New Variant Idea: Ahab Chess

It already exists in cards.

In cards, you can't tell which card is the King as all cards are disguised the same.

And in some sense in chess. You can't tell which pawn will Queen.

You can easily play disguised King in Burmese chess.

Play with 2 sided checker pieces like cards. Have the pieces face down like cards. When in doubt, have a referee look under the pieces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sittuyin

You can play Fischer random chess with checker pieces faced down.

Perfect.

You can bring a Queen, Rook, Bishop back next to the King.

Do a do-si-do to confuse the other player.

Then the King can act like a one-step Queen, Rook, or Bishop or the Queen, Rook, or Bishop only making 1 step, and viola, you don't know who is the Prince and who is the Pauper.

Ooh, that is good.

With a Queen moving 1 step to imitate a King, Are you coming to get the King or is the Queen waiting for you?

Which is the head and which is the tail of the snake?

Edit 1:

Except for the Knight, the King can mimic all other pieces.

And all other pieces can mimic the King.

Where is the King in Chess 960 when all the checker chips are faced down?

Hmm. Things that make you wanna go hmm.

Edit 2.

A computer program would only represent a real board. That is you cannot play back the moves to figure out which is the King.

Hey guys, I'm still working on developing this variant and solidifying the rules and getting test games. To that end, I've created a group dedicated to this variant!

https://www.chess.com/club/ahab-chess

Please join if you'd like to help me test Ahab Chess!

I just thought of a better game.

Decoy Roy.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-much-is-a-king-worth?page=2#comment-89436699

Interesting. That’s a cool idea. If Ahab Chess gets accepted, then the coding they’ll do would make Decoy Roy possible to create, and then you could submit that in the Custom Variants club.

However, if 2 kings get killed, the player will lose. In Ahab chess, we need to kill more than 2 for sure.
Nevertheless, interesting idea, it contains our history!

@thenomalnoob

You only need to kill 1 King, the real one.

What @thenormalnoob is saying is that there are only 2 options for where the royal is hiding, versus Ahab chess having 14 options for where the royal is hiding.

Umm... killing 2 kings is ensured that the game over. That means we have 2 targets, less than in Ahab Chess we have unidentified targets.

Brilliant idea!

Then they can have only one weak target to attack

Indeed. Choosing your opponent’s Ahab would defeat the entire purpose of the game 😆

Yeah, I did. It’s an interesting concept worth playing with. Possibly even a limit of 3 squares. The current setup I have is that there are no limitations on how the piece can move, but there’s a bare piece rule—meaning if your only remaining piece is your Ahab, you lose. That’s seemed to work pretty well in my test games, but this could be a cool idea, as a way of giving a hint to your opponent when trying to find the Ahab.

I always figured that if you manage to protect an Ahab pawn long enough to get it promoted, then you deserve to get a royal queen at that point. It is extremely difficult to keep an Ahab pawn safe.

But you know that the percentage a game that exists a pawn promoting is very low

In the rules I have, king and queen are not allowed as Ahabs. As for rook, that one is kind of hard, but imo it’s no harder than the other pieces, especially when using the bare piece rule.