Battle of the Kings - Irrational Chess Online
I am pleased to inform you that one of my best chess variant can now be played online.
I express my deep gratitude to programmer V. Chelnokov, who helped turn my dream into reality. I also express my deep gratitude to all those who helped test the game in practice.
The Battle of the Kings was a natural evolution of my E-Chess, the rules of which I published here on chess.com back in 2021.
It was in E-Chess that I proposed an interesting, in my opinion, idea of the appearance of a new piece on the square from which another piece had just made a move.
Such a unique reproduction of the material in the game introduced a breathtaking plot into the gameplay and brought the chess variant to a completely different, hitherto unknown level.
A significant disadvantage of E-Chess was the huge advantage of White's first move. And in fact, with extra tempo, White developed rapidly due to the constant appearance of new and better material on the board. All this led to the fact that Black lost quickly and beautifully, without really having time to get into the game.
Trying to level out White's advantage, I tried to experiment with the hierarchy of the appearance of chess pieces on the board, but soon realized that the chain P>N>B>R>Q is ideal and cannot be changed.
The question rested on the kings. And this is where the solution was found.
Battle of the Kings
Battle of the Kings is an irrational variant of chess that follows almost exactly the canons of standard chess with the following exceptions:
The game begins on a chessboard, where, apart from the pawns of both players, there is not a single chess piece. The starting position is shown in the figure below:
A distinctive feature of this chess variant is the process of the appearance of chess pieces on the board.
Every time a chess piece leaves the square on which it stood, a new chess piece appears on that same square according to the following hierarchy:
Pawn > Knight > Bishop > Rook > Queen > King
Thus, after a pawn moves, a knight appears on the square where it stood. After the knight moves, a bishop will appear on the square from which the knight moved, etc. And only when the king moves does not a chess piece appear.
In the example below, White started the game with e2-e4:
As you can see, on the e2 square, where the pawn made its move, a new piece has appeared - and this is a knight.
Let's assume that Black responds e7-e5, now if White plays with a knight, for example, on c3 the following picture will turn out:
The knight "gave birth" to the bishop on e2, which in turn will give birth to the rook, the rook will produce the queen, and the queen will finally give birth to the king.
The appearance of the king on the square where it is facing check is unacceptable.
This means that if your Queen is under attack, then you cannot make a move with this Queen, since the King will appear on the square where the Queen is.
During the game, a player may have one, two or more kings on the board.
To win, it is enough to checkmate one King. A check to kings is considered checkmate if at least one of them is unable to escape from this check.
A stalemate is a win for the player delivering the stalemate.
The player made a move leading to a repetition of the position (which is only possible if there are kings on the board) losses.
There is NO DRAW in this chess variant.
There is no castling.
Play against a bot (no registration required):
Play against other players on Dagaz Server:
Battle of the Kings on Dagaz Server
Battle of the Kings in action:
