Ranking Chess Variants
In the words of Bobby Fischer, "I hate chess!" Chess is beautiful, encourages critical thinking, inspires creativity, and rewards dedication. However, playing with the same rules and the same position again and again can become tiring. Much of chess today is simply memorization and repetition, which is why variants can be so fun!
Chess variants offer an escape from the dull ordeal that normal chess can become. Chess variants offer new rules, new positions, and new strategies. Given the joy that can stem from playing chess variants, it is phenomenal that Chess.Com has a server for these unconventional versions of the game. In this blog, we will rank the best and worst chess variants on that server!
A quick thank you to @ for helping me figure out how to make a table of contents in a blog post! I wouldn't have been able to do it without him! 
- Table of Contents
- How I Ranked Each Variant
- The Best Variants
- The Worst Variants
- My Full Ranking
- Conclusion
I am not rating variants based off any objective system, but simply based off my personal preference. I played each of the variants I ranked a minimum of three times, and how good I was at each variant definitely impacted my perception of it. I tried to give higher rankings to variants that were easier to understand, play, and quickly find matches of. But overall, my ranking is completely biased and solely based off my experience. If you don't like my ranking, then make your own!
The fact that I judged some variants based off of only three games will inevitably lead to some more complex and strategical variants being ranked below where they deserve. Yet, I did not have time to play each of the 19 variants I ranked ten times each, and I played many variants far more than three times.
I played all the variants Chess.Com has labeled as "Most Popular" and "Featured", as well as a few other variants. However, I was unable to play every single variant because some of the variants are so unpopular that finding a match for them would take several millennia. A full ranking is available near the end of this blog, so you can go there to see all the variants I played and how much I liked or disliked them.
Note: Some variants (such as King of the Hill, Crazyhouse, and Chess960) can be played both through the "Play" menu and through the variants server. In general, I would recommend the variants server because it tends to be more competitive and active.
#1: Fog of War (10/10)
In Fog of War, you win by capturing your opponent's king. In this variant, you can only see the squares that you occupy or can move to. This ensures that you see very few of your opponent's pieces and have an incomplete picture of the board. Due to this, it is incredibly difficult to know what the other player is doing, where they're moving to, what they're attacking, and how to respond.
Here is an example of how much of the board you might see at any given time in a Fog of War match. This example is taken from the 27th move of a recent game of mine.
As you can see, I was only able to see four of my opponent's pieces in this position. This is pretty normal in Fog of War, and sometimes you can't even see any of your opponent's pieces!
I have played hundreds of Fog of War matches and even wrote a blog about the variant! Clearly, I love Fog of War. But why??
Fog of War revolves around uncertainty, around predicting your opponent's moves, and around balancing caution with aggression. All of these factors help make Fog of War enjoyable.
But, I also love the number of tricks and traps in Fog of War. In endgames where I am completely lost, it is incredibly satisfying to stealthily gallop my knight around the board until I find and capture the enemy's king. I have also joyfully won dozens upon dozens of games in the first few moves with three traps, two of which I came up with! These traps are shown in the graphic below (without fog):
Fog of War is one of the most popular variants, so it is easy to find a match. And not only that, but there is much more variety in Fog of War than in normal chess. This is because many moves that would be foolish in regular chess work wonders in Fog of War, simply because your opponent has no clue where you put your piece.
I would definitely recommend playing Fog of War!
#2: Crazyhouse (9.5/10)
Crazyhouse is chess with one distinct change: Whenever you capture a piece, you keep it. On your turn, instead of moving regularly, you can place any one of the pieces you have captured onto any empty square. The one exception is that you cannot place a pawn onto the eighth rank, because that would just lead to endless promotions!
Crazyhouse is basically Bughouse except there are two players instead of four. Below are two Crazyhouse games I played recently and won:
In this game of Crazyhouse, I chased the enemy's king all over the board before eventually checkmating him.
In this match, my opponent castled right into checkmate!
Crazyhouse is a fun variant because it is easily understandable. Whereas some variants have alternative setups, pieces, and even conditions for winning, Crazyhouse doesn't. The only difference between Crazyhouse and regular chess is that the former allows you to use pieces you have captured.
Additionally, I love tactics. I love forks, skewers, and pins. In normal chess, I often bemoan the potential tactics that cannot be achieved simply because my pieces are in the wrong places. In Crazyhouse, you can spawn in pieces, which encourages tactical thinking and better allows for forks, pins, skewers, and more!
#3: King of the Hill (9/10)
In King of the Hill, you win by checkmating your opponent or by moving your king to the "hill". The "hill" is simply the center of the board, which means that you win if your king ends up on either d4, d5, e4, or e5.
When I was playing King of the Hill in years past, I would always march my king towards the center of the board as fast as I possibly could. Then, I would wonder why I got checkmated so much.
When I rediscovered King of the Hill shortly before writing this blog, I realized that was not the smartest strategy. Now, I work to control the center with my bishops, knights, pawns, rooks, and queen. I only begin to move my king towards the center once I am confident that it can reach its destination. Most games I win are won by checkmate, not by my king reaching the "hill".
King of the Hill taught me how to punish players who do not defend their king adequately. It also encouraged me to revisit and practice one of the core principles of chess that I was taught in first grade: Control the center.
Not only does playing King of the Hill help you improve at regular chess, but it can be an invaluable break from the normal version of the games of kings and queens.
Below is a King of the Hill game I played on the variants server:
#4: War for Throne (FFA) (8.8./10)
One of the hidden gems on the variant server is War for Throne, which is a 4 player game where everyone starts out with one king and three rows of pawns. The position looks something like this:
In War for Throne, your pawns promote to kings whenever you reach the fourth rank. If your original king (not any of the promoted pawns) is checked five times, then you lose the game. You win if your original king reaches the very center of the board.
If you checkmate a player, then you earn forty points. Whenever you capture a pawn, you earn one point. However, whenever you capture a pawn that promoted to a king, you earn three points.
War for Thrones is a complex, confusing variant, and that definitely hurt it in my rankings. When I first played War for Thrones, I was baffled by the distinction between your original king and your many other kings.
The first time I played this variant, I promoted a pawn to a king and marched it to the center of the board. When I did not win on the spot, I was perplexed. Eventually, I realized that the king I had to get to the center was the one I started with on the corner of the board.
It is wacky to see a gajillion kings meandering around the board, capturing each other, trading, and threatening other pieces. But it is a fun kind of wacky! The sheer number of kings causing mayhem is one of the enjoyable aspects of War for Throne!
The main reason why I love War for Thrones is because it is a long, complicated, and strategic game. War for Thrones revolves around avoiding blundering, around controlling the center so that your king can reach the middle of the board, and around attacking other kings... All with kings.
It is amazing how much strategy can be injected into a game with pieces that can only move one square in any direction. And War for Thrones games go on for a while, but this just means that they are all the more satisfying when they conclude... Unless you lose.
I especially enjoy going on the offense early and trying to checkmate the player who starts to the left of me.
Ultimately, even though it might take longer to find a War for Thrones match, the wait is well worth your time.
#5: Horde (8.6/10)
In Horde, the player with the White pieces starts with four and a half rows of pawns. Meanwhile, the player with the Black pieces starts with the regular chess setup.
In terms of problems, Horde may be imbalanced. White seems to have a slightly harder time, according to some. Personally, however, I know that you can definitely win, regardless of what color you start with.
However, Horde is truly a phenomenal game. When you have the White pieces, you learn to focus on pawn structure and avoid overextending. When you have the Black pieces, you practice how to make good sacrifices and how to use bishops, knights, rooks, and queens as best you can.
Winning in Horde requires concentration. But after each and every victory, I feel like I have created a masterpiece on the chessboard.
In order to view some of my better Horde matches, click HERE, HERE, or HERE.
#6: 4 Player Chess (FFA) (8.4/10)
Shockingly, 4 player chess is a version of chess that involves four players. In 4 player chess, pawns promote to queens on the eight rank, which is the middle of the board in this variant. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.
A player earns one point whenever they capture a pawn, three whenever they capture a knight, five whenever they capture a bishop or rook, and nine whenever they capture a queen. When a pawn is promoted to a queen, that queen is worth only one point when it is captured.
The board is large, but the squares and pieces are tiny, which causes me to strain my eyes to see. Not only does 4 player chess require good vision, but it also requires a ton of concentration.
While I dislike the focus and eyesight needed to succeed in 4 player chess, there are many more aspects of the variant that I do like. For one, 4 player chess is an understandable variant and is not particularly complicated or counterintuitive.
In 4 player chess, you have to keep track of a lot more moving parts. But that encourages good board vision, which is a crucial aspect of normal chess. And 4 player chess revolves around calculation, which is extra complicated due to the number of players. While intense calculation can cause headaches, calculation is a core part of regular chess games and it is a skill that 4 player chess helps build.
It is also easy to find a game of 4 player chess. But above all, 4 player chess emphasizes effort, strategy, and tactics. It is fun to balance attacking other players with protecting yourself from getting targeted. And playing 4 player chess is certainly an enjoyable, rewarding experience.
Now that we've covered the best variants chess has to offer, it's time to cover the worst ones. I will only write about my three least favorite variants and not my six least favorite. This is because I want to write a blog, not a tome, and because people (hopefully) enjoy hearing more about good variants than about trash ones.
#1: Minihouse (3.4/10)
My least favorite variant is Minihouse, and that may or may not have something to do with the fact that I got cooked nearly every time I played it. In Minihouse, you get to place pieces you capture, just like in Bughouse and Crazyhouse. However, Minihouse also utilizes a smaller 6 by 6 board and both players only start with one king, one pawn, one knight, one rook, and one bishop. Below is the Minihouse starting position.
The Minihouse matches I participated in were way too quick, and players seemed to lose right out of the gate. Sometimes my opponents were checkmated in the first few moves, but usually, it was me who lost almost instantaneously.
When playing Minihouse, I had to wait a bit to find opponents. And the first time I played, I kept getting matched against a sweaty 2000+ Elo Minihouse player.
The second time I played several games of Minihouse, I had the nagging feeling that I really wanted to quit. The board is horrendously small, which prevents complex maneuvering. Additionally, bishops seem overpowered and it's game over if your opponent gets two of them. Not only that, but your king is exposed the whole game and cannot be protected whatsoever, which left me with the constant and irritating feeling that my king was out in the open and unsafe and that I could do nothing to change that.
The third and final time I played Minihouse came right before I wrote this. And let me just say, those matches certainly did not endear me to the variant.
#2: Giveaway (2 player) (3.5/10)
My second least favorite variant was Giveaway. Giveaway was created when some 400 rated player thought "Wow, I'm really good at blundering all my pieces" and decided to turn that idea into a variant. The goal of giveaway is simple, you want to lose all your pieces. You win if you have no pieces, or if you get stalemated. In Giveaway, whenever you can capture a piece, you must do so. Giveaway starts with the default chess position, but manages to make chess far less fun than it normally is.
My chief complaint with Giveaway is that it makes you worse at regular chess. In Giveaway, the whole goal is to blunder. Not only that, but you don't want to be able to capture any of your opponents pieces, so this encourages blocking your bishops and positioning all your pieces in the worst possible squares. These are terrible habits, and Giveaway teaches you "skills" that will hurt you in regular chess matches. So, while other variants make you better at chess, Giveaway does the precise opposite.
On a related note, it's completely counterintuitive to deliberately blunder your pieces. This is because all chess players have been taught from day 1 to protect their pieces as best they can. Due to this, several times when I was playing Giveaway, I forgot that I was supposed to sacrifice all my pieces and lost because I kept playing normally.
To conclude, Giveaway is only good for 400s who actively want to sabotage their chances of improving at normal chess.
#3: Self Partnering Chess (3.8/10)
My third least favorite variant is self partnering chess, which is an... Interesting version of 4 player chess. Self partnering works exactly like 4 player chess teams works, with one key exception. Each player controls their side of the board, and their would be teammate. If either of the sets of pieces that you control get checkmated, then you lose.
There are two big problems with self partnering 4 player chess. The first issue with this variant is that you have to control pieces on the other side of the board that are completely upside down from your vantage point.
In normal 4 player chess, you do not have to control a second set of pieces on the complete opposite side of the board. And doing so is difficult and dizzying.
My second issue with self partnering 4 player chess is that players are incentivized to hard target each other. Both you and your opponent should coordinate both your sets of pieces to hard target one of their sets of pieces. And while this is the best strategy, it's simply not fun to defend against 2 queens, 4 rooks, 4 bishops, 4 knights, and a bajillion pawns that are all focusing their attack on 1 of your kings.
Below is my full ranking of all the variants I played. If a variant has a ranking higher than 5/10, then I like it. if a variant has a ranking lower than 5/10, then I dislike it.
- Fog of War (10/10)
- Crazyhouse (9.5/10)
- King of the Hill (9/10)
- War for Thrones (8.8/10)
- Horde (8.6/10)
- 4 Player Chess (8.4/10)
- Chess960 (8.2/10)
- 3 Check (8/10)
- Spell Chess (7.8/10)
- Bughouse (7.6/10)
- 4 Player Giveaway (7.4/10)
- Setup Chess (7.2/10)
- Duck Chess (7/10)
- Chess as Checkers (6.8/10)
- Chaturaji (FFA) (6.6/10)
- Atomic chess (4/10)
- Self partnering 4 player chess (3.8/10)
- Giveaway (3.5/10)
- Minihouse (3.4/10)
This blog was the polar opposite of my last blog, when I (correctly) predicted the men's chess world championship. Instead of using an elaborate and objective mathematical system like I did in that blog, I largely went off personal preference here. This may leave some readers feeling hot under the collar. And to those of you who are disgruntled by the list I made, disregard my ranking and make your own!
But I digress. Sometimes, normal chess can feel boring. When you're tired of endless Londons, Sicilians, Italians, Four Knight's Games, Scandinavian Defenses, and the like, variants can provide a valuable escape from the monotony of regular chess while allowing you to keep honing your skills.
And if you liked this blog, then I hope my ranking will help you decide which variants you want to play and which ones are a waste of time.
