I played every chess variant! | Chess variants tier list
Since the creation of a prototype game that will eventually be called "chess", it went through many generations of players that have improved the game. A two-square king's move turned into castling and the queen became the most powerful piece in the game.
But since FIDE was formed on July 20th, 1924 a game of "chess" was formed with very strict rules. It has been 100 years since the freedom to change the rules so you can enhance your chess experience was taken away. With that, chess variants started to develop.
For example, going to chess.com variants you are greeted with (oh my eyes!) a gigantic amount of options. Do you want to play chess, but with spells? Chess with 4 players? Or maybe chess on a 10 by 10 board? What about everything together?
No joke, you can literally combine variants and rules to make your own game of chess!
The possibilities are endless! So, I decided to put chess creations that people came up with to the test!
I wanted to do this for a long time. I played hundreds of different chess games to finally make it.
CHESS VARIANTS TIER LIST
#10-6 - S tier
#5-1 - SS tier - The best of the best
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Rules: Normal rules apply, except that pieces are invisible.
I usually play a few games before making a decision, but this was enough. You see, developers failed to make this variant actually blindfolded. You can still see how your pieces can move when you click on them, which just destroys the whole point of the game.
This results in "chess with dementia". Instead of actually training our brains, we are just randomly clicking pieces. And yes, it was hilarious after one game, but then it just became a chess game with no point.
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Rules: All pieces except for pawns are placed on the first two rows. White pieces are on the kingside and black pieces are on the queenside. Checks and checkmates are forbidden. To win the game, you must win the race by being the first person to get to the 8th rank. If Black manages to finish the race on the same move as White it is considered a draw.
Cool concept, but in reality it never got along with me. Why? Well, you can't check kings so you will suffer from making moves and realizing that's not possible. This results in less freedom in the game.
This game mostly involves only one strategy, protecting undefended pieces with the king. In this game, you can forget about pins or forks, because in 90% of the cases, they don't matter. The only thing that matters is to get your king to the 8th rank.
The variant is well made, but it's so different from chess that I'm not sure that people can play this for fun. I will never understand how the creators of Racing Kings just "cut out" all tactics and strategies from chess and called it a chess variant. This should be its own game, but not a chess variant.
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Rules: The game is played on a 6 by 6 board. You get one pawn, king, rook, bishop, and knight. Pieces that you capture get recolored to your color and added to your deck. You can always place a piece from your deck on any free square except for pawns that you can't place on the 1st and 8th ranks.
Miniature chess is a really cool concept, and it is really fun actually, so why am I placing it in F tier? Well, after spending 30 minutes analyzing, I found out that after 1.Bb3 White wins in all variants except for one!
After 1.Bb3 black can play:
1...Re1 which results in loss of time after 2. a3 Re4
1...Re3 2. a3 f4 (Re4 transpositions into the first variant) 3. a4 Re5 4. Nd3 Ra5 which is the only playable line
1...Re4 2. Nd3 (with the idea 3. Nc5 Re5 4. Rc1 with nearly losing position for black) Rd4 3. Re1!! (black can't take the knight because of checkmate in 1) Be4 4. Rxe4!! Rxe4 5. @Bc3+ (@ symbol means that a piece was placed) @Re5 6. Nxe5 (It is important to keep the bishop alive for the pin) Rxe5 7. @Rg8#
1... Re5 2. Nd3 Re3 3. Nb4 Be4 4. Nd5+! (This is an important move, you will see later why) Bxd5 5. Bxd5 @Ne5 (To prevent a fork after @Bd4) 6. Rb6! (Black has no way of saving their knight) Re1+ 7. @Bb1
1...Be4 (copying white) 2. Bxe6 Bxb1 3. Bb3! @Re5 (Or white will place rook on e6 and checkmate black) 4. Kxb1 (White has a free piece and a winning position)
All other moves just blunder the rook. I'm pretty sure that there is a way to win after 1...Re3 as well, I just couldn't find it. Maybe you know how? But unless I get black pieces, I have the power to win every single game...
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Rules: Please go read the rules yourself if you want to. I'm pretty sure you won't need them.
Cool, futuristic concept. I will give an A tier... maybe after 100 years. Please explain to me, who has the time and energy to play one chess game for three hours with intense thinking? Games can last from 100 to 1000 moves, which is just absurdly long for no reason.
Yes, there are really cool pieces, but the board shouldn't be so big! Your only hope in finishing the game fast is delivering a camel checkmate in 4 moves. Otherwise, you will be sitting and playing this game forever...
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Rules: Both opponents can't castle on the same side
Really, really cool concept. Except there is a huge flaw. Apparently, in this variant white can always decide where to castle, and black will have to deal with that. Is this fair?
Well, a lot of chess openings require preparations and specific plans for Black, meaning that unless White lets Black castle first, Black is always going to get worse positions. So, instead of fixing a problem with White having a "first move advantage" now they also have a "castling advantage". In the position that I showed you it's just too much advantage for White.
This is the third game (after Minihouse and Racing Kings) that actually restricts freedom instead of giving it. That's the whole point of chess variants! To give freedom!
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Rules: Chess pieces are underpowered. Pawns can't move up two squares on the first turn and they can only promote to ferz. Queen is replaced with ferz - it can move 1 square diagonally in any way. Bishops now are elephants - they can move 2 squares diagonally in any direction.
When I tried this ancient chess from India I was surprised by how unexciting it was. All the new pieces were useless, especially the elephant. Somehow throughout all 3 games elephant failed to capture even 1 piece!
So, something was wrong. When I checked Wikipedia, I realized that this variant is not the same as the original. In reality, Elephant had three different types of moves!
- Two squares in any diagonal direction, jumping over the first square. (The one that chess.com uses)
- The elephant in Chinese xiangqi has the same move but isn't able to jump over an intervening piece or pawn.
- The elephant in Korean janggi has the same move, but outward from an initial orthogonal step, also without the ability to jump over an intervening piece or pawn.
This was such an interesting piece! I was upset at how they turned the most interesting piece in the entire game into the most useless one. I'm not even talking about ferz, which felt more like a moral help rather than anything else.
I think that pieces are cool, but not in the interpretation that Chess.com offers. The only compensation is normal knights and rooks, which are ironically the only pieces left from chess.
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Rules: if your king gets checked 3 times, you lose.
Really cool! This variant adds a new value to the game. Now you could be down a queen but still win because you only need one check to win the game. I also have an interesting question: if a check in 3 check chess was a piece, how many pawns would it cost? If you have any ideas please leave a comment!
Anyways, the game is easy to learn and fun to play! Beginners can also improve their chess vision and more advanced players can learn hard to see combinations which is always a good thing. It can also help you with defending your king and understanding your weaknesses in the position.
But, apart from that it is just normal chess. Nothing more than that.
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Rules: Every piece looks like a checker, so you can only see the difference between white and black pieces.
Really cool idea, and it feels a lot better than blindfold chess. And now you actually can't see where your piece can move when you click on them! I loved this variant and thanks to checkers I was able to remember all the pieces and the board until the end of the game.
The idea is amazing, but it is not enough to earn a higher ranking because it is still normal chess. I would recommend this variant for people who are bad at calculating in chess.
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Rules: Pawns can move one square to the right and one square to the left. All pieces turn into stones when they are captured except for pawns. For every piece you capture, you get points: Pawn - 1 point, Knight - 3 points, Bishop or Rook - 5 points, Queen - 9 points. Checkmate is worth 20 points. The person with the most amount of points wins!
Well thought variant. The point system also makes that draws are nearly impossible. (I wish the point system was in Chaturanga) I like that it delivers the main point - entertainment, this is the easiest yet the most important value when ranking chess variants.
Turning pieces into stones allows you to come up with lots of interesting strategies (finally! strategies get involved!) like blocking rooks with pawns and knights blocking bishops. The best part is that you can decide what strategy you choose - you can try to get points by eliminating pieces or try to get eliminated by a more valuable piece so you can gain an advantage.
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Rules: If you can capture a piece, you must. If there are multiple ways to capture, you can choose between possible captures. To win the game you must have no possible moves or no pieces left. Checks and checkmates don't exist, capturing kings is allowed.
- The wins against 1.e4, 1.d4, and 1.d3 consist of some simple series of forced captures and can be played from memory by most average players.
- The wins against 1.Nc3, 1.Nf3, 1.f4, and 1.h4 are harder to demonstrate but can be solved by skilled players.
- The next tier of difficulty is formed by 1.b4, 1.c3, 1.f3, and 1.h3, which were solved by computers: they form a significant jump in difficulty from the previous set.
- 1.a3 is much more difficult than those.
- 1.Na3 is more difficult still.
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I want to end this chapter with a quote:
The complexity and beauty of losing chess is found in its endgame. In contrast to regular chess, losing chess endgames with just two pieces requires considerable skill to play correctly, whereas three- or four-piece endgames can exceed the human capacity to solve precisely. For example, the following endgames may turn out to be quite complicated: 2 Knights vs Rook, 3 Kings vs King, or Bishop+Knight+King vs King. In the latter case, in particular, a win may require more than 60 moves, which means that it is sometimes unattainable due to the fifty-move rule.
David Pritchard
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Rules: Pawns now can move two squares up permanently.
I'm a fan of this variant! I always thought that pawns are underpowered so now they are not! Good luck to your opponent catching pawns in the endgame!
This variant makes pawns more dynamic which results in crazier openings and endgames. Now pawns actually feel powerful and dangerous. This rule completely changes evaluations to a lot of positions, and I'm amazed how this little change managed to unravel so much chaos! Well, little things matter a lot more, I guess?
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Rules: Now pawns can move one square to the left or one square to the right at any time!
Again, little things matter! Pawn structure is probably one of the very few things in chess that you can't change (in most cases). This variant tells us what would chess look like if pawns could change their position at any time they want!
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This adds another layer of strategy and tactics. Rather than explaining this hard topic with words, let's explain it on a chessboard!
In this position, Black's kingside is heavily defended with three pieces, but it doesn't matter! One sneaky pawn on f5 can move to g5! Now, the only way to defend for black is 1...Bxc6 2. dxc6 Nd5 and honestly, it isn't pleasant for Black!
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Rules: If you can capture a piece, you must do that. If there are multiple captures, you can choose which one to make. If you capture a piece with a non-pawn piece then it becomes gray. Gray pieces can't move and you can't jump over them. Capturing gray pieces is not a must.
I would say that this game is an improved version of Giveaway. One wrong move won't result in a disaster! Although capturing pieces with pawns is dangerous, so you should watch out!
At first, the rules may seem confusing, but I actually like gray pieces! It makes the game more "realistic" and in some cases, these pieces actually add value to the game (a good example is shown by the gray knight on b5)!
This variant combines the beauty of Giveaway chess and practicality at the same time. The most challenging part of this game - endgame will require a lot of skill and precise calculations to win which is just so much fun!
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Rules: You can see only your pieces and what your pieces see. Your goal is to capture your opponent's king.
To make it easier to understand what is going on, here is a chessboard after 1. c4 e5 2. Qa4 d5
The game is really interesting and in my mind, it is associated with gambling. When you move or capture pieces you can win a jackpot (See your opponent's queen and take it on the next turn) or lose everything (Hang a piece).
My favorite part of this game is that it is the "game of minds". Do I take his pawn on d5 or is it protected? Do I leave my knight on this square or do I move back? The most intelligent and cunning person will win!
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Rules: 2 games are played at the same time. Your partner has the opposite color of what you have. Every piece that your partner takes from his board you can place on yours. The same goes for you. Placing pawns on 1st and 8th rank is not allowed. Placing a piece with a checkmate is allowed by chess.com rules, although not all communities think the same.
There is a particular reason why this variant is number 11. And the reason is really simple - fun. It was genuinely one of the best times I had playing chess.
There's something magical in playing a chess variant with your friend where you have to use consistent teamwork to win the game. That is such an amazing idea! It feels like adding another dimension to chess!
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It is getting serious now...
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Rules: White has 36 pawns occupying 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and partially 4th rank (b5, c5, f5, g5). The goal for white is to checkmate the black's king and black's goal is to take all white's pawns. If white can't move but they still have pawns left it's a draw.
This is the coolest 2 player variant I have ever seen! Each side has its own weakness that you need to exploit to win the game. White must protect their 1st rank at all costs while black must watch out for any threats to their king.
The amount of strategizing you need to put into this variant is insane. Also you need to have a perfect board vision and calculation to become a master in this game. This is a type of chess variant that everyone will like: from the beginner to the grandmaster.
This is one of the very few chess variants that has a full theory book! I don't know much theory, but I know that this variant gets
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Rules: Bishops are replaced with dragon bishops. Dragon bishops combine the movement of a bishop and the xiangqi horse (It can't jump over pieces vertically). This variant also shuffles pieces on the 1st and 8th ranks, in total making 30 different starting positions.
If in another universe someone plays this instead of normal chess, I wouldn't mind. A new piece is nicely done, now being stronger than a bishop. The fact that there are 30 different starting positions just adds a nice touch to the game.
Overall it is really enjoyable to play and the real fun comes in the endgames "Rook+King vs. Dragon bishop+King" which are very common. As I see this variant, it answers the biggest in chess: knight or bishop? Now every piece has its own value, without any overlaps.
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Rules: It is normal chess except that now you can't castle.
This concept is really strong. Kramnik originally wrote an article about this chess variant a few years ago. He found out that disabling castling leads to more dynamic chess games with frequent pawn pushes like h4, g4, and a4 which would weaken your king's position otherwise.
Now your primary goal is to get your king to safety or exploit your opponent's king. Getting king to g1 and rook to f1 takes quite a lot of time without castling so in this variant you will often see kings on e2, d2, c2, or f2. You have to reinvent castling in your own way. Maybe king on f2 and bishop on e3 is a new type of castle for you?
I really recommend trying this variant out because it is better to play it one time rather than hearing about it 100 times.
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Rules: Pieces on the 1st and 8th ranks are symmetrically shuffled. There are 960 starting positions you can start with.
I played a few very bold games with amazing strategies and tactics that probably wouldn't ever happen in normal chess. It feels like chess got extended. This is amazing. A lot of young and old players prioritize learning openings and quick traps to become better but in reality - this is what chess player needs!
When people played this game previously, they didn't have any openings at all! They improvised, strategized, calculated a long series of moves! It removes the opening barrier which restricts us to only thinking with ideas that only we learned from chess theory. Now you can think outside the box from move 1 and outplay your opponent in the middlegame and endgame to succeed in winning!
This is truly an amazing choice no matter who you are and what chess level you have - you will still enjoy coming up with your own openings, strategies, and tactics!
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Rules: You know the rules, right?
Chess is a competitive game which requires accurate calculation and a good understanding of different chess themes like "piece activity", "pawn breakthrough" and "positional sacrifice".
While this article is focused on different chess pieces and rules, I want to take a moment to appreciate that a game like this was created. Without this game, we wouldn't have a community so strong, smart and friendly. Let's keep it up!
Keep exploring new openings and endgames, keep improving your tactics, keep solving and creating puzzles. keep thinking... Don't stop.
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Rules: The game is played on a 10x8 chessboard with 4 extra pieces - Man, ferz, alfil, and wazir! Man looks and moves like a king but can be captured. Alfil can jump over pieces 2 squares diagonally. Ferz can move 1 square diagonally at a time, and wazir can move one square orthogonally (horizontally and vertically). Pawns on the 8th rank are promoted to ferz.
There is something magical in a chessboard with weak pieces. Big boards let these pieces shine in their full form, because there are no overpowered pieces like queen and rooks are almost useless in the opening and middlegame.
The idea of some pawns being in the center helps with dynamic openings and middlegame requires a lot of strategizing. For example, let's look at this endgame:
Who do you think will win?
From one perspective, the answer is easy: white will win, they just need to get their king to g5 and sacrifice their rook on h5. However, from black's perspective they can put their alfil on e6 and wazir g5 and bishop on g7, attacking their pawn on g4. Together, even most useless pieces like alfil that can only jump squares diagonally became useful!
A good game will last from 30 to 50 minutes, consisting of 70 to 200 moves which will test your strategy and long attention span - definitely useful skills to have these days.
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Rules: Each variant contains the same 2 pieces, but on different boards. Chancellor combines the movement of rook and knight and Archbishop combines the movement of bishop and knight. In gothic chess these pieces are placed along with a normal chess set on a 10x8 board and in Seirawan chess you can place 1 of these pieces any time you want on a classic 8 by 8 chessboard.
Why am I placing two chess variants in the same place? How is that legal? Well, first of all, these variants contain exactly the same set of pieces. And secondly, I just couldn't put any of these two variants in the previous tier. So, let's welcome Gothic and Seirawan Chess!
Both of these variants are focused on adding two new pieces to the game. If in Courier Chess accent was on the weak pieces, here it is a complete opposite. Instead of strategic plans, you will have to encounter tactics since Move 1.
These two pieces add more type of forks to the game. This makes the game more unpredictable which adds up to the fact that now Archbishop is the first piece that can checkmate king without any help! I would recommend this to intermediate players so they can improve their chess vision.
The funny thing is that many people know this variant as "Capablanca Chess" but it isn't for 2 reasons. Reason number 1 is that in Capablanca chess two new pieces are placed next to the knights, but what if I told you that Capablanca wasn't the first to suggest these pieces?
Yes, that's right! Many people don't know that the first person to suggest these piece according to Wikipedia was Pietro Carrera in his book Il Gioco degli Scacchi. The setup was a little different, but the pieces were the same. And that happened again! In 1874, Henry Bird, the same player who invented Bird opening (1.f4), invented the same variant, but with a little different setup. In fact, Capablanca was only the third person to discover this in 1920.
After that, a lot of other variants were inspired by Capablanca chess, but most of them just repositioned the Chancellor and the Archbishop. Gothic chess is just one of them. So, this place goes to Capablanca chess and all variations of it. One place to rule them all
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Rules: Every person gets 39 points that they can spend on pieces. You can place non-pawn pieces anywhere on your first three ranks and pawns on your 2nd and 3rd ranks. Pawn is 1 point, Knights and bishops - 3 points, Rook - 5 points, Queen - 9 points, King - 0 points After you spend all your points, you need to wait for your opponent. After that, the game starts and normal chess rules apply!
The winner of the bronze medal is Setup Chess! It was able to beat my heart with a customizable element of chess.
In Chess960 the board position is decided for you. In Horde you only have two sets of pieces to choose from. In Gothic, Seirawan and Courier chess new pieces are great but Setup Chess beats them all.
You can customize the battle however you want. It is like building your dream sandcastle! And the best part is - you play with your setup! You can put an army of knights and fight against someone else's dream setup! The possibilities are endless if you get creative!
This is a good balance between placing pieces and playing chess. I think it will be very interesting to see Grandmasters play this!
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Rules: Quack, quack... - move the duck!
After every move, you must move the duck to any free square. Your pieces can't move through the duck and can't stand on the same square as a duck. The goal is to capture the king, so walking into check is legal. (Invented by Dr Tim Paulden.)
The silver medal goes to the Duck Chess! Duck adds a lot more to chess than it seems. For example, now there are 640 starting moves for White! This duck quacked the whole chess code!
There are lot more possibilities with tactics too! For example: now you can use duck to disconnect two rooks and capture one of them! The same thing happens in the trap that I showed you, it is also disconnection, because I disconnected bishop on f1 from capturing my knight on d3.
Can you guess what kind of tactics is this move with arrows? Here, it is the complete opposite - connection. In this position, I am down a pawn. So, I played knight takes e4 and moved my duck on f6. Now my opponent must capture the knight and move the duck... But moving the duck would connect bishop on g7 and e5, which will result in me winning a bishop on the next move.
So, using these quite hard tactics, I was able to win a game of duck chess! With every game I played, the more I realized how strategically deep this game is. Oh, have I told you about endgames theory? People already developed their own endgame positions despite the game being created only a few years ago!
This is a true masterpiece. It is a type of game that the more you play it, the more interesting it gets. Just like life.
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Rules: The goal is to finish with the most amount of points.
Points may be earned in the following ways:
Checkmating an opponent: +20
Stalemating yourself: +20
Capturing active (colored) pieces: pawns +1, knights +3, bishops +5, rooks +5, queens +9, kings +20,
Checking two players simultaneously: +1
Checking three players simultaneously: +5
Pawns will promote on your 8th rank.
Pieces become “dead” (grey) when a player is eliminated. Capturing dead pieces doesn't give any points.
The game begins with the Red player and continues in clockwise move order: Red, Blue, Yellow, Green.
The game is finished when three players have been eliminated.
When a player resigns or he/she runs out of time, their pieces will become “dead” but their King remains "live" and will continue to move at random until checkmated or stalemated. Points for stalemated resigned kings are shared.
The last remaining player will be given +20 points for each enemy king left on the board.
Claim Win means a player is so far ahead on points that he will win even if he resigns.
Autoclaim means a player is forced to claim the win immediately to protect the player in 2nd place.
In case of insufficient material, threefold repetition, or the 50-move rule, the remaining players will share the points of the remaining kings.
And the gold medal goes to... 4 players chess! Out of all variants that I've played, only Setup Chess and Duck chess came close to the gold. But the idea and the interpretation beat all my expectations.
4 players chess has 2 variants - Free For All and Teams. In Teams you need to defeat one of your opponents with a teammate opposite to you, and in FFA everyone fights for themselves. And both options are amazing!
First things first - the points system. The problem with games with 2+ players is that two players can team on one player. The point system makes that even if the player gets eliminated, he can still be the winner. In my opinion, it is the only fair way to figure out the winner!
Second of all, this game requires a new skill, previously never considered in chess: psychology. Now you need to look at every single move in the board and think: Who is he targeting? What is he planning? To survive, you will have to outsmart all your 3 competitors!
As a player who has 2200+ rating in 4 players chess, I can say that every single game that I played was very fun and exciting, and most importantly - fair. Chess.com has strict rules for teaming up with other players and you could get banned or chat banned in case you do that more than once.
So, what are you waiting for? This is the end of this blog! Go try out and play variants featured here by yourself and leave a comment! Thank you for your time spent here and goodbye!
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END
Thank you so much for reading my blog. It took me a full month to make this, and I had to exclude a lot of variants because they didn't match the testing criterias. Let me know if you want part 2! Also I would love to hear your feedback and your rankings in the comments, maybe I can update my rankings or make a community version of the tier list!
