Shafran’s hexagonal chess
It is a hexagonal chess variant developed by Grigorevich Shafran in 1956. It uses an irregular hexagonal shaped chessboard. It uses the standard set of pieces including an extra pawn and a bishop. The board has 9 files and 10 ranks with 71 hexes in it. The rules for movement are similar to other popular variants.
The first move of the pawn can take it to the middle of the file. Hence some pawn move one step and other 3 steps depending on the file it are placed. Castling and En passant capture are allowed in this variant. The king’s safety can’t be increased with castling but improves the rook.