Thought of a chess variant

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bangersnmash70

Or more of  a "twist" more like.Laughing

 

Last night I was talking to my brother on the phone. He's not a chess player but he did get me some new chess pieces as a gift recently. As we were talking I explained the different versions of chess worldwide, like shogi, xiangqi etc. Then he said "You should try your own variation" I sort of laughed it off- what is there left to invent in chess variations?

 

But later that night I did sort of think about different variations. Some I dismissed after a few minutes but one stayed.

Each player has two boards. Each board has a king or queen, but not both. So the board on the left might have a white queen at d1, the other board a white king at e1. Black has the mirror image of this. Each board has the full complement of other pieces in the usual position.

 

The twist is this. The object is to both checkmate your opponents king and capture his queen. Pieces on one board can travel to the other board by entering the "vacant" king/ queen starting square and can reappear on the other board in the corresponding square, but cannot otherwise move that same turn. So if you feel that one of your royal couple is in danger you can send in a reinforcement from the other board via  a "teleport hole" If either the entrance or exit square is occupied the move can't be made. Kings and Queens must remain on their original boards. (Or that's what I think right now, I might change my mind!)

 

I have never played bughouse chess, or Alice In Wonderland chess, but I have a general idea of the rules. I can see some similarities in the ideas.

 

However I must say that was simply an idea I had, I have no human opponents to test my idea on. It may be simply unworkable in practice, or it could be a case of "good idea, but needs serious reworking". Or maybe it could be  viable variation! Or maybe this variation has been essentially done before, I don't know, I only know the rules to a few Comments welcome! Required, evenLaughing

HGMuller

99% of the games or more would end in a draw, as it is in practice impossible to force capture of a Queen. I think you should be at least 3 Queens ahead to manage that, and this will almost never be the case if you are not playing against someone that is at least 1000 Elo weaker. It is like playing Draughts where you already give a King to both sides in the starting position.

bangersnmash70

Hmmmm, maybe you're right, But there's just something about the idea of switching pieces between 2 boards I find intruigng!