Dark Chess and other variants
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.
thank...
See, now there’s an idea. If the USCF is so concerned about promoting chess in America, they’ve gotta do some strip chess tournaments. They could probably fill up Madison Square Garden if they got the right girls to play. I mean, I’d go to a few of those tourneys. But just as a spectator, mind you; I’m not that good at the game.
Comment by The Mascot | 11 March 2008
Back in college, we played a drinking chess game called Suicide… Every piece had a shot value… for every capture, the loser had to take a number of shots equal to the value of the piece. Queen captures usually decided the game. Unfortunately, I have very little recollection of those daze.. or if I ever won any games or lost … I just remember the strippers… or was that some other haze?
Comment by Blunderprone | 11 March 2008
The Mascot is on to something–strip chess is only a viable game with the right players involved; for example, at the Reno Chess Club (most nights) not so much…
Comment by Wahrheit | 11 March 2008
The only problem with the idea of strip chess is the current demographics at the events seems to be heavily imbalanced to one gender… if you know what I mean.
Comment by Blunderprone | 12 March 2008
@Blunderprone: Yeah, baby! That’s my type of party! We used to do something similar where we’d have a drunk free-for-all sumo tournament. The guy who did the worst was forced to crack his own shell, make eggnog out of his yolk, then drink it.
It was kinda foul come to think of it.
@Wahrheit: I went to a Chess Club with Donnie once and there were these two old white guys and a fat black guy. Not appetizing (I had to rely on getting a Sourdough Jack to satisfy my appetite.)
Comment by The Mascot | 12 March 2008