Chess variants from A to Z | Part 1
Chess variants are taking over the world. Every year, the community's interest and passion in making and playing modifications of chess increases, making the chess variants community bigger and bigger. Over 130 million games of chess variants have been played, and this number will only keep rising.
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So, why not make an introductory for people who are new to this? Welcome to the first part of the A-Z introduction to chess variants, this is a new and exclusive blog that will show you the beauty of the world where people are chess pieces, brick, ducks and the monotone white and black chessboard that doesn't end. Turn on some nice jazz, and let's start!
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
English-language pangram
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Chess variants alphabet
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US_Army_Blues_-_07_-_Bayou_Farewell
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The game where the most dangerous, outrageous and explosive thing in the world is... yourself.
White knight
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Chess is a game of 2 balances: strategic and positional play. I don't know about you, but I always found positional play annoying and boring. Why should I care about that when I can win the whole game in 5 moves thanks to a cool fork? What if we just remove positional chess and leave pure calculation, tactics and strength? Welcome to Atomic Chess!
In Atomic chess, when you capture a piece, your piece and every non-pawn piece adjacent to it get exploded! A game where one wrong move, one rushed decision, can cost you the entire game! Bold and saturated tactical play in its true form.
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Strategies
First, let's look at this 5-move game. It might not tell us a lot at first glance, but it will teach you a good lesson.
The first thing that you notice is how powerful queens are. Long-range pieces just dominate open positions, and the queen is the most common piece to be used in atomic chess, just because of how easy it is to develop from the start of the game. So that means that knights are useless since they have a very short range, right? Well, I wouldn't agree:
And as you can see, knights also have a use in closed positions! In fact, every single piece has a unique use:
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- Pawn - Disconnecting pieces and covering up important squares
- Knight - The king of closed positions
- Bishop - Sneaky piece with a long-range attack, really useful in middlegames
- Rook - The most powerful piece after the queen, although it takes a lot of time to develop, it dominates endgames.
- Queen - The best piece in openings and in any other part of the game until it is alive.
- King - wait, this piece exists?
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The game
White starts off with a really interesting sacrifice... I don't think that giving away your knight to open up your pieces is too bad.
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We are done with the opening and moving onto the middlegame - the hardest part.
Q&A
Now let's hear what @Anonymousplayer_796 thinks about this game!
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- Is it hard to play?
- Yes, the variant is quite hard to play and defend against.
- Do you think you can get used to this variant?
- Anyone could get used to it easily with some patience and practice.
- Would it be hard to become an expert?
- Like in chess, becoming an expert is very hard.
- Thank you!
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Conclusion
Atomic chess is a really fun and bold game that requires a lot of calculations. Every piece has its own unique purpose in the game, which is a big plus. However, it is pretty hard to play this game for beginners, and definitely much harder to improve due to the insane accuracy you need to have during the game. It is also worth mentioning that white has a very big first-move advantage in the game, which is quite unbalanced.
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- Fun game
- Every piece has its own purpose
- Hard to play
- One mistake can cost you the whole game
- White has a big first move advantage
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My rating - 4.3/10
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Bughouse chess
Finally, a game where we don't die, but appear in a better place.
Pawns
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Have you ever dreamed about chess turning into a team game? Then you are in the right place! Bughouse chess is a game with 4 players, 2 boards and 2 sets of pieces. You and your buddy play with different colors, and every piece that you capture, you give to your teammate. Then your teammate can place this piece on the board any time they want and same goes for you! Simple!
This game is a lot of fun to play with your friends, and I am not an exception
Although sometimes we had 5 knights on the board because of someone's funny joke, I think that's okay. So what does this variant offer?
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Strategies
Would it make sense for you to sacrifice a knight in this position? Probably not. But in Bughouse chess, you have one goal: open your opponent's king at all costs. In this situation, white got an advantage pretty easily, but not all players are going to blunder this. Or did black actually blunder?
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We are all used to thinking about one position, one board, one task. Here, it is unacceptable. The second thing that you should be looking for apart from your board is the situation that your opponent has. Let's have a look!
Would you sacrifice your bishop on f7 if your teammate plays as black in this position?
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So, you saw that your teammate can give you a bishop, you ask for it, and you sacrifice on f7 in style! Let's go back to your position and see what happens!
When you look at your clock, you realize that after so much thinking, your opponent's teammate is 1 minute and 30 seconds ahead of you! He understands that you need pieces, so he just stalls to not give you any! As evil as this strategy is, you can't do anything about and you end up losing because you were down a knight that you sacrificed. But even though you lost, you learned an important lesson! Maybe shouldn't have made this sacrifice...
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The game
Now let's grab popcorn and see how well @nova-stone did in this variant! One interesting thing about this game is that you can look at it from two different perspectives!
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The first piece placement usually symbolizes how the game will go, it may be an attacking potential or some kind of defending scheme, let's see!
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Since her teammate already started an attack, Nova's goal is clear: give him/her as many pieces as possible. If she does that quickly enough, then they will win!
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Thanks to the pawns that Nova gave to his teammate, now they are very close to winning the game. One rook and it will be checkmate!
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The haunt for the last rook begins!
And her teammate puts the rook on h1 and delivers a checkmate
What a nice ending!
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Q&A
Now let's ask Nova some questions after the game!
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- Is this game interesting and balanced?
- It's certainly balanced in theory, because the situation of both teams is identical at the start of the game. You have to rely on the other players, and realise that the piece values are very much different. Initiative means almost everything in bughouse, and the traditional piece values no longer add up. Based on the pawn being 1 point worth of trade value, the knight, bishop and rook are 2 points, and the queen is 4.
- Do you enjoy this vision of chess as a team game?
- I don't play bughouse often, but I always associate it with parties, get-togethers with friends, and people getting wasted like madmen. It's great fun in those environments. I don't see myself playing it for any other reason than having fun with friends. Although I'm highly motivated to win once I sit down to play.
- Would you prefer playing this online or in real life?
- Online bughouse can make for great content in livestream collabs. But you typically miss the "Rook for mate!" and "PAWNS! NOW!!!" that you'd have in random encounters.
- Thank you for your time and effort!
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Conclusion
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Bughouse is a fun game to play with your friends, as it adds unpredictable element to the game. You can also improve your tactics vision and your skill of working in teams. But apart from that, will be quite overwhelming and hard to play this daily as you have to look at your board, your opponent's board and your clock at the same time! So, I don't think it has potential as a replacement for chess.
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- Very fun
- Can help with improving tactics and teamwork skills
- Very unpredictable
- Quite overwhelming
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My rating - 6,3/10
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Capture anything
Why? This doesn't make any sense!
You
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Have you ever thought of how chess would look like in 100 years? Some people think the board will get bigger with more bishops, rooks and knights. Some people think that pieces like chancellor (rook+knight) and archbishop (knight+bishop) will find their spot in future chess versions. Some people think that in the future we will have more players like in 4 player chess!
Everyone has a different vision, and capture anything chess is one of them. What if you could capture your own pieces? That would solve so many problems! Are you down in space and piece development? Just eat your own pawn! Afraid of smothered checkmates? They are not a thing anymore!
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Strategies
First of all, this rule completely changes all theory, and especially gambits. Just have a look at this position!
I can't really say that this is an "improvement" because it removes a dynamic element from the game, but I also can't say that this change made the game worse. It feels like it shaped the game in another way, letting the water flow in its own direction...
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If you got the right idea, good job, you are starting to become a master in this game! Rush an attack, don't waste time and use capturing your own pieces to your advantage! That is the only theory that you need!
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But that was the only strategy that I found... Everything else is just the same as normal chess, which is quite disappointing...
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The game
Sadly, due to a weird glitch, I didn't find the game from @PokeGirl93. So I played it myself to fill in this gap.
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And in this position, white starts an attack, which costs them their own pieces!
But white doesn't stop here, and they sacrifice their next pawn like nothing!
So far so good for me...
At this point, it is just a loss for White. The amount of pawns white sacrificed is huge and it doesn't seem they got anything for that.
Did I just blunder? No, I made a brilliant sacrifice!
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Q&A
Now let's ask for an opinion about this game from @PokeGirl93!
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- Do you think this is better than normal chess?
- No, nothing is better than normal chess haha. The only variant that can MAYBE be better is Chess960.
- How often would you capture your pieces in this game?
- Hm, very rarely I think, but this variant can be helpful, especially helping players visualize better where they should place their pieces (always somewhere where you'd not capture them)
- Thank you for your responses!
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Conclusion
Capture anything chess was quite amazing and frustrating at the same time. On one side, this rule allows a lot of freedom, breakthroughs and so many strategies! But from the other side, this doesn't affect the game at all because in 90% of the cases sacrificing your own pawn for activity is just not worth it.
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- Interesting strategies
- A very small change that will be rarely used
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My rating - 5,4/10
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Duck chess
As cute as it looks, never trust this mighty duck.
Black king
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In a world of normal chess, a new neutral animal appeared. White places it on move 1, and after every turn, you must move it to any free square on the board. It is immortal and can't be captured, but pieces can still jump over it. To win the game, you must deliver a checkmate, but be careful: your opponent might use it to escape.
You guessed it: this is a duck. But why would you add a moving obstacle to the game? Are 32 free squares too much space for pieces? And is this where the beauty of this variant comes alive...
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Strategies
Let's just say that you are playing your first game and your opponent responds to 1.e4 knight to f6. You are confused: did my opponent just blunder? I am just going to trap his knight, right? Well, let's see!
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And just like that duck can be used to block pieces, prevent captures, disconnect pieces and connect them! This is one of the coolest things in this variant 
As the game continues, the duck may be your best friend or worst enemy. Let's look at another example, this time from my game!
This was an example of disconnecting pieces. Black won the pawn back in a nice fashion and got a really good position afterwards.
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Things can get out of hand quickly, and if you'd develop a theory I'm not sure if it'd become more or less complex because of the duck.
@nova-stone
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So, is this game complex? Yes. Is this game easy to play? No. But is it fun? Oh yeah!
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The game
Now let's see all of this in practice! This is a game from @JugadaBrillante, who was able to use the duck in his favor and destroyed his opponent.
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Q&A
Now let's ask @JugadaBrillante some questions about the game
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- Did it change your thinking process?
- Yes, from the beginning you can think about how to avoid certain lines that bother you by putting the duck in certain squares, there are also some new tactics that cannot be used in a real game (for example when you defend one of your pieces from far away and the opponent can put the duck in between), you can also leave pieces hanging because the duck defends them...
- Do you think this variant is balanced?
- It may give some advantage to White, who can already prevent you from playing some openings and hinder the development from the beginning.
- What do you think about chess variants in general?
- Although some variants can help to practice some specific chess concepts, by changing the rules so radically, there are basic chess concepts that are no longer applicable. In general, I see that they are fine as entertainment, but not as a way to train. And I think that playing too much can even be detrimental by having to think so differently from normal chess in each variant.
- Thank you for your detailed answers!
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Conclusion
Duck chess is such a complex game that even I couldn't figure everything out. But unlike bughouse chess, this complexity doesn't overwhelm, and I like it! The game is intuitive, easy to learn and play, and there is a lot of space to improve. Although white has a slight first move advantage because they place the duck on the board, in most games you won't feel it.
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- Easy to learn and play
- Intuitive and complex game
- White has a slight first move advantage
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My rating - 8,8/10
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