Nah that's not real 3d chess then, board should always have equal dimensions in every direction.
3 Dimensional Cubic Chess 8x8x8 Board
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You would need 4 3D queens. One below the king, 2 in a diagonal relative to the one below, one in a triagonal.
I'm trying to visualize that it is so hard lol, so if let's say the lone king in on the 5th level, on e55, would this configuration of queens be checkmate?
Level 5:
Level 8:
What's stopping the black king from moving 1 cube triagonally to 4F6? Or should the c6 queen be on the 4th level instead?
IF you want ez 3d viasualizing, set up 3 boards, one for each spatial dimension, then you'll see.
More like this:
Level 1:
Level 2:
Level 3:
Z
X
Y
Somehow a king got in there just ignore 
From X you can't see one of the queens, it would be in front of the king.
Yes the queen directly below the king covers all the cubes in two of the levels of movement, and then 3 queens are needed to cover the top level of movement, wonder if this could be reduced to 3 queens total?
(1,0,0) + (-1,2,0) + (-2,-1,0)
Those are the coordinates relative to the king?
HGMuller escribió:
(1,0,0) + (-1,2,0) + (-2,-1,0)
This position does indeed counts as checkmate
Now how many queens required to force checkmate is the next question!
I suspect that 2 Queens would be enough, with the help of their King. Even 3 Kings (only one of those royal) might be enough. This based on the fact that on 8x8 in 2d two Kings can easily force mate, by some kind of pincer movement, one King blocking escape from the corner along a file, the other along a rank. So it seems one needs one King per dimension.
What do you mean by two kings?
Two pieces that move like a King, only one of those royal. Or both of them royal, but extinction royalty. But that in general makes things easier.
Nah that's weird, only 1 king regardless of the number of dimensions lol
Another interesting question, how many 3d queens needed to control every vacant cube on the board. With 2d we know it's 5 ("The mathematics of chessboard problems" is an interesting read)..
Apr 27, 2025
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#158
I think the history of this was more just people would play over boards just spread across the table. So 8 boards with all those extra places to move. The link you provided in chess variants was kinda of cool and it warms my heart that people are into that stuff. Of course, 3d chess is actually quite easy to play online tho : https://store.steampowered.com/app/3463010/ChessFinity_Demo/ Where you can play against your friends for free in a medley of different sizes. In my experience and I do play a lot of 3d chess, an 8x8x8 board is just too big , too time consuming and rather confusing without having to use tooling for marking grids and move preview modes being turned on. A comfortable size is around an 8x8x3 with parties staring at the 1 and 3 levels Anyway. Enjoy
I would have to disagree that uneven dimensions are better than even 4x4x4 for example. Part of what makes chess such a great game is the square symmetry of the board. Positions without pawns are exactly equivalent regardless of reflection or rotation. I'm not saying this always isn't the case either with uneven dimensions, but it makes it harder to visualize basic patterns and piece coordination if the distance to the edges of the board are uneven. At least with the 4x4x4 board you can have 1 total set of 3D pieces that take up the same proportion of the board spaces, but pawns would get a little funky.
Its actually fun irl, 3 boards are more than enough with 1 set