What happens if double check? And why not promote to queen? Is there a bonus to promoting to king. Is king promotion only option? Sounds fascinating.
New Chess Variant (Promote to King)
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No, only the first pawn is promoted to King. Its an uphill intellectual challenge because of the difficulty.
What????????
actually interesting, but probably wouldnt work well
You cannot add a random rule to chess and assume that it works. You have to define precisely how the rule interacts with the other rules of chess. Obvious issues for king promotions are:
1. Is it legal to capture one of the kings?
2. Does the game end when one of the kings is checkmated?
3. Can two kings be checkmated / stalemated simultaneously?
In fairy chess almost any rule you can think of has been explored. What is unattractive about king promotion is that it only takes effect in the later game phase where pawns start promoting. Until that point, games look no different from the current ones. Still, one can do interesting things with it, e.g. in retrograde problems.
By the way, most chess variants are used to create interesting problems, not to play games with.
Interesting, what happens when 2 kings get forked?
Aug 15, 2025
0
#10
I've been thinking about this for a while. Here's how I would handle it:
- You play like normal chess, except instead of checkmate, you actually capture the opponant's king.
-The first player to have no kings on the board loses.
This is a great idea. You only have one active king and you can promote any pawn to heir, which can be captured like any other piece. If the actual king gets captured you can name any of the heirs as king, or wait until a pawn gets promoted to king. The game ends when no pawns can promote and the king is captured
Allow pawns to be promoted to Kings. This is only for those confident enough to fend off 2 king attacks simultaneously.