Josh Green Presents
Chess Variants
Congratulations on your purchase of the classic game system“ Chess Set,” abbreviated here as“ CS2.” Although your system probably came with“ Chess,” many other games have been developed for it. I suspect you are familiar with“ Suicide Chess”( in which the goal is to lose all of your pieces) and“ Bughouse”( which requires that you connect two CS2s together and, in its best form, requires the“ Chess Clock Expansion Pack”). Here I’ ll describe some of the other available CS2 titles, most of which are discussed on The Chess Variant Pages( www. chessvariants. com).
Extinction Chess
“ Extinction Chess,” invented by R. Wayne Schmittberger in 1985, is very similar to Chess; only the goal has changed. In this game, the object is simply to capture all the pieces of one type. For example, if you lose your only Queen, both of your Bishops, or all eight of your pawns, you lose the
game. Promoted pawns join the species of whatever they promote to. Don’ t promote your last pawn( you’ ll lose) unless the move involves capturing the last piece of some type, in which case you’ ll win. There is nothing special about check or checkmate( though you don’ t want to lose your only King), so castling into or through check is perfectly legal. Similarly, since the King isn’ t particularly special, it is legal to promote pawns to additional Kings.
When playing this game, be careful which minor pieces you trade. For example, if you are going to trade one of your Knights, make sure the other one can’ t be hunted down.
In this variant, the games tend to be relatively short, and tactics tend to predominate( so this is good practice for Chess). In particular, decisive forks are very common, so pay attention!
Monster Chess
“ Monster Chess” begins as in this diagram
with White to move. The goal is to capture the King. In Chess, White would be hopelessly lost here( Black could force checkmate) so to even things up, we allow White to make two moves on every turn. On a given turn, White’ s first move may be into check, but certainly his second move shouldn’ t leave his King attacked.
The wK can deliver checkmate on its own( for example, with the wK safely on e6 and the bK on e8, White threatens KxK with his two moves and Black has no defense), so Black must be very careful not to let the wK get too close. Generally, White tries to use the pawns to