Russian Roulette

Hey, I made this joke chess variant called Chess Roulette. Essentially, every time you move a piece other than your king, it has a 1-in-6 chance of dying.

The game can be played here:

chess-roulette.com

Please let me know what you guys think.

Op

This sounds really interesting. It seems fun, but maybe a little frustrating for some when their queen dies on a checkmating move. How would captures work, let’s say, if I took your queen with my rook, but then my rook dies from the roulette? Would the queen be taken off the board too?

chess-roulette.com

You can play the game here.

Russia Banned Chess.com.

Alright, you magnificent monster, I visited your site . After my queen vanished on her first outing like a failed magician's assistant, I've come to a conclusion. What you've created isn't a chess variant; it's a psychological stress test designed by someone who lost to the Queen's Gambit and swore a terrible revenge upon the concept of strategy itself. The entire value system of chess is inverted. The King, once a pampered liability, is now the only piece with job security, the one Gigachad on the board who can move without the universe demanding a blood sacrifice. The humble pawn, formerly cannon fodder, is now your most reliable operative—a low-risk agent you send on suicide missions to poke at the enemy and force them to risk their pieces. Meanwhile, the knights and bishops are just panicked middle-managers, and the Queen is a nine-point landmine you own, a diva who might spontaneously combust out of sheer boredom.

The core of this chaos is the simple, brutal math. Each piece has the same survival odds as a game of Russian Roulette with a six-shooter. The rate of decay is staggering; after a piece makes just four moves, it is officially more likely to be a ghost than a physical object on the board. This catastrophic evaporation rate means that games are brutally short, functionally decided in 10 to 15 moves. The board gets decimated not by brilliant tactics, but by a series of unfortunate, random workplace accidents. The endgame arrives with the speed of a guillotine, often leaving one player's lonely king to stare down a single, triumphant pawn that somehow survived "The Culling," which is what I've named the opening phase.

For these reasons, Chess Roulette ascends to the throne as the stupidest chess variant of all time, and I say this with the utmost admiration for its absurdity. It is an insult to the human intellect, a game where a lucky mouse click is superior to deep thought and my cat stepping on my keyboard has a non-zero chance of beating a Grandmaster. There is no joy in victory, only the fleeting relief that your opponent's piece exploded instead of yours. This perpetual fear gives birth to the game's optimal and most profound strategy: being a total coward. The best course of action is often the "Coward's Waltz," just shuffling your king back and forth, praying your opponent is forced to actually play the game. You've taken the poetry and art of chess the elegant sacrifice, the deep positional squeeze and replaced it with meaningless slapstick. This isn't the Queen's Gambit; it's the Bishop's Unfortunate Slip-and-Fall.

In short, your creation is a fundamentally broken, strategically bankrupt, and psychologically scarring parody of a game. It strips chess of its dignity, skill, and beauty, leaving behind a twitching husk of pure, dumb luck. It is, without a doubt, a terrible perversion of the royal game. And I must confess, I have never had a more hilarious and enjoyable 10 minutes of watching all my plans crumble into dust for no reason whatsoever. It's awful. It's perfect. Well done.

Glad you enjoyed it @ChessShadowsofZhadum

yes

Wait, let’s take a second here. This is actually a really good variant! It’s not as unbalanced as some people think, because from playing against the bot, I realized that there are only five total explosions that can happen on either side. Once 5 pieces explode on your side, no more of your pieces will, and this makes some interesting strategies, like trying to move pawns as much as possible, so that you waste your explosions, but not wasting too many pawn moves as each one makes your position worse. I played against the 3200 engine for fun, and won the game because I got really lucky (my pawns exploded, while their queen and higher-value pieces exploded at the start.) I like how the game is almost entirely luck-based, with a hint of skill, as there’s also its own unique layer of depth and strategy to it, but even a bad player can occasionally beat a good one if they get lucky enough. Overall, amazing variant. 8/10 + 3 exploded pawns, would highly recommend.

Glad you liked it, thanks for playing

W game

Ive onnly crashed out 3 times

I like the theme on the home screen though, it's a vibe.

I played and enjoyed it. Until my rook... well... DISAPPEARED. Amazing variant, that brings some uncertainty to chess.

It's pretty cool, but now my heart is beating twice as fast, I am hyper-ventilating every time I move a piece, and I see death in front of me every time I touch my queen.

Fun, but mildly stressful.