My favorite “alternate” version involves two seperate (normal) boards and four players. The boards are set up in opposite directions, and each physical “side” is allied. One ally would play white, the other ally would play black. Each game would be played at its own pace, regardless of how far “ahead” you got of the other board.
As each partner captures pieces on their board, they hand it over to their partner. Since each player plays the opposite color of their partner, they can use the piece that their teammate captured. This piece can be placed on any free space on the board with two restrictions: It cannot be used to put the king in check, and a pawn cannot be placed on the eighth row (and therefore be promoted to queen). This placement is in lieu of a piece movement. When one player is in checkmate, both players of that team lose.
Obviously, this leads to some interesting situations. Placing pawns on the seventh row can be devestating (they become queens by advancing one row), so each player tries to keep an intact line of pawns on their end of the board to prevent this. In some circumstances, its worth giving up a queen to capture one of the blocking pawns. Whenever we play, by the way, we tilt the pawn to indicate a queen – you don’t substitute in anything. It is theoretically possible to have 18 queens – the 16 pawns, plus the two queens of one color. Checkmate is extremely hard – they can block with a piece (if they don’t have any, they are required to wait until their teammate captures one, so they can put one down to block!). The game takes an extremely long time for those not experienced, but is very fun. It can also be played with two players, each one playing on both boards. I (and a friend who also does it a lot) can complete a game like this in about 30 minutes, when we move quickly. Of course, certain sets of moves are pretty much scripted, because you can’t do anything else without losing outright.
I have Feudal somewhere, but my copy didn’t have instructions, just the divider that shows how the pieces move, so I worked out some rules based on that and the blurb on the back of the box.
I read about a neat variant of chess, someone linked to a page on it at somethingawful.com but I can’t find it now - anyway, in this version each playing piece is also a shot glass, and they hold varying amounts of alcohol based on the value of the piece - a pawn would hold less than your typical shot glass, while the queen would hold a lot more. Whenever you take a piece you have to drink it, that way if you start getting ahead you get hammered, which balances play.
Years ago I tried to design a three-player version of chess that would have been on a triangular board, but it proved difficult to define the moves for some of the pieces.
EnderW24, yes yes yes yes! I just love Bughouse, but I didn’t know anyone else had ever heard of it, and I had NO idea it was “gaining legitimacy.” I’ve been playing this game for years, since high school, it’s awesome. I was just waiting for someone to post about it to this thread. We rarely played with a clock, we’d just beat up anyone who was being obnoxious by taking too long, although we did have some rather interesting games that resulted from one board being way ahead of the other.
Psi Cop, interesting commentary, but, uh, read the thread before you post to it… heh.
I played a variant where one player gets an extra 8 pawns, while the other gets an extra queen. Can’t remember how exactly they did that, but I remember playing it and it seemed balanced.
Bughouse is very cool. Another one we used to play a lot is monster chess. White has the normal setup. Black has only the king and 4 center pawns. While goes first, and black gets two moves for every white move.
Not really a variation of course, but speed chess is a lot of fun where you put 5 minutes on the clock for each player.
White Lightning, it is indeed gaining legitimacy. I seriously doubt it will be as big as real chess, but who knows? At this year’s SuperNationals (one word…weird), they had a bughouse tournament before the real tournament began. Personally I never liked playing it during the tournament season because it’s such a warped game, it skews your view of real chess and you can make some serious mistakes if you’re not careful.
I once saw a book at Barnes and Nobel about a bunch of different chess variations. Don’t remember the title though.
Most of the above variants have been published (Cambridge University Chess Club hold an annual tournament where the winner of each game has to drink a pint of beer).
There was also a 3 player game published, but it wasn’t successful.
Here’s one chess problemists invented:
Madrasi Chess:
Any chessmen that can capture each other are paralysed. They cannot move, capture or give check. This includes Kings and pawns.
So after 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Nf3xe5, Black cannot recapture, since both knights are paralysed. However he can play 3. … d7-d6 and take the White Knight at his leisure.
It’s a good game to even out different strengths of players, since the board often becomes blocked, and you have to manouevre round the pawns.
I assume you all know about Zillins of Games, right?
I’d be remiss in not mentioning it, and I’d probably be chastised for linking to it. (It’s a thing you can buy, so a link would be an ad, although there is a completely functional free download.) You can probably guess where to find it, though.