How Variants Can Improve YOUR Chess Skills!

Chess.com recently released a new platform called beta. Beta is basically another level of chess.com! With new variants, positions, tactics, and more! As mentioned, chess.com has this awesome extension called "variants beta." Showcasing all sorts of variants like Chess960, King Of The Hill, Fog Of War and SO much more! Here is the question that I will be discussing today: Do variants help your chess skills? If so then how? 

And the answer is... YES! Different variants help you with different chess-skills! And each different variant, helps you with different things that you need in chess! 

Lets take a closer look at each of the variants, and see what they help you with! 

Chess960

Chess960 is basically another version of "random chess" or Fischer Random. Basically, at the beginning of the chess game, your pieces are all randomly set up, and you have to make them work together to help open up the position, and hopefully convert it into a win! 

Another great/surprising thing about Chess960, is that you don't have any idea of how the position will be setup when you start the game! Random chess? Well it definitely lives up to its name! 

Chess960 helps you with piece coordination, and attacking skills. And how? 

Well lets say you get a random position in one of your chess games. (In normal chess.) And you don't know what to do. There is absolutely no theory, or tactics. That's when piece coordination comes in handy! 

You need to somehow convert your position into some sort of attack! You can't just sit there and wait for your opponent to do something! You will work together (as shown in Chess960) to get your pieces in great placement, get a great position, and hopefully even an attack! Lets take a look at one of my games, and how I converted an equal position into a win! 

Apart from the moral lesson, I also learned something else: The Sicilian Dragon is dangerous to play by both sides, even with a more or less piece disadvantage. Ayo! As you saw, I clearly converted a disadvantage to an advantage in that game, making my pieces contribute and work together! For now, lets move on to the next variant!

3+ Check

3+ Check raises your awareness skills, and control over king safety. Looking after your king is very important in chess. You can't just let it walk across the board, and easily get checkmated. You have to look after it. Letting your pieces defend the powerful piece. This is when 3+ Check comes in! As most of you know, in 3+ Check, you have to check your opponent 3 times in order to win. But your opponent may do the same. So you have to carefully watch over your king, to make sure that it doesn't get checked! The previously shown game easily gives an example of king-safety. My opponent wasn't paying attention, and so... BOOM! Forced checkmate and they resigned! As shown, 3+ Check helps you with an important skill in chess! Without anything more, lets move on!

Solo Chess

Solo chess is practically another version of "chess with 1 player," which @EnergeticHay explains here. You must capture all of 'your' pieces, in order to win! There will be levels from beginner, all the way to challenge mode! Here is a nice scale that I found in the solo-chess form:

As you saw, the scale pretty much went from level 1, to level 10. And no joke! Each level gets harder than the other, and on the last level, you pretty much struggle to solve the positions! I would really recommend Solo Chess because it increases your board vision, and helps you setup stuff like forks, or skewers! 

Moving on from Solo Chess, next up is... 4 Player Chess!

4 Player Chess (4PC)

4 player chess recently became a very popular and beloved variant, that is played by many people. The graph below pretty much shows what I'm talking about:

Yep! 4 Player Chess pretty much became the most popular variant! Off course, playing 4PC can be really fun, but does it really help you improve in chess? 4PC develops a wanted skill, called 'relying.' You need your pieces to trust each other, and corporate to win an attack, just like in 4 Player Chess! A plat called 'team 4 player chess' makes 4 Player Chess turn into, teaming! There are 2 boards on a team facing the other 2 boards! And each team must cooperate to win! Relying on the other is a very important skill in 4PC, such as sacrificing yourself to give a win to your teammate. This brings up another skill! Sacrificing! In the game, I'm sure most of you have seen at least 1 sacrifice, where maybe you give away a queen to make a checkmate with your knight? Right? Sounds familiar? Lets give a good example: Smothered Mate!

And so how does white mate here? Nh6+!! A discovered check! ...Kh8. And now what? Qg8+!!! WHAT? Yep! I'm not joking! Rxg8. And finally... to end it all... Nf7#!! GG!

It was pretty neat to end 4 Player Chess with a tactic/sacrifice. These were probably the most popular/helpful variants here on chess.com! There are many others like Fog Of War, or Bug House, or Crazy House, and literally so, much, more! You can play any of them for fun, and I really recommend trying them out! If interested you can visit the Chess Variants extension, and try out many other variants! 

Thanks all for reading! I hope you enjoyed todays blog! There are many variants that you can chose and play! So what do you think? Which variant should YOU play?