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What about Shogi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi I want to learn to play Shogi, and i think that is a good opportunity for chess.com to give it a chance in this web

ok, uve seen a lot of new variant suggestions. But here is my idea (well, one I saw on another chess website) So, there is two kings. But at a time, only one of them can be active. An active king needs to be : Closer to the h-fileIf they are on the same file, closer to the back rank If they move in a way as the non-active king and the active ones exchange roles, they cannot get into check. Castling is available for both kings, both sides. When an active king is in check, the inactive king can become active so the position is legal -1 if u don't like, +1 if u do. Let me no if u have ne qs.

This is simple: There is no royal piece. The king is equal to all other pieces and the game ends when every piece is captured, like in horde

Just asking since I am a fan of variants😅😅😅😅

so if your opponent is giving a check, then you can- a) capture the checking piece b) move king c) block so this variant is like you counter check the other king if you are in check, and the 2nd check always wins. another rule: now, black can play Ne2+ and grab the bishop (just an exapmle, ofc there's more material on board) and that works because the pinning piece is getting captured so the pinned piece can move write down any more opinions/ suggestions for this counter chess variant

https://www.chess.com/variants/atomic/game/11384443 In this game the site did not allow me to play king to 47. Kb4, which would be the typical way of winning this position on freechess or lichess. I had to invent a different way to win over the board which, interestingly enough, used the fact that you apparently can't move into "check" despite having the kings connected. Normally I am sure Opabinia would have played 53... Kb4 or 54... Kb4 in these positions, but the game again wouldn't allow him to move into check despite the kings remaining connected, meaning he had to play in a way that allowed a quick king explosion. I didn't have to allow 54... Kb4 and could have just played 54. Ka7 but I thought this move would be funnier in game since it abused the glitch again. This is a fairly standard end game situation to have, so it's kind of annoying to have this bug. In the meantime however, this method with putting the queen 2 squares to the side of the black pawn (in this example the blocked pawns are on a4 and a5) and the king one square away from it appears to be a good way to win in spite of the glitch whether the black king is on d4, c4 or b4 no matter who's move it is. For example, with the black king on d4 with white to move, 1. Kb6 Kc5 2. Ka7 Kb6 3. Qxa5# works, and with black to move this same series of moves works after 1... Kc4 2. Kb6 Kc5 3. Ka7 Kb6 4. Qxa5# We just looked at the position with the black king starting on c4 with the white king to move above, where it moved from d4 to c4, so now we look at the position with black to move and the black king on c4. Here we have 1... Kd4, which goes into the other line we just looked at with the black king on d4 and white to move, and 1... Kb4. After this, we again get the line 1... Kb4 2. Kb6 Kc5 3. Ka7 Kb6 4. Qxa5#. Finally, there are the positions with the black king starting on b4. We've just looked at the positions with white to move in our lines above, so all that's left to analyze are the positions with black to move first. Again, we've looked at the positions that occur after 1... Kc4 above, and since 1... Kb5 is illegal due to the glitch mentioned above, we can conclude that this is an effective method to force the kings to separate in these types of endings while this glitch is in place. I am sure there are other positions where this glitch certainly changes the result of the position however, so it would be great if it could be fixed.

Should a move that would normally be illegal, but because the pinning piece would explode after that move be legal? Shouldn't you be able to take the king with a pinned piece? I thought that was a settled matter, a pinned piece can still give check (that is, threaten to take the king), so why shouldn't be able to capture/explode the king? The attached game has an example of both of these on the same move, but the move(s) in question (exf2/exe2) could not be played. Is this a bug because of unforeseen circumstances, or is it one of those "features"? https://www.chess.com/variants/atomic/game/11217687

When i was a kid i was initially taught some different rules The pieces are same . The differences were: Pawns can only move 1 square. No castling but the king can also move like a knight until he is checked. The promotion was according to file for example knight's pawn would promote to knight d pawn to queen and e pawn could promote to anything. I think it was also 3 check or something but i can't remeber.

So I had an idea for variant chess which is very similar to normal chess but with one small difference. White King can only castle queen side, whereas black can only castle king side. White has to take one extra move to castle which should undermine its advantage of starting first. Due to opposite sides castling we will also have a lot more aggressive games. What do you guys think?

I was thinking that since there is a game of hidden information on this site, that it could be interesting to also have a game of chance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_chess Dice Chess is a collection of variants, in which dice determine the moves that a player can make. I think it would be nice to have either an existing variant of dice chess, or one made up for Chess.com added to the Beta Variants.

There are a few situations where one side can trade an imbalanced material. One of these popped up in my game against @animedegenerate which I had 2 alfils and a pawn against a knight. I eventually got swamped because my alfils were too weak. Other material imbalance questions I have are:Knight vs. Alfil+Ferz Rook+Alfil vs. 2 knightsFerz vs. Alfil+Pawn Ferz+pawn vs. Knight Knight+Alfil vs. Rook Knight+ferz vs. Rook I also got into a King+2 knights+Ferz vs. King+Rook which I was hoping I could win due to bare king rule, but I couldn't find a way to corner my opponent's king. I have many other questions, if you want to participate in further discussion you can join the chaturanga discord, which i have also posted on the homepage of the variants club but i'll also lleave it here: https://discord.gg/vn3ffdR4

As you can see in this game: https://www.chess.com/variants/king-of-the-hill/game/10880873/0/1 my opponent was greedy and brought his king up without developing any piece so I got my knights to protect the center and managed to win in 10 moves and force his king back into e8 with a deadly attack Moral of the story: get defence and center control first then bring your king up

they added the antichess under the name of GIVEAWAY this is unacceptable

Do you like new Chaturanga pieces? For me they transform once-familiar board into horrible mess. - new fers is fine, visually dissimilar to a queen, and it may prevent beginning players to think of it as a strong piece - there's absolutely no point in replacing rook witch a chariot - it just destroys important visual cue. - alfils are catastrophically bad, their shape is too similar to a knight. Today I both blundered a piece because of that and got a 1750+ player to blunder his, because he considered a square to be defended.

Hi everyone, I recently started to play shatranj here on chess.com and found I enjoy the game quite a bit. I was interested in getting better so I went looking for more resources on the Internet, however, I hadn't much luck. The only stuff I could get my hands on was the Wikipedia page and a couple of shatranj problems. While reading the Wiki page I found out about the bare-king rule (for those who don't know, historically, capturing all enemy pieces leaving the king alone was considered a win, unless the opponent could do the same on the next move, which was a draw). To be honest, the game made much more sense to me once I read that, considering checkmating with the relatively weak pieces in shatranj seems to be quite difficult and requires a considerable material advantage. If the rule isn't implemented and we play shatranj as it is on chess.com right now, wouldn't that mean that almost every game played between two highly skilled players would end in a draw? For this reason, I believe leaving the enemy king bare should be adjudicated as a win. It would make the game much more enjoyable and make possible ideas and combinations that you can't find in standard chess.While trying to learn more about the variant I stated to use Winboard and ChessV and both implement the rule. I'm currently trying to make a shatranj variant without the rule, so that I may discover more about endgames.On this same note, it seems like the "standard" starting position for the kings is the d file for shatranj (and this is also the setup used by Winboard and ChessV). However, the Wikipedia page claims that it wasn't uncommon at all to switch king and ferz. Does this variation in setup cause any change in gameplay? I don't think so but I was curious to hear your opinion on the matter. Even if, should we try to make the variant on the site as historically accurate as possible?I'm curious about your take, let me know your opinions.

Hello once again.Last time I exchanged a couple of words with the mods of this forum. It was about Chaturanga and why we need to adjust the ruleset to make the variant enjoyable and reveal its full potential. While I'll be talking about that as well, I want to voice an opinion: WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE OBSESSED WITH POSTING NEW VARIANTS? Seriously. Why?Because they look cool? They're wacky and epic? Maybe.The problem is twofold though:1) Most of the suggested variants are BAD. Really bad. A variant should be interesting, offering new ways of playing that aren't found elsewhere, and balanced. Most ideas that are posted here are about very weird variants that would be difficult to program and, most importantly, haven't been sufficiently playtested. Who wants to play an overly complicated Frankenstein variant that, in the end, is almost always a win for White/Black?Controversial gray-areas would be Atomic (a variant with a pretty big initial advantage for White) and Antichess (a mathematically proven win for White). The reason I say this is that these two have resisted the test of time and have a small-medium playerbase who play consistently, proving that the variants are playable in the long run and remain interesting. Even if the two are extremely unbalanced, there are practical chances for a counter-attack (Atomic) or a very complex net of sidelines that make a win hard to attain from a human perspective (Antichess).I personally believe that it should be Chess.com's call on whether to add these two. Maybe they want to have on their site only fairly balanced variants. Or maybe they don't mind having a couple of unbalanced but classic variants. I'd respect either decision, really.But a "Fog of War Atomic Seirawan Gravity Chess for Three Players" or something like that probably won't be balanced. The current variants available on Chess.com were tested by a team of researchers, a World Champion and AlphaZero, the strongest chess enitity in existence, and then revised by Chess.com's team. Don't tell me you can do better.That being said, there absolutely nothing wrong with playing wacky variants. That's actually quite fun to do. But Chess.com probably wants to implement only "serious stuff" and for good reason. I hope the variants will soon exit the Beta phase and we will be able to do tournaments and have rankings. That'd be awesome and it would put this site on the spotlight of the chess-variant comunity. If you want to have some fun though, I suggest you visit fishrandom.com and Pychess. You'll find some nice variants there.2) There already scarcely played/in-need-of-revision variants. Even if the programmers go through the trouble of making a new variant, how many people do you think would play it? Most players pass their time playing Fog of War. That's great, and it's just such a fun variant. But what about the other variants? Sideways pawns? Capture anything? No castling? Torpedo? These are all great games that make you think about your moves from the very start of every match and let you play beautiful games with new tactics, strategies, and motifs. And, they have been proven to be balanced. So why are they so impopular? Should we just let these variant die?Mostly I think that Fog of War is stealing the show because it feels like a perfect mix of skill and gambling. That's what makes is so exciting. But people are eventually going to move on and find something new. We don't need to litter the site with new variants that no one will play. We should give a chance to other variants already here and make them at least as popular. I guarantee you, you'll have a great time.Other variants, on the other hand, have somewhat serious balance issues: Automate and Chaturanga/Shatranj. Automate has already been covered has already been covered. I have also started a thread about Chaturanga.We should use the forum to make the existing variants GOOD and without bugs. Only once these variants are popular and ready to leave the beta stage we should suggest new ones. What about Chaturanga? Yeah, Chaturanga isn't abondoned like Sideways or Torpedo, but it soon will be if it doesn't get fixed. This is such a cool variant and has historical significance to it but the issue remains: without the bare-king rule, a LOT of games will end in a draw. For a discussion on why, I once again link the previous thread on the matter. Now on some endgame considerations for this variant of Chaturanga:- 2 Knights vs King: WIN for the Knights (they can force stalemate)- 2 Alfils vs King: obvious DRAW. Alfils seem to be almost useless in the endgame, except in particular situations where you need to control one particular square.- 2 Opposite color Ferz vs King: Probably a DRAW. At first it felt like they should be able to mate or stalemate the king since they're like two "little bishops". But I don't think that's the case, since the attacking side has to move 3 pieces to mate, while the defending side only has one (the King, who's running for his life). Since the Ferz can't really trap the enemy King like bishops do, he will always be able to run away. So yeah, although I can't prove it, it looks like a draw to me. Just like a 2N vs K, though, if the defending side does some dumb moves, he can get stalemated or mated.- 2 Same-colour Ferz vs King: DRAW(???). It looks like it should just be like the 2 opposite ferz scenario, but worse. I didn't run any tests on it though.- 1 Knight + 2 Ferz vs King: Almost surely a WIN.- 2 Knights vs Ferz: Depends on how the Kings are placed on the board.These are my first considerations on "Chaturanga" endgames. pls ckess.net fixx bayre king pliz

I think Seirawan Chess would be a good variant to add.

I hope this idea doesn´t exists already. I think there should be version of fog of war where you can capture your own pieces. Why? Sometimes you are checkmated and you can´t do anything and lose the next turn. But if you could capture your own piece you could still continue playing.

Discuss strategies for fog of war Endgames here. Examples:1.white to move,black knows colour of white bishop,neither player knows any position of opponents pieces in fog of war 2.White to move,neither player knows any position of opponents pieces in fog of war.There shouldn't be any strategy involved here...,should it? 3.white to move,neither player knows any position of opponents pieces in fog of war.as stalemate is a win in this mode the standard approach by black wouldnt work here. 4.white to move,white knows colour of black bishop,neither player knows any position of opponents pieces in fog of war

Another idea would be to have the pieces in the normal setup but move one square away if they aren't in the centre. For example in this position here: the knight would slip 1 square right but not 1 square down because the pawn is blocking it. The pawns wouldn't slip because they are "safe" in the middle. If the king would slip into check it doesn't slip as there is that invisible "barrier" there.