best regards

Kasparov vs Sting, 2000

Mini-chess. Identical to the 6x6 Los Alamos variant except: 1) The knights on the right side of the board are replaced by bishops (setup is RNQKBR). It is possible for Black to get mated on move two: 1. d3 e4 2. Qf4#. 2) Pawns can move 2 squares on their first move, and e.p. can take place on the square they skipped. 3) Castling is allowed (although in my experience it's usually a bad move). The king only moves ONE square when castling kingside.

Wizard chess. Normal setup and moves. After your move, any piece that COULD be captured by ANY of your pieces (if it were still your move), are removed from the board. After such pieces are removed, you may continue to remove pieces in this manner until there are no more possible captures. (Thus landing a rook or queen on your opponent's back rank is like an A-bomb; however, both queens are usually removed by force after a couple of moves.)

You are not required to make all possible captures this way. However, you may not remove a piece in your attacking piece's 'line' if it is behind another piece that must be captured first (no 'jumping'). Also, your opponent has the right to insist that you make additional captures if he/she desires.

The king is like any other piece. There is no check or checkmate. Castling is allowed if the usual conditions apply, except that the king can move into, through or out of check.

The rules of Turkish Greater Chess, my variant of Turkish Great Chess, differ from the parent game in the following respects; all other rules remain exactly the same. 1) The piece called the giraffe (R+B+N) in the parent game is called a paladin. The two war machines (R+N) in the parent game are called marshalls. The vizir (B+N) in the parent game is called a cardinal. All of the other pieces are named the same and move the same as they do in orthodox chess (king, queen, rook, bishop, knight). 2) A pawn on either player’s second rank may move one, two, or three squares on its first move. A pawn on either player’s third rank may move one or two squares on its first move. A pawn on either player’s fourth rank or beyond moves just one square per turn. 3) There are no pawn captures en passant. 4) A pawn may only promote to a piece that has been lost by its side. 5) A pawn may promote on either player’s eighth, ninth, or tenth rank, at the option of the player owning it. A pawn moving to either player’s tenth rank must promote; if no pieces have been lost by its side, it may not move to the tenth rank, although it still can check an enemy king on that rank. 6) The opening array for White’s first rank is R/M/B/C/Q/K/P/B/M/R. The two knights are placed directly in front of the king and queen on e2 and f2. The opening array for White's second rank is all pawns across the board except for the two knights at e2 and f2. The opening array for White's third rank is 2 pawns placed in front of the knights at e3 and f3. The pawns remain placed exactly the same as in the parent game. Black’s opening array is completely symmetrical to White’s. 7)As in the parent game, castling is not allowed. 8) Stalemate counts as a draw as it does in orthodox chess.

PARENT GAME: GREAT CHESS - INDIAN / TURKISH VARIANT

This game is described in an 18th century Indian manuscript. It is mentioned by several authors. Murray describes the game, mentioning its Indian source. Gollon bases his description of the game on Murray, but calls the game Turkish Great Chess.

Most authors agree: this is one of the nicest and interesting variants of great chess. Probably the largest disadvantage is the slowness of the pawns.

The real age of the game is somewhat hard to estimate, but given the modern type of moves of several pieces, its date of birth should probably placed after the middle ages.

The board

The game is played on a ten by ten board (uncheckered?). The opening setup is as follows: White: King f1; Giraffe e1; Vizir d1; Queen g1; Rook a1, j1; Knight b1, i1; Bishop c1, h1; War machine e2, f2; Pawn a2, b2, c2, d2, e3, f3, g2, h2, i2, j2. Black: King e10; Giraffe f10; Vizir g10, Queen d10; Rook a10, j10; Knight b10, i10; Bishop c10, h10; War machine e9, f9; Pawn a9, b9, c9, d9, e8, f8, g9, h9, i9, j9.

Movement of pieces

Rook, knight, bishop, queen, and king move like in usual chess. (Actually, some of these pieces were named differently in the original game, e.g., the queen was a general, the bishop an elephant.) The giraffe is a powerful piece: it has the combined moves of queen and knight, i.e., of rook, knight and bishop. The vizir has the combined moves of bishop and knight. The war machine (dabbabah) has the combined moves of rook and knight. Pawns move as usual pawns, but have no initial double step. When reaching the last row, pawns promote to queens.

Other rules

SCREEN CHESS
1. Set up a screen in the middle of the board. (between ranks 4-5)

2. Arrange all of your pieces on your side in any fashion you choose. You may put pawns on the back row, bishops on the same color, etc.

3. Lift the screen and begin play as usual.

4. Or, for laughs, SWITCH SIDES so that you are playing the pieces your opponent set up and vice-versa. In this version, you are obviously trying to set up the worst position possible. (Kudos to Jim Bartle for coming up with something simular on the Kamsky v. Anand page.)

I'm sure we had to agree on some other rules as well, which I don't remember. Here are some that I would suggest:

Pawns may not move 2 spaces or capture EP, and there is no castling.

White still moves first unless Black is in check, in which case Black moves first.

If one side is in checkmate at the start, they lose. (And they didn't even get to move....)

Stack-up chess
First player plays one move, and second player plays 2 moves, and the first plays 3 moves, second 4 and so on! It wil drive you nuts

<Odds games
Another difficulty with the early 19th century is the frequency with which matches were played at odds. Whole tournaments were designed with handicaps of various odds for players of different classes, even as late as 1889 or 1890. Jerry Spinrad argues for the inclusion of these results, with an adjustment in the indicated rating difference depending on the odds. Since they were so common in the early period, we have to do something like this or the available results would be too thin to be useful. Hence, I have taken the same approach, though my rating offsets for the various types of odds differ from Spinrad's. He suggested, without justification but as a starting point for discussion, an advantage of 100 rating points when given pawn and move, 200 points when given pawn and two moves, and 300 points when given knight odds. This has the feature that an extra knight makes three times the rating difference of an extra pawn, corresponding to the generally accepted ratio of piece values, if this ratio can simply be translated into ratings.

Rather than accept these suggested rating offsets, however, I tried to estimate the effects from the data itself. The idea is that whenever a pair of players played games both at odds and on even terms, the difference in percentage scores can be interpreted as reflecting the difference in rating advantage. This proved difficult, however, as there were few occasions on which the same pair of players played with and without odds, especially in the same year, and sometimes when they did, the results were contrary to what one would expect.

For pawn and move there is a reasonable case to be made, especially due to the long matches between Dubois and Wyvill in 1846. They played 81 games on even terms and 69 games in which Wyvill was given pawn and move. The score for the even match suggests that Dubois' rating should be 130 points above Wyvill's. The score for the odds match corresponds to a 46 point lower rating for Dubois, without accounting for the advantage. This suggests a 130+46=176 point effect of the odds. Other situations with fewer games, considered collectively, suggest a similar rating effect for pawn and move, though perhaps slightly less. I adopted a 174 point effect for pawn and move.

The comparitive results for pawn and two moves are much scarcer and sometimes contradictory (there is more than one instance of a player doing better when giving pawn and two, than when giving pawn and one to the same opponent). The rating advantage seems to be considerably less than double that of pawn and move. I adopted a value of 217. For knight odds, I have very little to go on, but those comparisons I do have, with some guesswork led me to adopt a 304 point rating advantage. This is not triple the effect of pawn and move, of course, but I don't think that such a ratio is necessarily appropriate. I have so few results for rook odds games that I have no way to assess the effect and so simply excluded them.

There are some handicap tournaments in which odds of the move were given, which I take to mean that the player given the odds simply played white in every game. This gives a very minor advantage, that of white over black, which has been estimated by Jeff Sonas to be about 28 points, so I adopt this value as the offset for odds of the move.>

<Several years ago at the Marshall Chess Club in New York we experimented with odds in a weekend tournament. We used a fast time limit, something like 30 moves in 30 minutes, and a normal Swiss pairing procedure.

But whenever two relatively equal players were to meet, the higher rated player was given black, regardless of previous color assignments. If the rating difference was more than 200 points, the higher rated gave pawn and move. If the difference was 400 to 599, he played white but at knight odds; more than 600, he gave a rook.

Everyone thought at first that the odds were much too steep. After all, how can an expert be expected to give a rook to a C player? Or a guy rated 1900 give pawn and move to a 1660?

But out of some 40 games, the odds giver lost only once. The exception came in the final round on first board, when an underrated A player successfully accepted Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier's rook.>