Creating chess variants on the spot

[Evert]

I have played chess variants for the last 24 years (I was developing Hit Points Chess in 2007), that's a main reason for my interest in trying to invent new things for them. For some reason I was never a fan of strange fairy piece with odd movements, they don't feel like chess at all, so I've been trying to come up with things that use the pieces I already love, because I didn't like Gothic chess's archbishops and chancellors.

It's interesting how broad the range of "chess variants" is. Personally I'm not a big fan of peculiar extra rules, they tend to feel "gimmicky". I love different piece types though, especially if they open up interesting new possibilities. I also like historic and regional games.
I agree that the addition of Archbishops and Chancellors doesn't make Gothic Chess very interesting though. It's just another pair of strong super-pieces that dominate tactics. I'm more interested in a game that adds intermediate (rook-class) or minor pieces.

I was a great fan of Zillions of Games, it had a powerful, yet simple code, that would allow you to create any kind of variant that you liked, my very first attempts were "Knightmate" (the king moves like a knight, and the knights are replaced by non-royal kings) and "Pawnmate" (the king is replaced by a pawn, that may jump from the first rank to the 4th rank, and all pawns were replaced by non-royal kings that may promote), and one could test them from the get-go as Zillions had an AI that could play any variant that you implemented.

SjaakII is fairly easy to modify for chess variants, but its ability to define "extra" rules or restrictions is limited. It could play your "drop chess", except that there is no way to force starting with dropping a royal piece. However, starting with the two kings in place, it could play the game.

It's overwhelming to see that any variant that one implements will sink in the big sea of variants that already exist, though, I wonder if the next Atomic Chess (very popular variant, played by thousands of people daily) can be created.

Don't get into creating chess variants because you want to build a popular one. You're just setting yourself up for disappointment. There have been several commercial attempts (Omega Chess and Gothic Chess spring to mind, I'm sure there are others) that all failed.
That said, I think there is probably a market for a free app that allows you to play chess variants. Thing is, it probably needs both a way to play against other players, a decent (not good, decent) AI and a good UI.

[Ovyron]

I host a server based on the public version of the FICS code, adapted for supporting (next to orthodox Chess) variants like Capablanca/Gothic Chess, Knightmate, Spartan Chess, Xiangqi, Shogi, Shatranj, Courier Chess... No people there at all. Neither for the variants, nor for normal Chess.

Well, at least it's great to know what I wanted already exists!

Perhaps what this needs is advertizement and sponsorship, I promise that if prize money is on the line, people will appear, and will probably stick around if the interface is good, we'd just need to think of some other enticing things beside money. Maybe a rating list like the CCRL or CEGT but with humans playing chess variants? Then some people would play just to see their name at the top of the list.

On lichess, I'm sure, many people try variants out of curiousity, because they always appear at the bottoms of the seeks, and there's always tournaments running with them, and if they try them and like them they might stick around to play them or try others, on an alternative we could make the variants be the center of attention.

A more feasible route would be to latch on to one of the already popular websites. But it is questionable whether these would be interested to support exotic variants.

We need someone to infiltrate lichess and see how were the ones that they have implemented. Apparently they'd have no problem implementing ones that have the common chess pieces, common board layout, and possibly pieces in hand and dropping, I wonder which one would be the next variant that would be easiest to get them to implement, and that is fun to play. Bughouse is the obvious answer but they don't have the basis to allow for the boards split on the screen and such.

I wonder what's the status of chess.com on the issue, they recently implemented 4-Player chess with success, if they are going to pursue other chess variants, we just have to wait.

[Ovyron]

Don't get into creating chess variants because you want to build a popular one.

I just want it to be popular so that I can find someone to play with!

From the ones I can play right now and easily find opponents:

Chess960 - Meh, its alien castling rules take me out of the immersion, and I know I'd rather be playing normal chess. Super-prepared openings from opponents don't bother me anyway, and it's fun to see new opening traps played against me and lose to premoves, anyway.

Crazyhouse - Love it! Give me more like this!

Atomic - Love it! Give me more like this!

AntiChess / Racing Kings / Horde - These ones don't feel like chess variants at all, but games that can be played in a board with chess pieces. They have a radical component that just makes it not be chess anymore. Compulsive capturing, being unable to move your piece if it'd check the opponent's king (!?), and in the last one there isn't even an opposing king to checkmate... Hey, I wonder how that would work.

King of the Hill / Three Checks - My gripe with them is that the objective is not to checkmate the enemy king. That's still the case in 960, Crazyhouse, and Atomic (where capturing it is also available), these ones have an unsatisfactory end of game. They're also arbitrary, why not 2 checks or 4? Why having to reach the center squares and not the last rank of the board to "promote" the king and win?

For someone that wants more variants implemented I complain a lot!

I don't even have a proposal for "the next variant I want to see implemented", but it ought to at the very least have checkmate / capture the king as win condition.

I think in the future there will be a site that allows you to play any chess variant, even ones recently invented, against everyone, like Game Courier, but real time, so I'm interested in seeing what project will be the one doing it. It could be Lichess, Chess.com, the return of FICS, H.G.Muller's server, ChessV or something else, but people have to show interest.

[hgm]

Well, if you don't like pieces with unorthodox moves, and most alterative winning conditions make very unchesslike games (with which I fully agree), it seems to me the choice becomes very limited.

What do you think of Peace Chess (aka Paco Shako)?

And how about Chess with anti-trading rules (but otherwise fully normal), e.g. where Queens are not allowed to capture a protected Queen. Or where any piece capturing a Queen instantly promotes to one ('contageous pieces')?

[Ovyron]

if you don't like pieces with unorthodox moves

Probably I don't because I never get to get used to them.

Whenever I played with such pieces, variant after variant, they were completely different ones, there wasn't a common one that appeared in many variants, all of them were doing their own thing. I could never get used to a fairy piece. Probably I'd get in love with some fairy piece if it was implemented in some Lichess variant and I got to play with it, whatever it was, because I could learn its quirks, just like I learned the quirks of pieces that explode or can be dropped.

My favorite fairy pieces:

Cylindrical Pieces! Yeah, the ones that are orthodox except they wrap around the board. After a few games of Cylindrical chess, it's a variant I can say that can feel superior to normal chess, in that, limiting the pieces by an arbitraty board margin seems unnatural. Having a floor and ceiling makes sense, otherwise the kings would start beside each other, but why do we have walls on the side of the board?

I'm also a big fan of Billiard Bishops, those ones that bounce on the walls of the boards to gain the same mobility as Cylindrical Bishops, with the extra option of allowing them to bounce on the ceiling and floor of the board as well.

Finally, the Unicorn from 3D Chess, with its unique move that would only work in those variants.

What do you think of Peace Chess (aka Paco Shako)?

Sounds like fun, I'd need to play it. But definitively doesn't sound "chesslike", though at least it seems like one of those variants easy to implement in a server that wouldn't allow difficult things.

It seems that the whole concept of not capturing is overkilling it, though? We could just use Uri Blass swapping captures (so pieces don't "die"), it's simple and can be explained in two lines:

Captured pieces move to the attacker's vacant square. The objective of the game is to swap against the enemy king.

And how about Chess with anti-trading rules (but otherwise fully normal), e.g. where Queens are not allowed to capture a protected Queen.

Yeah, besides adding extra moves to the pieces, limiting them could work.

Or where any piece capturing a Queen instantly promotes to one ('contageous pieces')?

Ah! Now that seems interesting! Is it that pieces become whatever they capture? So a Queen isn't so useful now, because you will lose it as soon as you capture it? Should you care much about turning a piece into a queen if this is the case? It's all intriguing.

Have you considered hosting such a variant on your server and organize a tournament to see how many people can you gather? If I'm the only one arriving I'll accept my outstanding defeat.

[hgm]

Probably I don't because I never get to get used to them.

Whenever I played with such pieces, variant after variant, they were completely different ones, there wasn't a common one that appeared in many variants, all of them were doing their own thing.

Well, the Chancellor and Archbishop are very ubiquitous, as they are the most obvious combinations of orthodox pieces missing from normal Chess. Strange enough combinations of King and other pieces are much less popular. (Although of course these play a major role in Shogi and its variants.) Just out of curiosity, what are your feelings w.r.t. a non-royal King ('Commonner')?

It seems that the whole concept of not capturing is overkilling it, though? We could just use Uri Blass swapping captures (so pieces don't "die"), it's simple and can be explained in two lines:

Captured pieces move to the attacker's vacant square. The objective of the game is to swap against the enemy king.

It is very questionable whether games of variants where pieces never disappear will ever terminate. (At least as a win. Of course you could declare them a draw after they muddled on for a certain number of moves without achieving anything.) My first reaction to Peace Chess was that it should also suffer from this problem. But it turns out this is not the case. There is irreversible increase of the number of paired pieces. And it turns out that paired pieces are much more dangerous than unpaired pieces, as they can be liberated by chain moves, and effectively allow multiple moves per turn. It is as if the 'cloud' of paired pieces (which do not belong to a particular player) acts as an amplifier of the capabilities of the 'free' pieces. This increases the power of your army during the game, and with it the advantage to be on move, until you reach the point where you attach any square on the board.

Ah! Now that seems interesting! Is it that pieces become whatever they capture? So a Queen isn't so useful now, because you will lose it as soon as you capture it? Should you care much about turning a piece into a queen if this is the case? It's all intriguing.

A piece is 'contageous' if capturing it makes you change to its type. It is not necessary that all participating pieces are contageous; you could just limit it to certain types (or even just to some instances of the same type). What I had in mind is to make only Queens contageous. So a Queen capturing a non-Queen doesn't suffer any ill effects. But a Queen capturing a protected Queen would of course get recaptured, and the recapturing piece (say a Knight) would then turn into a Queen. So that you effectively just captured a Knight for your Queen. This means you cannot really trade Queens. Contageous pieces can never disappear from the game. (Although their number can be reduced to one, by having the thers capture each other.) To slightly ameliorate that, the King could be declared 'immune', so that you can capture KxQ without consequences fr the King.

This idea was taken from the historic game Maka Dai Dai Shogi, b.t.w., where the strongest two piece types are contageous to prevent their disappearance from the game.

It actually has a large effect on tactics, as there is no harm to capture with a Queen first in a long exchange, as log as you will make the last capture to that square. Normally you would of course always start capturing with your least valuable piece.

Have you considered hosting such a variant on your server and organize a tournament to see how many people can you gather? If I'm the only one arriving I'll accept my outstanding defeat.

I have not done that, but it should not be difficult to implement the rule. I have no idea, though, how I should advertize a tourney so that people would actually show up.

[Nordlandia]

Ulysses P: don't you like Chancellor & Archbishop?

I've requested fairy pieces for Lichess but apparently it doesn't seem to be prioritized.

[Ovyron]

Just out of curiosity, what are your feelings w.r.t. a non-royal King ('Commonner')?

My only experience with the Commonner was in my own chess variant, Pawnmate, where the pawns and king are swapped out, so it's 1 Royal Pawn vs. 8 Commonners, though these commoners could also promote.

They seemed mostly worthless and just wanted to be swapped for Knights and Bishops, though I wonder if they suffered from the "Elephantiasis" effect, and didn't have much value because they were too many of them.

For what's it worth, it seems Commonners should be a default part of normal chess via promotion, why is it that pawns can't promote to kings? It should be fine as long as they're not royal.

Another idea is having a start with 8 Commonners and 1 king with no pawns, except, players secretly have hidden their King among the commoners. A thing is that it's a King, so you must avoid checks and protect it from attacks, but your opponent doesn't know when it's checking it, so you can pretend they attacked your king by moving it when attacked and protecting it so the opponent can't figure out who's your real king.

Some variants I have been proposing want to keep some hidden factor like this, Poker is a very popular game but chess variants allow for hidden information without the random factor.

It is very questionable whether games of variants where pieces never disappear will ever terminate.

All the ones that I have played eventually ended, though it's clear you need some rule in effect to avoid repetitions of positions. I wonder if a rule like "a player loses if they repeat a previous position" would help, the suckiest thing is knights that just jump to capture other knights that don't go away, over and over...

it turns out that paired pieces are much more dangerous than unpaired pieces, as they can be liberated by chain moves, and effectively allow multiple moves per turn. It is as if the 'cloud' of paired pieces (which do not belong to a particular player) acts as an amplifier of the capabilities of the 'free' pieces. This increases the power of your army during the game, and with it the advantage to be on move, until you reach the point where you attach any square on the board.

Nice! A chess variant with combos!

I guess one can't really comment on a variant until one has tried playing it, this Peace Chess sounds odd with pieces hugging each other and whatnot, I'd like to think that each army is of opposite genders... but in practice it does sound very interesting.

This idea was taken from the historic game Maka Dai Dai Shogi, b.t.w., where the strongest two piece types are contageous to prevent their disappearance from the game.

I like the concept of Contageous pieces, actually, I think several variants could be implemented with this concept, perhaps the one with a contageous queen would be best, but who knows.

Has someone invented "Chameleon" pieces yet? They are like normal pieces, but when they capture, they act as if the captured piece was Contageous, so you can have a variant where all the starting pieces are normal, but the Pawns are "Chameleon", so they transform in the piece they capture.

I have not done that, but it should not be difficult to implement the rule. I have no idea, though, how I should advertize a tourney so that people would actually show up.

Yeah, it may require some preparation, like a web page that will host results and celebrate the champion, perhaps some kind of "Cup" that the champion wins and has to defend on the next tourney, for some other variant.

Then you can call the event "World Contagious Chess Championship" (or the variant you would play), and post about it in chess forums that are already talking about chess variants.

Or something.

It's kind of frustrating the technology is already here and the main problem is finding players to have some fun.

[Ovyron]

Ulysses P: don't you like Chancellor & Archbishop?

I don't have anything against the pieces themselves, but I have only played them in variants where a Queen was also present, and then the three of them on the board seemed like too much.

And the queen was still the strongest, so the other 2 seemed mostly unnecessary, and I was really happy when those were exchanged and we were back to normal positions, but you know something must be very wrong with the variant when you want to turn the game into a normal one ASAP...

I guess my dislike for them doesn't come from the concept, but about how they've been implemented on variants.

Imagine a variant where you swap a rook and a knight for queens, so each side starts with 3 queens... I think it's too much power on the board, and a thing that makes chess special is that it's only one queen, and it's basically two games entirely, one where the queens are active, and one after they are swapped, with the rare game with material imbalance queen vs minor pieces.

With the Chancellor & Archbishop, if they survive to endgame then they're like crippled queens, as they're not as powerful, and if they don't survive you're back to normal chess...

I've requested fairy pieces for Lichess but apparently it doesn't seem to be prioritized.

Oh, you're our infiltrator

Do you have any info of the status of chess variants in lichess? I mean, I know they are playing Shield Tournaments (Shield Crazyhouse starts in 1 hour) and money tournaments for chess variants, but do they have plans to implement another, and if so, which one has better priority? Are they thinking about implementing double boards for Bughouse or boards for different layouts? Or will all this be normal looking variants for a while?

[Evert]

They seemed mostly worthless and just wanted to be swapped for Knights and Bishops, though I wonder if they suffered from the "Elephantiasis" effect, and didn't have much value because they were too many of them.

For what's it worth, it seems Commonners should be a default part of normal chess via promotion, why is it that pawns can't promote to kings? It should be fine as long as they're not royal.

The Commoner is quite an interesting piece. It's slightly weaker than a Knight, has mate potential, and can draw against a Queen.

There exists a variant where pawns can promote to Commoner (I think it also has promotion to file-piece). I forgot the name, but it's one of the standard variants that come with Sjaak II.

Has someone invented "Chameleon" pieces yet? They are like normal pieces, but when they capture, they act as if the captured piece was Contageous, so you can have a variant where all the starting pieces are normal, but the Pawns are "Chameleon", so they transform in the piece they capture.

I think so.
Sjaak II could play that (by making pieces contageous but making all but pawns immune).