Angel Chess

In 1914, Louis P. D'Autremont developed and patented a chess variant called Angel Chess.

By enlarging the board by one file and introducing the Amazon piece into the game, calling it Angel, he got a very unusual and unique chess variant on an 8x9 board.

So, let's see what makes this chess variation unique, what various chess 'experts' have done with the rules of this truly worthwhile game, and finally, let's try to improve D'Autremont's forgotten idea.

The game is played on an 8x9 board.

All pieces move and capture according to the laws of standard chess. A new piece has been added to the game - Angel, which combines the moves of a knight and a queen.

The king can castle in both directions, moving three squares to the queenside:

or angelside:

Special rule for capturing an Angel: A player's Angel cannot capture an opponent's Angel if it is visually protected by another friendly piece.

For example:

Here White, with 1. Ag6#, checkmated Black, who, in turn, cannot capture White's Angel 1. ...Axg6 due to the Angel capture rule.

White's Angel is protected by the f5-pawn and is invulnerable to Black's Angel.

An Angel is considered protected even if a recapture results in the king being exposed and in check.

For example:

White cannot play Axc6, again due to the Angel capture rule, even though Black's dc move is illegal under the rules of chess. Black's Angel is under the protection of a pawn and this is enough to be inviolable for the opponent's Angel. At the same time, if White had the opportunity to capture Black's Angel with any other piece, they would have done it without a doubt.

The Angel capture rule only applies to Angels and not to any other pieces in the game.

All win and draw rules follow the rules of standard chess.

The Angel is quite a powerful piece compared to the Queen. Its lethal force in the system of the relative value of a chess piece corresponds to 12-13 points, for example, the value of a queen is about 8, and two rooks is 10-11.

The Angel is extremely mobile and can control every around it within a 5x5 square. This is the only piece that can checkmate the enemy king alone, without the help of other friendly pieces.

The initial position of the bishops of both players is interesting.

At first glance, this seems to be an absolute absurdity: how to play with opposite-colored bishops?! After all, we all know that in the endgame they dramatically reduces the chances of the sides to win. Why did D'Autremont choose this initial arrangement of bishops? The answer will become obvious to you if you pay attention to the color of the square where the king will move as a result of castling. But not only that. D'Autremont's idea was to maximize the intensity of the attack on the king, which, again, as we all know, must be done with opposite-colored bishops in the middle game.

Now we understand that before us one of the aggressive chess variants, in which attack prevails over defense, in which it will not be possible to quietly and calmly play the opening, going into a draw, because the army led by an Angel seeks only victory.

A few words about the rules of Mr. D'Autremont, which were given in the description of the game from 1914, and also added later (whether he added them there are big doubts).

These are the ''rules'':

D'Autremont proposed a board game using only digital markings. That is, both rows and files were designed only by numbers. The first was the file number and the second was the row, with each player reporting in his own coordinate system, starting from the lower left corner square. So the a1 square for White, like the i8 square for Black, was designated by the number 11, b1 (h8) - 21, etc.

All pieces, with the exception of pawns, bore one number or another. That is, numbers were applied to the pieces! So the number 1 was depicted on the rook, 2 on the knight, etc. Thus, the move of the knight b1-c3, for example, was written like this: 2 21-33, where the first two is the designation of the knight.

Mobilization. Before the start of the game, the players cast lots and the loser received the right, in a specially allotted time, to make exactly 10 moves with his pieces within his four rows, that is, on his half of the board. This option then passed to his opponent. Thus, the game itself, with the order of moves, began with the initial position of both players changed. It is clear that in this case the second player has an advantage over the first, since he fully sees the opponent’s arrangement and can advantageously distribute his forces, concentrating them in the most vulnerable places of his position.

Castling. In his 1914 description of the game, D'Autremont makes no mention of castling at all. And indeed, if at the beginning of the game the so-called Mobilization of Pieces is used, where in 10 moves you can arrange your army in the desired formation, then the question of castling disappears by itself. However, in Chapter 14 of David Pritchard's Encyclopedia of Chess Variants we find a mention of castling and, moreover, the transfer of the king to the right (for White) is accompanied by its movement to the g1 square, which absolutely does not fit into the geometry of the game and the board. Such a skew for odd files raises certain questions. Firstly, such castling violates the harmony of numbers of the entire structure, so carefully designed by D'Autremont, and secondly, it introduces a noticeable imbalance into the game, where there are opposite-colored bishops. All this suggests that this rule was added later or even invented, and by no means by the author of the game.

Promotion of pawns. Pawns are promoted as usual, but only the pawn on the central file can be promoted to an Angel. This is completely beyond the bounds of reason and this “rule” cannot be taken seriously. If the author of this idea had enough imagination, he could have proposed not the central one, but the f-file on which the Angel is located at the beginning of the game.

The last two “rules” are clearly not the author's and were clearly added later.

Thus, summing up everything stated above, we can draw a certain conclusion: D'Autremont concept of the game deserves close attention. By getting rid of the digitization of the playing field, mobilization, asymmetric castling and allowing the transformation of pawns only into Angel on any square of the last row, we will get a pretty good chess variant. This game will be extremely interesting and useful for our mind.

Having understood the basic idea that the author of Angel Chess wanted to present to us, we can go a little further and make the game even more aggressive, I would even say super-aggressive.

All we need for this is a change in the geometry of the board plus a little experiment with the relative value of some chess pieces.

Angels Chess

We use a 9x9 board for the game. Odd-numbered boards perfectly balance the game, giving the entire game process exquisite harmony.

Let's add another Angel to the chess set instead of the Queen.

The resulting starting setup will look like this:

Instead of Angel pieces, you can use regular chess queens.

Let's change the abilities of some pieces, namely:

Bishop - in addition to the functions of a regular chess bishop, it can now move and capture like a King.

King - moves like a regular chess king, but is absolutely devoid of any aggressive actions - he is prohibited from capturing. Of course, with this rule, two kings can meet on the board, which is not allowed in ordinary chess.

Following the Law of Conservation of Energy, we transferred the killing power of the King to the Bishop, maintaining the relative value of the chess material in our closed system of eighty-one squares.

All other rules are similar to Angel Chess with the exception of:

A pawn that reaches its last row can promote only to an Angel.

Checkmate or stalemate is a victory condition for the player who performed this action.

The player who manages to bring his King to the adjacent square to the opponent’s King wins.

So, we have before us a unique picture, where a weak King, surrounded by super-powerful pieces, makes the game strong, aggressive and absolutely irreconcilable. It’s a paradox, but if you remember the name of the chess variant, then all this fully corresponds to the original nature of our existence, our reality. And if you don’t forget about the Angel capture rule, then everything becomes completely obvious.

Stay safe and blessed.