Courier Chess Online? (Possible chess.com variant?)

Courier Chess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courier_chess

It likely bridged the gap between Shantranj and modern chess. Likely an avid gamer, or group of gamers, owned a Shantranj and Courier set and invented the new game we play today. Courier expanded on the ideas of Shantranj, but neither game proved to be as balanced or exciting as chess.

Chess also had economic benifits over Courier chess. If you already owned a Shantranj board you could play chess with no new gear. Maybe you could buy a (very cheap) little scrap of paper with the rules for modern chess on it. It would have been a very early expansion pack.

Courier chess would require you to buy that 50% more expensive 8x12 board and 48-58 units. I wonder if there are any 4x8 "addon" boards.

Still, Courier chess seems fun, and I was wondering if anyone knows a way to play it online.

      Your titles are mixed up. Courier chess IS a variant. If you wish to play, then google chess variants, and it will take you to several variant sites. There is no variant of chess.com, except maybe, checkers.com, or solitaire.com, or I need another coffee.com

Thanks. I saw that chess.com offere Fischer Random and thought maybe they had other varients available for playing. Been reading about varients this morning and Capablanca (Gothic) chess seems like even more fun. I built a chess set a few years ago (it's wooden but the units are square and very abstract, while retaining staunton qualities) and I'm thinking of building a varient set. I was going to build another set just for fun anyway, and throwing in a few extra pieces is no problem.

Just need (in addition to chess):

4x Elephants, 2x Archbishops, 2x Generals, 8x Pawns, 2x Jesters, 2x Men

-Jesters and Men can use the Archbishop and General pieces, but I'll probably make the designs different because it's only 4 extra pieces. 

I've also built a Hnefatalf board, but I need to redo the pieces on it. The expanded pawn set would quadrouple as my talf troops.

      For your pieces, try Michael's Craft stores. At Safari Ltd.com, they market a set of toys called TOOB toys. Right up your alley--elephants, arch-bishops, etc.   I'm just trying to help you save money. Or wherever they sell, "Magic-The Gathering".

I'll have to check it out and also post plans for the set I already made. It was extreamly cheap, and all you need is a saw (preferably bandsaw, but any hand craft saw would work just fine) and a long piece of 1" x 1.5" wood. You could use a different base size also, depending on how big you wanted your set to be.

I'm pretty sure I used pine (it was scrap wood at the time, made it on a whim), but anything will work. Stained one with a light oil and the other dark maple. I had tons of woodstain so I didn't have to buy any either.

It's not a fancy $200 set, but it's great for travel, chess club, and whatever. 

Courier Chess is a pretty slow game. On average stronger pieces than Shatranj, but because you have 50% more, the games last even longer. That promotions are non-decisive, and in fact hardly a gain at all is definitely contributing to this, and to a high draw rate.

Gothic Chess is way more exciting. Very tactical, with 3 Queen-class pieces on each side. Despite the larger board games are shorter, and the draw rate is quite low (~16%). Perhaps it is too tactical.

Spartan Chess is a nice alternative. It has the same complexity as standard Chess (in fact one side does play with standard pieces), and has very interesting end-games (which is a bit missing in Gothic Chess, as the game is usually decided much earlier).

I'm thinking about buying 2x cheapo ($2.50) chess sets from Walmart today and using the boards and pieces to make a Gothic and Courier set. Can paint some of the Knights and stuff, and plenty of pawns to go around.

Also found some info about the rules to "Mad Queen Chess;" there was indeed at least 1 printed rule set in the 1470s. 

https://sites.google.com/site/caroluschess/modern-history/the-origin-of-modern-chess

Pieces look like Shatranj on the cover to me.

It is quite possible to 'cut and paste' sets for orthodox Chess to create novel piece types. At least if they are made of wood. I did this for obtaining Cannons for Chinese Chess: mount a Rook horizontally on the underside of a Pawn, dril a 'bore' in it, and you get a very naturally looking Cannon.

If you want to really invest, you can also buy Superchess pieces. Many different piece shapes are available there, which fit well with a high-quality Staunton set:

        To Robot 5000; I just got an E-mail from New In Chess. There's a new book by Adrey Calje, called 50 Variants of Chess. Hope that helps!

thanks everyone, lots of cool info. I really like those other pieces HGMuller posted also... 

They have many more, and the prices are not excessive. You can find them at:

http://www.superchess.nl/indexengels.htm

(Click on "available pieces" in the menu in the left margin of the page.)

        When I was 12, I made a set from an article in Popular Machanics, entirely out of nuts and bolts.

Hi,

for those who might be interested, we just released a full playable Courier Chess.

No plugin needed, available in 3D if you have WebGL (Chrome or Firefox), and 2D (see below)

You can play against computer or with friends (chat and video chat included). Everything is here: http://www.jocly.com/courier-chess

Many other chess variants to come, or implement if you can code ;)