It's a varation of "Buuuuuuugggggggggggggg Hoooooouuuuuussssssseeeeeeee!"
Team Chess
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Wow. I guess a huge advantage of this is that players can't rely on any memorised openings or blindly follow other rituals, they must think for themselves. On the other hand, a huge con is that the games can be very unbalanced-a loss or win might be more relevant to the ability of your teammates' rather than your own. Of course, that's just a part of playing in a team. Regular chess team games aren't as "teamish" as a basketball match would be, these are.
Layout illustration
General rules
Any opponent piece which you take is passed to your team mate next to you,
e.g. Player 2 passes to Player 3 (Player 4 passes to team member #1).
On your turn, you can place any piece given to you, on your board instead of making a move. The two main rules of placing pieces are;
Players cannot place a piece so that it puts their opponent in check
Players can only place pieces in their own half of the board.
On checkmate, the loser must sacrifice pieces totalling 9 points e.g. two bishops and three pawns, these are taken by the winner and passed on to his/her team mate sitting next door (as described in first rule).
A finished game then restarts; players reset the board using the pieces available to them, this meaning that there may be pieces missing from their set up! Standard setup only i.e. you cannot replace missing pieces with extra pieces you have received, these may be added though once the game has begun!
Discuss!
i.e. Have you come across / played this variant before? What do you think of it if not?
I remember years ago at middle school, my friends and I spent a significant proportion of our lunch times playing "team chess" whilst singing the theme tune to "Tom & Jerry kids" over and over again. Good times.
The other advantage of being members of the chess club at that time was that we each received an "early lunch pass"!
Regards,
Mik