If you want to explore something a bit different than international chess, I’d highly recommend taking a look at Xiangqi (Chinese Chess). It’s a wide-open and more unpredictable game, focusing more on tactics than strategy.
You’ll notice some interesting features, starting with the board itself. The board is considered to be 9×10, since the pieces are placed on the line intersections. In the middle there’s a river that affects gameplay, and each side has a 3×3 palace out of which their Generals (king) cannot exit.
The Red side I’ve always seen colored as red, but the Black side can be black, green, or blue. In fact, green’s been used in about a quarter or third of the sets I’ve seen.
The pieces are represented by a Chinese character, and sometimes, different words are used for different sides! This set is unusual in that most of the time, the Cannons (located on the rank behind the pawns) usually use slightly different characters. My set does have a picture representation on the back, but it’s not helpful in the long-run because most sets don’t have anything except the Chinese!
The Cannon is a Rook-like piece that moves like a Rook, but to capture, it’s required to jump over exactly one other piece (friend or foe).
One of the most striking and important aspects is the lack of a solid rank of pawns. There are only five, which means there’s a lot of wide-open action pre-made for the Rooks and Cannons. “Pawn structure” is meaningless, and according to various sources, there’s not even a real struggle for control of the center. (If you recall, in chess, the Rook is the only piece that can control as many squares from the corner and side as from the center.)
There’s even a “fool’s mate” in Chinese Chess that’s four moves long (I lost to it my very first game), where both Cannons are lined up on the same file as the general.
Some links:
Peter Donnelly gives an excellent introduction to Chinese Chess here.
Normally, I don’t like linking Wikipedia, but their Xiangqi article is very well done.
A lot of basic strategy and tactics here. The English is imperfect, but comprehensible.
This guy has a freeware Xiangqi program Qianhong (According to the site: The name Qianhong (“chyen hOng”) means “Light Red”. It is a play on the name of IBM’s “Deep Blue” Chess computer and refers to this program’s weak computer AI.)
Here’s a variation on regular chess I’ve recently tried and enjoyed: simply increasing the size of the board.
I have a board for “Millennium Chess” that’s 15 files by 8 ranks. (See here.) Now, Millennium isn’t a terrific game in its own right, but if you play regular chess on the Millennium board, things can be very interesting, depending on the starting positions of the two armies.
I’ve played regular chess on the Millennium board with the armies facing one another in conventional fashion, “centered” on the e through l files. Making use of the extra maneuvering room is quite a challenge. I’d like to try it with the two armies offset by one file, so that each side starts off with an unopposed pawn, but I haven’t yet had the opportunity. Give it a whirl!
The weirdest “rule” to me is how the two kings can’t face each other and actually can’t move past that little 3×3 box
@Francis: For some reason, the spam filter didn’t like your post, so I had to release it. (That’s happened twice now in a week!)
Millennium Chess (as given) seems like it would take FOREVER, and even the thought of starting a game makes me blanch. Your idea is interesting, though, with the offset formation. Did you experience any sort of “tunnel vision”? In other words, we’re so used to playing on the 8×8 board, it may be harder to see moves using the extra space.
I don’t spend much time on variations–I already have enough problems mastering standard chess–but they can be fun. If you can find someone to play with.
@Allen: The palace thing kinda makes sense, but the facing each other is really odd. You have these kings who can’t leave their own palace, but if they see the other king…presto, they can teleport over to the other palace and assassinate. It does lead to some interesting mates, though.
I’ve found it interesting that there are the elephants that can’t cross the river and the uh.. palace guards? that can only move diagonally to protect the king.
I guess the idea is that the kings should never be able to see each other.
Did you find it odd that the knights move in a similar fashion? Although a knight isn’t allowed to jump over a piece.
Maybe the elephants are just too fat to cross it. 🙂 In Korean chess, which uses the same exact pieces as Chinese chess, the elephants can cross the river, and there are some other rules which apparently make it even more “wild” than Xiangqi (as compared to Western chess). But I’ve never played it.
In Japanese chess, the Knight also has the same move, except only the two directions moves most “forward” (2 up, 1 left or right) until it reaches a promotion zone.
All these games, Western chess, Xiangqi, Korean chess, and Shogi are similar enough so it’s clear they developed from one another or a common ancestor.
Well, I always saw it as an emphasis on defense.
The elephants and the two guards are defensive units… I mean, imagine if the bishop in Western Chess could not cross the half line