I Invented 8 Player Chess

Hi! I'm Eldar

17th March 2021, the day I invented 8 player chess.

UPDATE: I did not invent 8 player chess, I invented this particular version of it. At a later date I will post an 8pc history. For now, come check out the 8 player chess club or read on if you would like to know my thought process for coming up with the design I ended up with...

Coming up with a version of multi-player chess is not the easiest, especially if you want all players to have an equal footing on the board in question.

When designing a 2-dimensional multiplayer chess board, the main thing to consider is what shape the position nodes (the "squares") will be and how they will be connected to other nodes on the board...

Consider the regular chess board: A typical node (square) is connected to 8 other nodes (diagonally and rectilinearly). Its these nodal connections that define where a piece can sit and how a piece can move on the board.

Tesselation is the concept that a number of 2-dimensional polygon shapes can repeat themselves in a "tile" pattern ad infinitum in all directions without any gaps for other shapes to creep in. "Regular" tesselation is when a single shape is able to tile in this way with only its own shape throughout the entire pattern.

The reason the square is so useful for the chess boards tiles is because the square is one of only 3 shapes that can form regular tesselations.

It is of course possible to create boards of more than 2 shapes within its tesselation, in fact it's even possible to create boards with entirely different tesselation makeups, unique geometries and even hyperbolic geometries. Generally this would create situations where different tiles will have different consequences for the pieces and in some cases create confusion in terms of figuring out how one is to navigate across the board. It is not impossible however, so I thoroughly encourage would-be creators to go out and make chess boards with unique geometries because the experience is fun and might even lead to some really interesting gameplay! My interest however is in creating a multiplayer chess game that is as simple as possible for players to use without too may complications occuring as a result of the board's geometry.

When I first attempted to create an 8 player chess board, my first thought was to try and create a means by which 8 players could play at equal angles to each other in an approximate octogon shape. Each player would ideally be facing inwards and would use octogon tiles to navigate the board... but there was a problem... Octogons don't tesslate:

It became painfully obvious after my first draft that all I did was create a giant board that essentially just had regular squares since the tiles connected to one another in exactly the same way that regular squares do.

I tried to envision that pieces within the diagonal corner territories would be able to move forward facing their relativistic centres, but this fell short to a not-so-discrete problem inherent to the construct of square tiles: Moving diagonally is fundamentally different to moving rectilinearly. In the above setup, if you were to try to stick to the rule that a piece's relative orientation was based on their starting positions, you would find that Rooks would move like Bishops (losing half their "squares") and Bishops would move like Rooks (gaining twice as many "squares")... not to mention that pawns would become amplified Berolinas! On top of this, the corner territories have twice as many squares as the side territories. Overall, it just didn't work.

It was st. Patricks day and in my drunken haze I had a brainwave:

"You know what I'm a'do? I'm gonna rehash the 4pc board and just expand it so you can fit 8 players in it..."

So thats what I did. This is the result:

Along with the board, I also devised 3 main standard game types to go with it...

FFA - Free for all. Each player fights for themselves in a battle to rack up the most points. Knights are worth 2 points, Rooks are worth 6, Queens are worth 10 and pawns promote on the 12th rank.

FFT - Free for Teams. Same points based game as FFA but you work with the player far opposite you (e.g White & Green) to rack up points for your team.

2x4 - 2 teams of 4 battle it out to be the first to checkmate at least 2 opponents.

Strictly speaking, I am not the first to invent an 8 player chess since there is a warped board version and a hyperbolic version out there. I am however the first to create an 8 player chess board that obeys the rules of regular tesselation. Since I came up with the idea on st. Patricks day, and the board kind of looks like a clover, you can call this version of 8PC: Shamrock 8 player chess.

If you are interested in playing 8 player chess you can join the 8 player chess club where we use a forum based system and image editing to make moves with daily time controls. All games are casual and there are a whole bunch of variations we've written down for you to try.

Have fun and thank you for reading,

- Eldar

P.S: During the construct of writing this blog I inadvertently invented a 6 player chess using hexagonal tiles. Follow/subscribe if you'd like to hear more.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: After discussion with a reputable player within the 4 player chess community, it turns out that I am not the first to invent an 8 player chess with regular tesselated tiles ;-;. My board is unique as I understand it, but 8PC with regular square tiles was invented by one of our very own in the 4PC community (who I won't name unless they say it is okay to name them). Here is a video of that board: video.