Not as much as challenging him to a game!
Maybe all of the posters in this thread should have a tournament, and the winner gets to challenge Cecil!
Imagine being able to boast (when he doesn’t show) “Cecil wouldn’t dare face me in a chess match. He knows I’d kick his butt!” 
Fleeing
A variation we would play at school (not sure on the name, blind something, I think)
Three boards were set up, black would have one, white another and a referee the third.
White and black could not see each others board and so could only guess the moves of their opponent
White would make a move,
The referee would inform him weather it was legal or not
If it was legal the referee would update his board, if not then white would take another move,
Black would then move in the same way
After a playing a few games, the tactics would get quite complex, with the general options of a sneak attack, normal play or all out defence. It’s a long time since I played this, but I can remember that it was very popular along with 5min chess and suicide chess (if you could take an opponents piece, you had to).
Is this played anywhere else?
Indeed it is: Kriegspiel
Actually, I have seen a variation of this variation. When I was little and my Dad first taught me how to play, he showed me a “trick” move where he would, as his first turn, move both rook pawns forward (either 1 or 2) spaces simultaneously. He wasn’t the only player I’ve seen do it, but he’s the only one I can recall.
(and he wasn’t cheating. He used to play without his queen, bishops, and knights and still beat me handily until a few years later. heh.)
I clearly recall one of Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories in which an American army officer is captured in 1950’s Korea along with members of his staff and (rather implausibly) the officer’s wife and twin sons. The 16 captives are forced into a chess game with their cruel jailor in which each American stands in for one of the white pieces and is shot if ‘captured’. The story ends with the officer having to sacrifice one of his sons (standing in for a knight) in order to win the game and save the rest of them. For the life of me (as it were) I can’t remember the title or the anthology it appeared in.
A few years ago, my sister gave me a chess variant called “Ministers” which is played on a 9x9 board with the king in the center file flanked by two queens (originally called, as the game literature claims, Ministers). All four bishops end up on the black squares and castling involves moving the king three spaces instead of two. The game is interesting at first, but since the board is now 17 squares larger, it isn’t congested enough to have any really desperate conflicts. The games are longer without being more interesting. Standard chess resists change probably becuase it has just the right level of complexity to challenge but not overwhelm.
One of these days, I’ll play “wraparound”, in which the pieces can go off the edge of the board and reappear on the other side.
A couple of chess variants invented by a friend and I while at school:
(1) “Cylindrical Chess.” The two sides of the board are considered to be joined; pieces can move off one side of the board onto the other. (I understand this isn’t an original invention; but it was new to us.)
(2) “Spherical Chess.” Basically an extension of Cylindrical Chess. The two ends of the board are also considered to be joined. Because this causes certain problems (it puts the kings on adjacent squares!), the game is played on a 14x8 board instead of 8x8. Each player has 16 pawns: a row on either side of his pieces. The 14x8 board gives 4 empty rows between rows of pawns in either direction at the beginning of the game.
Call me a nerd, but I feel obliged to point out that the second variation mentioned by MacSpon isn’t properly spherical, but toroidal: On a sphere, if you get to the North Pole and keep on going, you’re not at the South Pole all of a sudden.
It does raise some questions, though: I presume that the pawns on both sides move in the direction away from their pieces, and towards the others (so half of them move “backwards”)? Do they ever promote? Can you ever have two pawns of the same color travelling in opposite directions in the same portion of the board, and if so, how do you keep track of which one’s going which way? Is there any limit on the number of times that a given piece can cross boundaries in a turn (if not, a queen or bishop could reach any same-colored space instantly on a clear board)? The cylindrical version (which seems to be the same as the wraparound version mentioned by Bryan Ekers) seems a lot more playable, but even there I suspect that there’s some strategic wrinkles from having a player’s two rooks right next to each other.
I’ve come across another variant in an old issue of Games Magazine that, like many of the variants, makes the chess essentiually unplayable becuase it destroys the value of a slow strategic build, replacing it with out-of-left-field ‘gotcha’ moves.
A pawn’s power is determined by what rank is is currently on. If a pawn reaches the fifth rank (i.e. the opponent’s side of the board) it can move and capture as a knight. If it is on the sixth, a bishop. The seventh, a rook. the eight a Queen. The pawn does not promote if it reaches the eight rank, but its power is solely a function of its current location. If it moves off a power rank, its power is adjusted accordingly. The pawns can also move back to the first rank if bishop, rook or queen power allows it, though they must now move four spaces forward as normal to recapture lost glory.
The game is best played by nerd types who occasionally get a burst of overwhelming self-confidence but come crashing back to earth. Isn’t it interesting how chess can work on so many philosophical levels?
Chronos –
Actually, yes, now that you mention it, “toroidal chess” is a better name. “Spherical” was what I originally called it; my partner at the time suggested “toroidal” was better, and I eventually agreed with him. Typically, after all these years I’d forgotten all but my original version. 
Yes, each player has two rows of pawns, which move in opposite directions. Pawns which reach the other player’s “pieces” row are promoted as usual. This makes it impossible to have same-coloured pawns moving in opposite directions on the same section of the board (one of them would have been promoted on the way).
As for the boundary-crossing thing, I believe we eventually decided that a piece could not move more than 7 squares horizontally or 13 squares vertically; though now I come to think about it again, a better rule would be that you can’t cross a horizontal or vertical boundary more than once.
Don’t forget the spherical chess game that appears briefly on a computer screen at the beginning of “Star Trek IV” as Spock takes a battery of intelligence and memory tests.
He wins, by the way. What a guy.
Just wanted to pop in and say that Kriegspiel is one hell of a lot of fun. My friends and I also refer to it as Battleship Chess, since you’re playing without initial knowledge of the other person’s pieces.
DRY, SDP, Loren–have you played it?
I haven’t, but I have played Feudal, an Avalon Hill game which is similar to Chess, except you can move all your pieces once per turn (makes “discovered attacks” a bit more menacing).
Nope.Hey, let’s not forget the most famous chess variant, 3D chess from Star Trek! Has anyone ever tried to play this? It seems to be pretty silly.
I have played Martian Chess a few times with my brother. It was pretty stupid.
And I’ve seen four-player chess sets in game shops. Don’t know how it would work, since three players could mate one any time.
How about switching the opening positions of bishops and knights? I don’t know what you’d call this variant, but I’v heard of it several times, the authors claiming it would improve the game, but I don’t remember what it was called or their reasoning.
Wait, I just had a 3D idea! Cube Chess! You play in an 8x8x8 matrix! You could do it with 8 boards all set up normally. Pawns can only advance in one dimension, but other pieces can move up and down between boards. First person to lose all 8 kings loses.
I have one of those four-player chess sets, but lacking sufficient players, I’ve only ever played it two-on-two, with each player controlling two opposing armies. Played this way, the only major strategic difference is the value of the knights: The knight in the corner near your opponent suddenly becomes much more powerful, and the one in the far corner much less.
The cube chess is an interesting idea, but seems rather unwinnable: You might be able to capture the first few kings with fork attacks, but you’d need to bring overwhelming force to bear to immobilize the last one. Best I can figure, it’d take at least two queens or three rooks and a king, if you can get the poor guy up against a wall, and it’d probably take twice that number to push him to the wall from the middle of the board. It’d also take annoyingly long to get anything resembling piece development.
There are two main four-handed chess games. In one, played on an 8X8 board with four 3X8 extensions:
Opposite players are partners.
Pawns just reverse direction when reaching the partner’s back row. They must capture their way to an opponent’s back row to be promoted.
A checkmated king merely causes the player to lose his turn until rescued by his partner. Both partners must be checkmated for victory.
The other, a very ancient Indian form based on the original Indian rules, is played all against all on an 8X8 board.
Each player has only a king, an elephant (ancestor of the bishop), a knight, a rook, and four pawns.
The elephant moves one square diagonally or one square forward.
Pawns do not have opening double moves.
The initial setup is swastika-wise.
I was just thikning this would be so[ cool to play. Then I thought about it more fully for a few minutes and realized some of the tactical disadvantages, mainly in the endgame.
In 2-D chess, it’s possible to mate with only Queen/King, and very easy to mate with R/R/K or Q/R/K. This is because in a system with only two degrees of freedom, each rook and Queen cuts off an entire rank and an entire file. Two rooks can advance two ranks at a time, cutting off all escape for the enemy king.
In 3-D chess, this wouldn’t be possible. A rook cuts off a rank, file, and a column, but none of these actually cut off escape for the enemy king. In an absolutely perfect situation, I think you’d need six rooks or queens to mate–possibly more.
I think draws would be far too common in this sort of game. There are too many places to run. I bet this is also the case with the Air FOrce versus the Navy or the Army.
LL
Can’t say that I have, though I’ve seen it played.
In fact, if your opponent doesn’t have any other pieces to get in the way, in “normal” chess it’s even pretty easy to mate with just a king and rook, and possible (but not so easy) with king and two bishops.
I guess in cube chess, it would depend on whether kings (and queens!) are allowed to move one space on the square root of three diagonals, in addition to the square root of two ones.
Chronos, I’m not following you.
Let’s see. We could make kings easier to take by not allowing them to take diagonal diagonals. You can move regularly on your current board. Or you can move straight up or down. But really, we should preserve symmetry, so there is no up and down.
OK, restrict moves to one plane, defined however the user likes. That means diagonals, but not simultaneous diagonals on two planes.