I've made a chess variant on a geosphere. (which I've posted about here before). I have programed in the logic of the variant, but I want the game to detect insufficient material. I want the players to know in advance when there is a drawn endgame without having to repeat or play 50 moves.

For traditional chess, this is built on a large body of knowledge and a lot of brute force calculation. I am essentially trying to figure out a way to computationally generate an endgame table base.

Does anyone have experience checking for insufficient material, or know any search strategies? On the other hand, is this the type of functionality someone would expect when playing a chess variant?

Unlike my other post, which is an endless wall, the Weed Wizard is very simple to explain. To make a Weed Wizard OTB, just superglue a Rook to a Queen's head. That's how high he is.

The Weed Wizard MOVES one space diagonally, but CAPTURES like a Queen and a Knight. I know a piece that moves and captures like a Queen and Knight has roughly the material value of half the black chess army from studying so much fairy chess, but how do I evaluate the material value of this one?

It seems to scale up as the game progresses, so this guy clearly drank a whole bottle of 420mg tincture before the game started, and is slowly coming down, and the board gets more and more open, and if you can promote something to a Weed Wizard in the endgame, that's usually instant death for the opponent somehow.

How to Play

This version of Geodesic Chess is played on a globe of hexagons. The rules are the same as for established traditional hexagonal chess, with the exception of pawns and knights. Familiarize yourself with Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, aka, Hexodus, and you will understand the bulk of the game.

Pawns move one or two spaces in any of six orthogonal directions, forward or backward, and capture one diagonal space in any of six directions. A pawn cannot move onto it's own home palace area. When a pawn reaches the opposing players' palace area it promotes to any other piece, usually a queen.

Knights move two spaces orthogonally and then one space to the side orthogonally. Again, this movement is the same as in traditional hexagonal chess. Additionally, in this version a knight can make two consecutive jumps as long as it is in the same direction as the first jump, similar to the fairy piece knightrider. A knight can make these two jumps only if both landing spaces are empty, and not if either landing space contains a piece of either player. A knight cannot capture on a double jump.

Kings move one space in any of twelve directions, orthogonally or diagonally. A king cannot leave its home palace area unless forced to do so, i.e., there is no other legal move. Once a king has been forced to flee its palace it is in exile and cannot return. An exiled king can however enter the palace of the opposing player should it make it to that side of the board. A king cannot put another king in check. A king cannot cross an orthogonal file diagonally if that file is guarded by a rook or queen. A king can however sneak between two orthogonally adjacent spaces if both of those spaces are guarded by different pieces. This is in keeping with Glinski's Hexodus.

The Palace is the area containing all the power pieces at the beginning of the game. There is a row of fifteen pawns encircling the palace at the start of the game. Each pawn is protected by at least one other pawn and by at least one power piece to start.

Because this is a hexagonal variant of chess, only the hexagonal spaces are part of the playing field. The twelve pentagon shaped spaces are not part of the playing area. They can be thought of as edges or obstacles, and in effect are pylons which must be circumvented.

Hey guys, I made this as a haha funny maymay version of Chess, taking some r/AnarchyChess memes and turning them into reality, so this thread was written for their audience, but this is an actually playable and absurd Chess variant, and the part at the end, where i said consider this part of the public domain, I'm totally serious about that.

If any of you have the skill to make this into a free to play website or app, go for it. I know there are sites that let you play Chess with custom pieces, but I've never heard of one that creates a totally customized placement algorithm before. I do know some computer programming, so I think I can rejigger Fairy Stockfish's version of Chess960 to play the variant, but I'm not sure.

Bongcloud420 is a game I came up with high as fuck a few years ago and once I sobered up I fixed a few problems with it.

It's like Chess960, but instead it's just completely lost its mind even harder than Bobby Fischer did. Wish I was as good as Chess as him. Instead of have the usual Chess army, you have Archbishops, which moves like a Bishop and a Knight, and Chancellors, which move like a Rook and a Knight. I didn't invent these things, the grandmaster Capablanca did. You also have Queens, and you don't know how those move, I'm not sure why you're reading this. Finally, you have the Weed Wizard, which MOVES one space diagonally, but CAPTURES like a Queen and a Knight. He's clearly smoked way too much, because he's absolutely useless earlygame, but unstoppable lategame.

Apparently, the material value of an Archbishop is 8.25 on an 8x8 board instead of Capablanca's 10x8 board, and a Chancellor is worth 8.5, and in case you've been living under a rock, a Queen is worth 9 material. I have no idea what the fuck the material value of a Weed Wizard is, you'd think its material value is 420, but apparently something that captures like a Queen and a Knight has the material value of roughly half the black chess army, so it's material value is roughly 420/12, of which the divisor seems to be approximately how many turns it seems for the THC to get out of his bloodstream. According to Bobby Fischer, which is how I play Bongcloud420, against myself, just like how he used to play against himself all the time, the value of a King is infinity, so uhh, don't lose that guy. That's really bad.

Anyway, assuming you live in America FUCK YEAH, here's the current prices of what you need, and the cheapest place to get them, as of the time of the writing, 10/27:

• A chess board. Duh. Just pick one. I use a $150 marble chess board that's I'm pretty sure you couldn't even break on purpose.

-Two half-sets of Chess Pieces. Green for the player who goes first, and whatever fucking color you want for the player who goes second. You get a bulk discount from ordering off Wholesale Chess, and it's way cheaper than ordering off their Amazon merchant, current price before taxes and shipping for all 4 half sets is $22.20.

• Some colored dice. The price range before tax (and I assume most people have FREE SHIPPING WITH AMAZON PRIME) ranges from $8.99 to $21.99+tax depending on how fancy and what colors you want, but you probably want some green ones for most of the dice you need.
• Alternatively, you could make a openoffice calc doc that just spits a board at you, and I'm going to get a new toaster soon, so I'll patch Bongcloud420 to version 4.20noscope and make one.
• A bottle of Gorilla Glue. Do NOT get this from Amazon, I got a scam watered down version of it once, the best place I've been able to find it in my local area of America is CVS for $7.99+tax.
• One of two timeclocks: The actual professional chess timeclock, a DGT3000, or a cheap Chinese crap Chess Armory Basic Timeclock. You can get these on Amazon for quite ironically, $69+tax for the lit clock, and like $20+tax for the lame clock, and there's even cheaper Chinese knockoffs of it. These things also frequently go on sale.
• An absurd amount of whatever form of whatever form of weed you prefer. Price and legality may vary by your area.

Once you have all your cool shit, take one of your extra Pawns, rip the felt off the bottom of it and then superglue it to a Rook to give it a nice hat and make your Weed Wizard.

To make an Archbishop, rip the felt off the bottom of one of your Bishops, draw a line on top of one of your horseys that move in an L shape, hold it still while making sure it's at the best 90 degree angle you can get while pressing hard for like 1 minute, and boom, now your horsey can move diagonally too with its very impressive hat. Just don't fuck up and knock it on the floor, because if it that happens, you're going to have to pause your timeclock and fix it, and that will ruin your mental game.

To make a Chancellor, rip the felt off both a Knight and a Rook, and then superglue the Knight on top of an upsidedown Rook. These two Capablanca pieces have no standard form and I think even a player with -100 elo could easily understand what they do from just looking at them.

To make a King and Queen, one of you needs to be of royal blood and marry the other one, sorry, so at least you just bought some premade ones. As for Pawns, I'm not really sure what their deal is, sometimes I wonder if they're just floating souls, because it seems like the ones on my team just float straight to Heaven, while the ones on the enemy team just descend straight to Hell.

For time control, I only play on Sativa time control, with which an awesome DGT3000, you set in custom mode to 4min:20sec with 68 seconds for 4 additional periods of 10 turns for the first 3 periods and 1 delay second in each period, because I raged when I literally had my opponent that I can't quite figure out of they exist in checkmate but didn't hit the button in time, and lost ELO, and then released patch 4.20 earlier this day. With a terrible cheap Chinese crap timeclock, the best you will be able to do is bonus time of 7 seconds.

To play on Indica time control, use 42min instead, and keep all the other periods+1 sec delay/7 sec bonus time the same. If you have programming skillz, you could make an android/iphone app with 6.9 seconds of delay time, I guess. If you want to invent some form of Hybrid time control, there are so many strains, but these are the only two of the offical Bongcloud420 rulebook.

Now, let's get into the 420 random ways the board can be set up. Roll 1d8, 1d6, and 1d4 in green, and roll 1d6 in whatever other color you picked. With the probably green dice, if you rolled 8 on 1d8, reroll. If you rolled 6 on 1d6, reroll.

First, place all your pawns on their 2nd rank, except the E file, place them on their 4th rank. Then the first thing you do is determine how high the green King is. If you rolled 1-2 on 1d4, go Ke2!? and the enemy King is even higher and moves Ke7!? If you roll 3-4, they inhaled a Snoop Dogg tier, because they go to Ke3!? and Ke6!? instead.

Next, place your Weed Wizard. If you rolled a 1, place the green ones on a1 and h1. if you roll a 7, place it on a8, and a1 will be left empty. Any other number, a8 will be left empty. Place the green Weed Wizard on however many squares to the left you rolled, skipping over the King's file, so if you roll a 2, it goes on b1, and if you roll a 7, it goes on g1.

Now, we are going to do something called a Pawn Inversion. If you rolled 1-3, take the a-c file green Pawn and move it to the 5th rank. If you roll 4-5, do it to the g-h green Pawn. The Pawn Inversion can't touch the Bongcloud. That's how high I got.

Finally, we're going to use the other color d6 to decide the rest of the army. Fill them left to right on green side, leaving the previously determined square from the d8 and the King square empty, and obviously pass over the Weed Wizard's square, as it gets filled first, with the following patterns:

1: QACAQ 2: QCACQ 3: ACQCA 4: AQCQA 5: CQAQC 6: CAQAC

Then from there, mirror everything you did for green with the other color's pieces, and you're ready to start the game. That's how there's 420 different boards. 2x7x5x6=420blazeit

If you want to study the board while you chain vape, that's up to you, but I prefer to not pay any attention at all to what I'm doing while I'm setting it up and just start the timeclock immediately.

Now, we'll get into the awesome gameplay of Bongcloud420. First of all, the pawns have the "Torpedo Pawn" rule, where they can always double move, and not only are there tons of chances to en passant, en passant is forced. If a Pawn is horizontal to an enemy Pawn after the double move, announce "forced en passant" like you're announcing "check" or "checkmate", make the en passant move for your enemy, then make another move.

You can even do this if you are in check. That's how forced the move is. The movement of the enemy pawn itself might bail you out of check. If there's somehow two different pawns to en passant, just pick one for your enemy. Also, because of the Pawn Inversion, you have a guaranteed chance of opening with a forced en passant, just make sure it won't blow up in your face immediately. If you don't know how to en passant, just google it.

As a result of forced en passant, i'm pretty sure the average material value of a pawn is still 1, because unless you make a single move and your opponent doesn't feel like capturing it for some weird reason, there's never any way to get past another pawn, until the other high material value pieces starting blowing stuff up.

Another other super awesome rule is called King Inversion, to balance out green's 1st turn advantage. On the first move of both players, if you put the enemy in Check, switch postions of the King, unless this would put yourself in Check. This is an illegal move. This is how stoned I got trying to come up with an equivalent to castling, but there are actually fringe boards where if your green opponent does a really stupid opening you can checkmate them in like 5 turns with your chad King.

The next super awesome rule is called 1000AD pawn promotion, because the modern promotion rule was invented in roughly the year 1000AD. Instead of promote a Pawn to anything you want, you can only promote it to something that's out of play. There is always at least 1 piece out of the start of the game, usually 2, and if your opponent honestly sucks this hard, if you have nothing to promote, the pawn stays there and does nothing until something of its color dies, then it immediately promotes to that piece at the start of their turn.

Here's all the rules regarding victory conditions. First of all, if for some fucked up reason you wanted to play with ELO, which I recommend you do, your base ELO is 9001. The checkmate and stalemate rules work the same for points, although the board is so lethal I've never seen a stalemate once ever, but if you manage to use forced en passant to get your opponent in check, then that's called automate, and you didn't just win the game, you actually won the game, and it counts as 2 wins.

Finally, there's pipibrickmate. I wanted this to be the way to actually actually win the game, but it turns out the hyperaccelerated bongcloud has a trivial pipibrickmate in 2 when I finally sobered up. So instead, now you're so dumb for doing that, it's the one way you can lose on purpose, so were you vaping delta-8 with lead in it or something? As for me, I just obliterated a 1000mg 85% vape cart in one day when I came up with Bongcloud420, so that's why I didn't notice the easiest strategy ever. This counts as 2 losses towards your ELO.

Here's the final rule: It is absolutely required to have this song on loop in the background while you play this game:

https://youtu.be/JcBIzuuIdOA

So that's the game. Consider this bullshit released into the public domain. I don't care. If you want to make a free to play Bongcloud420 website or app, go for it, I'd play it. Once I get my toaster, I'll make an openoffice calc sheet (why bother paying M$ anything?) with a formula that gives us actual board numbers on Bongcloud420 patch 4.20noscope.

https://preview.redd.it/wtmeklng6ywd1.png?width=705&format=png&auto=webp&s=18390f88505222c6fc0f19d40ea0ba7dc97aab15

Geodesic Chess (geo-chess-beta.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com)

https://www.reddit.com/r/geodesic_chess

https://www.reddit.com/r/5DChessPro/

Feel free to share a picture of the starting position and ill repost it here.

9x10 (promotion at rank 9):

https://vintologi.com/threads/9x10-chess-with-centaurs.1080/page-2#post-11357

10x8 (promotion at rank 8):

https://preview.redd.it/9170qqgbwrvd1.png?width=1022&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d0346f26b75badafb3cc65eff9def937f819bbb

https://preview.redd.it/pap9859hwrvd1.png?width=706&format=png&auto=webp&s=9ea4669e50149a366fd40d8aa5d53d869f152887

So couple of weeks ago, I posted an idea for a knight rework here. I have thought about it some more, and was going to edit the post with another modifier to make it more aligned with what I was originally going for (to make the knight(s) more comparable to the bishop(s) ). But I figured I may as well make a new post.

So the original idea is letting the knight move as if it took two jumps, though only in the same direction. It looks like this-

https://www.reddit.com/r/chessvariants/comments/1fs1vd9/cool_knight_rework/ for original post

(Before talking about the modifier, I just wanna mentioned that I only recently realized that this rule would have meant that you can have games which start with 1. e4 Nxe4 and nobody mentioned that lol. Needless to say, that's really not something I want to see)

...anyways, I thought about adding some conditionals to it, and this is the best version I can come up with without it becoming too complicated-

The marked squares are ones the knight cant jump to. Yes, this means the black king isnt in check, though it would have been without the modifier.

So what's going on here? Basically, treating the knights movement as two jumps; it can only move if both the 'landing squares' of each jump are clear. Yes, that means the knight cant take when 'double-jumping' and this rule can only be used to reposition.

This allows the knight to be-
* Much more useful in the endgame
* Much harder to trap

How would this piece be rated? Its actually a relatively niche ability, though still pretty powerful. My assumption is a bit stronger then a bishop. Are any other improvements possible?

View Poll

The Viking Knight jumps like the Knight, but it only captures in hammer one or several enemy pieces (it depends on the number of enemy pieces) which are on orthogonal adjacent square with the help of allied pieces that serve as anvil. The capture(s) follow(s) the principle of the "sandwich". This piece cannot capture an enemy piece if there's no allied piece that would serve as anvil.

For example: a Viking Knight is on c4; there are enemy pieces on d5, e6, f5 and e4; there are allied pieces on c5, e7, g5 and e3; the Viking Knight can capture all these pieces by jumping on e5.

P.S.: this new idea of piece comes from a game called Hnefatafl.

Hi r/chessvariants gang!

I'm excited to share an update about Omnichess after a two-year development hiatus. We've introduced several new features that I'm eager to tell you about:

• Performance Enhancements: We've optimized our chess engine code, which has led to a performance boost of over 50%!
• UI/UX Improvements: Enjoy a more streamlined and intuitive interface, along with a range of bug fixes.
• Multiple Translations: Our game is now available in French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.

To those not familiar as to what makes Omnichess so special, here's a list of our coolest features:

• 👫 Online and Local play with 2-8 player chess variants
• 🥇 Options for individual or team-based
• ⭐ Multiple board type support including square, hexagonal, and triangular boards
• ♟ A chess variant editor, which lets you create and customize your own games. Adjust everything from the number of players to board size, piece placement, movement rules, and more!
• 🕓 Asymmetric move timers

We'll be making a number of large updates over the coming months so if you're interested, please join our community at r/omnichess

You can play the game at the following locations.

• Web: https://www.omnichess.club/
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=club.omnichess
• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-variants-omnichess/id1593756511
• macOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-variants-omnichess/id1624075548?mt=12
• Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/chess-variants-omnichess/9p69n10nsxj5?rtc=1&activetab=pivot:overviewtab
• Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2009510/Omnichess_Chess_Variants/
• Linux Snapstore: https://snapcraft.io/omnichess

Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

I posted about my spherical chess variant a few weeks ago, and I got some really useful feedback. My free demo is now on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2879040/Globe_Games/

The Demo has a "Chess Solitaire" timed puzzle mode (similar to solo chess on Chess.com) and an interactive tutorial for how each piece's moves.

I'm currently working on building an engine to play against (and have steam multiplayer working), but I would really appreciate direct feedback on the pieces and movement.

Someone in the previous thread pointed out that it might be "too easy" to have insufficient material, so I ran some experiments. As far as I can tell it's impossible for a K + Q to checkmate a lone King. This means that a player must have at least three pieces (K + Q + ?) to win.

I'm looking for suggestions on whether that can be improved or adjusted. I thought about making the queen move like an amazon, or placing additional constraints on the King. Currently, I really like that the game is streamlined (rules are basically the same as conventional chess, just the grid is complex).

I figure I should wait to let people try it out and get feedback before I try rewriting the ruleset. Thanks for any feedback!

https://preview.redd.it/lh5b88rs4mtd1.png?width=1415&format=png&auto=webp&s=17541642e4719983a7f3346022b9717c0689dc58

In this variant, captured enemy pieces don't go to your hand, but to your opponent's hand. I'm thinking of calling it InsaneHouse, but maybe someone has a better idea? Thanks in advance!

You start with 16 kings, located on the first two ranks of the chessboard.

Every time a chess piece makes a move, it transforms into another piece according to a given cycle:

King > Pawn > Knight > Bishop > Rook > Queen > King

Thus, after moving a King, the King is transformed into a Pawn of the same color. After moving a Pawn, the Pawn becomes a Knight, and so on.

All chess pieces move and capture according to the FIDE Rules of Chess, except that Pawn moves only one square forward and King can be captured like any other piece.

Thus, in the game there is no concept of check as such and the king is not inviolable.

Capture is mandatory. If several pieces can be captured, the player chooses any of them.

At the end of your turn, there must be at least one king of your color on the board. If such a condition cannot be met, then you have been checkmated.

Direct link to play against the bot (no registration required): https://dagazproject.github.io/checkmate/jabberwocky.htm

More information about Jabberwocky Chess can be found here: https://www.chess.com/blog/Pokshtya/jabberwocky-chess

or here:

https://lichess.org/@/ErzyaKS/blog/jabberwocky-chess/F6dq4iA7

or here:

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/jabberwocky-chess

Crazyhouse Preset Settings

We need help finding the optimal list of necessary options for the "Crazyhouse" mode Presets in "5D Chess". Should Pieces be placed with check or without? And if yes, with check only in the present or also into the past? Is dropping a Piece with capturing an opponent's Piece allowed? How about en passant captures? Should the Pieces in hand be shared across all timelines, or should each timeline have its own set? Let's play 5D Crazyhouse and figure out what settings we want when choosing a Preset for this mode.

I don't know what name to give to a piece that moves following the example:

this piece is on e4 and it can jump and capture on d6, f6, h5, h3, f2, d2, b3 and on b5.

It can jump like a knight to the front and to the back and can jump like a camel to the sides.

Or if we're not sure, what are some games, apps, or platforms that give a lot of flexibility to create a variant, where the service stores it and makes it available indefinitely?

I suppose this also depends on what qualifies as a chess variant.

Just trying to do my due diligence. Thanks!

The rules, as stated by this Triple S Games video, are as follows:

Several Spectators create secret rules which change how the chess pieces move and interact. The players playing the game try to discover these rules as they attempt to checkmate their opponent.

Before the game begins, the Spectators decide between themselves which pieces each of them will write rules for, then each of them writes down their rules. Each spectator may only create rules for 1 piece type: for example: all the pawns. These rules may control the way a piece moves, captures, is captured, OR if it causes an effect to other pieces on the board. A piece may be given an “invoke” command which causes it to affect other pieces on the board without moving. A Spectator can combine any or all of these types of rules together for their piece and they can have a piece’s rule affect other pieces. When creating rules, it is recommended to keep it simple, concise, and specific. For example, you could write down that the king may invoke to trade places with a friendly rook.

After a spectator finishes writing a secret rule for a piece, that Spectator also gives that piece a new name for the duration of the game. These names, and the existence of any invoke commands, are announced to the players at the start of the game. After the game has started, the spectators may privately discuss how their rules interact.

On your turn, you must attempt to move or invoke one of your pieces, then the Spectator for that piece declares whether the action is legal or illegal. If it is legal move, the piece stays where it is. If an invocation is performed, then the spectator of that rule performs the action of the invocation without saying what the invocation does exactly, unless player input for a choice is needed; then it is vaguely asked. Then your turn ends.

To continue the example, a player says I invoke my king. The spectator then says pick a rook. The player picks one and the invoke is performed by the spectator without saying more.

If you perform an illegal move, then the piece is returned to its position from the start of the turn. If the invoke isn’t allowed, then it is stated and nothing happens. In the original game, your turn would then end without a legal move being performed, however, there is a variant that you can play where you continue attempting, until you perform a legal move or invoke. Decide which version you will play at the start of the game. If playing with the first option, the only exception is if you are in "check", then you can repeatedly attempt moves until you are able to get out of check. Spectators may need to say check to inform the players when their rule is causing a check. You can also play that the check rule is ignored.

The first player to checkmate their opponent wins, after which, Spectators reveal their rules.

This piece was originally based on a piece from antiquity called an Alibaba, of which the literal translation from Arabic is Bandit, but I didn't want to collide with Bishop or the Capablanca Archbishop. The Alibaba is a leaper that moves ortho or diag two squares, but for balance reasons my board, I had to remove the leaping. It was way too powerful.

Now here is the magic on how this would work in Vanilla Chess. It gets two diagonal moves, like the Ferz of antiquity, so if your opponent really messes up, it can capture two pieces. If you move a pawn in its starting position only one space, then you can move one Thief a single diag. Or, you can move two Thieves one diag. And if you're playing with the torpedo pawn rule, then you can always single move a Pawn and a Thief. And if somehow, the Lion from Shoji is involved in your variant, then you can split between them as well.

I have a rule in my game that under no circumstance can it return to its original square, as there are multiple ways to get extra moves, because I don't want there to be any way to skip your turn once the board is open and I don't want it to be able to rifle capture, but that's up to you. Also, whether or not you can en passant this thing when a Thief makes a double move is up to you somehow, there is no en passant rule in my variant because my pawns are so insane they're like cracklings in starcraft.

I have no idea how to rate the material value of this thing, because it is colorbound, gets across the board very slowly, but it has a huge threat matrix and the ability to move a single square covers the whole flaw that caused the Arabs to drop the Alibaba, it's colorbound and can't cover all color squares on its board. If it makes a single move, it can move to any square of its own color.