements.
Returning to hexagonal chess, I think the most playable is the one created by Helge E. de Vasa in 1953. Here is the empty board:
As you can see, there are 9x9 hexagons, making a total of 81. With this particular board, the notation does not suffer dramatically. I also think the central color should be highlighted and distinct from the a1 and b1 colors, which should have similar hue.
Here is the initial position: 
Pawns start at the third rank (otherwise the Bishops and Rooks would be attacked from the start). There are three Bishops, of course for the three colors.
Here is my proposal, the pawn in its initial position (say e3) can only move forward, to the red circles (e4 and e5) and capture to the blue circles (d4 and f5):
Now, a pawn on other positions, say on e5, can move only move forward one square to e6, and attack d6 and f7 (potentially capturing en passant).
Here is the Knight's movements, and one of the reasons why this variant is too complex to be played without missing something:
The Bishop's movements, only to its color: 
The Rook:
The Queen, incredibly strong: 
The King: 
Here are shown the short and long castles:
All other rules apply, such as pawn promotion on the last rank.
While this game, with its specific board and modified pawn movements, resembles traditional chess, the complexity, the numerous move options for each piece—particularly the Knight—make it less suitable for learning and gameplay, despite the advantages of hexagons.
Have you seen Saturn's hexagon?
