inclusive chess?

[Uri Blass]

That is equivalent to normal chess with the rule added that losing the queen loses the game instantly, although you need to specify whether you need your original queen or any queen (i.e. from promotion). This would eliminate most endgames and so would appear to reduce draws a lot, but I'm not sure it actually would do so. It might instead lead to more draws as winning a pawn would be much harder to convert to a win if queens can't be exchanged. It would also increase perpetual checks, so a rule forbidding that might be necessary. I thought of this myself years ago, but I'm skeptical that it would reduce draws. You may have different motivations for the proposal; for me the main point of reforms in chess is the draw problem. In general, any ideas that give an alternate route to victory besides checkmate should help, but as noted there are exceptions to this. I'll also note that if your motivation has anything to do with gender equality, it is not valid because the queen is not always a female in other languages.

If the target is to reduce draws you can use the following idea:
play normal chess when you win by checkmate but if you fail to win by checkmate and it is a draw by normal chess rules then
the side who capture the opponent queen first win the game.

It is a draw only if no side captured the opponent queen and no side mated.

[lkaufman]

That is equivalent to normal chess with the rule added that losing the queen loses the game instantly, although you need to specify whether you need your original queen or any queen (i.e. from promotion). This would eliminate most endgames and so would appear to reduce draws a lot, but I'm not sure it actually would do so. It might instead lead to more draws as winning a pawn would be much harder to convert to a win if queens can't be exchanged. It would also increase perpetual checks, so a rule forbidding that might be necessary. I thought of this myself years ago, but I'm skeptical that it would reduce draws. You may have different motivations for the proposal; for me the main point of reforms in chess is the draw problem. In general, any ideas that give an alternate route to victory besides checkmate should help, but as noted there are exceptions to this. I'll also note that if your motivation has anything to do with gender equality, it is not valid because the queen is not always a female in other languages.

If the target is to reduce draws you can use the following idea:
play normal chess when you win by checkmate but if you fail to win by checkmate and it is a draw by normal chess rules then
the side who capture the opponent queen first win the game.

It is a draw only if no side captured the opponent queen and no side mated.

There are of course an almost infinite number of ways to adjudicate draws by rules such as this. I don't like this particular rule because I think there will still be a huge number of draws as no one will offer to trade queens unless it's forced or winning. I would prefer to adjudicate reps against the repeating side, stalemate being a win for the superior side, bare king losing, leaving the fifty move rule as the one case where we need to be a bit arbitrary. Simple and logical rule is that the last player to make a capture or move a pawn wins. Or first king to a center square wins if fifty move rule called; if no king reached the center Black wins. Many other options like this to totally eliminate draws. But of course they all change the game quite a bit; the challenge is to find the rule that changes the game by the least while still eliminating draws. Also there is the issue that White's edge may be too decisive with all draws gone, unless the rule is biased in favor of Black somehow. My best guess as to how to adjudicate fifty move rule draws sensibly while keeping the game balanced is to count points by P=3, N=10, B=11, R=15, Q=29, with Black winning with a tied score. Similar to the rule used in tournaments of Korean chess.

[hgm]

Is there any computer program that plays the game at superhuman level?

The multi-variant program / engine ChessV has Extinction Chess in its index of supported variants. I have no idea how strong it is in this particular variant. (Or how strong the average or the best human would be, for that matter.) In general the latest ChessV is a bit stronger than Fairy-Max, in variants they both support. (For previous versions Fairy-Max used to be stronger.) But Fairy-Max is certainly not unbeatable for a strong human club player.

As to the checking rule: it would not make much sense to only require the players keep the King out of harm's way, if losing your Queen is just as fatal. So it would be logical to either drop the rule, or extend it to any other piece of which only a single copy is left. And abolishing the rule is definitely the simplest of those two options. It could be a moot point anyway: whether you play for King capture or for checkmate with a checking rule only makes a difference in the case of stalemate. And when you still have at least K + Q + R + B + N + P it seems exceedingly unlikely that you would run out of legal moves, even if you are not allowed to expose any of these to capture (and none of those is under attack already).

[Ovyron]

bare king losing,

What about the bare queen losing in the royal queen variant, or "bare" queen+king losing in the one where both are royal? Basically, first to capture the other pieces win, has that been considered?

[AdminX]

Hi,

Just had an idea: a chess variant where the queen and king are equally valuable. As long as you have either (or both) of them, and either of them can move without being caught, you're fine (so the same rules as apply for old chess). I thought of the part where the queen can make "longer" moves than the king, but one could say that that is because in reality people are also not different in what they physically can (not making them different in value). I pondered about the pawn and the bishop. Not sure about those. Maybe keep them as they are?

Love to hear suggestions and constructive criticism.

I like the concept of the King and Queen being able to Teleport places with each other only one time during the game if legally possible. AKA: Trading Places