One who dubs himself the Pathology Guy has an amazing page with scores of chess variants, each with a computer opponent to try it. It would take days to try all the variants, but here’s a few I found the most interesting out of the small percentage I experimented with:

Dark Chess: You can only see the squares your pieces are allowed to move to. Knights can be really annoying. In many ways the darkness is an equalizer, certainly more than making up for the weakness of the Java chess engine. Dark Chess II prevents you from moving into check, a luxury not afforded by the first one!

Soccer Chess: Use pieces to kick a ball into a goal. There’s no pawns and no capturing.

Strong Pawn Chess: Instead of their normal movements, pawns act as a weaker version of the pieces behind them in the initial setup. For example, Bishop Pawns move one square diagonally. The center Pawns are very strong and move like Kings–don’t underestimate them!

Unfortunately, the Strip Chess variants are not working at this time.

Week 4 Results

Week 5 Matchups

Standings

		 dnk Pol Whr Tac cl  l3r Tom LEP RR  gor
1  drunknknite   xxx --- --- --- 1.0 --- --- 1.0 1.0 1.0 4.0
2  Polly         --- xxx 1.0 --- --- 0.0 1.0 1.0 --- --- 3.0
3  Wahrheit      --- 0.0 xxx 1.0 --- --- --- 1.0 1.0 --- 3.0
4  Tacticus      --- --- 0.0 xxx --- 1.0 1.0 --- --- 1.0 3.0
5  chessloser    0.0 --- --- --- xxx 1.0 0.0 --- --- 1.0 2.0
6  l3rucewayne   --- 1.0 --- 0.0 0.0 xxx --- --- 1.0 --- 2.0
7  Tom           --- 0.0 --- 0.0 1.0 --- xxx --- --- --- 1.0
8  Liquid Egg    0.0 0.0 0.0 --- --- --- --- xxx 1.0 --- 1.0
9  Rocky Rook    0.0 --- 0.0 --- --- 0.0 --- 0.0 xxx --- 0.0
10  gorckat      0.0 --- --- 0.0 0.0 --- --- --- --- xxx 0.0

Week 4 was upset week: chessloser Jokered l3rucewayne, and Wahrheit out-tacticked (sp?) Tacticus.

Just to complete the cheesy synonym for “defeat” thing, Polly scrambled Liquid Egg Product and drunknknite drunk Rocky Rook.

Has anyone heard from gorckat? I suspect he has some stuff going on in life that’s preventing him from chessing, noting his blog hasn’t been updated in a few weeks. Wherever he is, I wish him the best.

And, oh joy, I’ll get to play a furious* Tacticus this week. At least I’ll be White. And the tough half of my schedule will be overwith.

Note on the crosstable: I haven’t calculated any systematic tiebreakers, so the placement’s based on head-to-head matchups first, then randomness.