Editing Chess (section)

== Variants ==

Chess is nothing but a huge ripoff of older and cooler games (Shatranj, Chess with elephants... [[Derp|which for some reason are weaker than the modern Knight]]) but has still managed to give birth to a few amusing variants.  One is commonly called "Bughouse" (like that has to do with anything) or "4 player chess".  Most people cry witchcraft at this point, but it actually works.  Bughouse is two teams playing against each other so that one member of each team is white and the other is black.  (It's racist but what can you do?)  Every time your partner takes a piece he hands it to you.  Every turn you have you can either move a piece that's already on the board or drop that captured piece on any unoccupied square.  Yes, this makes surprise butt sex possible through chess.  By playing this way you can annoy your opponent for hours by dropping pawns all over the place as long as you have a partner with half a brain.  Usually Bughouse is played on a very limited clock because no one wants to watch slow butt sex.   

WARNING: Do not attempt Bughouse unless you are actually good at chess or you are likely to break your brain.  A game does not get to be called Bughouse because it is played by the sane.

There are also a variety of 3D chess versions but only [[Star Trek|Trekkies]] know how to play them, so nobody cares. An interesting (in a mind-bendingly weird sort of way) variant is [[Timecube Chess]], in which chess is played in the past, future, and four simultaneous presents.

Now if you paid attention to what you just read, you may have guessed that western chess came from a much older (and very different) indian version. And that indian version did not just spawn a few variants in Europe but in eastern Asia as well. One well-known version is '''Shogi''' or japanese chess. It has two-sided pieces, a promotion system that [[FAIL|arguably makes some pieces less interesting once promoted]], a supply/capture system and some more subtleties that make [[weeaboo|some]] say that it is superior to all other versions of chess, but all in all, it's not really that exciting. Like most things in Japan, especially [[mahjong|overly complicated games that are not role-playing games]], it is considered [[serious business]]. As in, dedicated cable TV channels, public tournaments and scouting for players in elementary school serious business. Unlike most classic board games without luck, including normal chess and [[Go]] for all but the largest board sizes, Shogi has not yet been "solved": It is still possible for (the best) human players to beat AI players.  The ability to return captured pieces to play means that shogi victories tend to build to a steamroll ending.  The outcome of the game hinges on coming out ahead on a string of tactical exchanges in order to achieve overall strategic advantage in pieces.

Another variant is Xiangqi or chinese chess. There is a promotion system as well, plus the game has elephants, chariots that player call cars or tanks nowadays, catapults or cannons, your <s>king</s> {{BLAM|'''*BLAM!*'''None shall taint the name of the Holy Emperor by putting him in a game!}} {{BLAM|'''*RE-BLAM!*'''The emperor is a coward and is holding the glorious revolution of the people back!}} general has two personal guards, each side has a fortress and there is a river in the middle of the battlefield. Much like western chess, all these elements are not enough to make it awesome because all of them are held back by the rules and by some logical flaws. The elephants cannot cross the river and have a stupid movement pattern so they can only be used in defense and have only seven possible positions on the board making them easy to threaten. At the end of the day, your two elephants are just trying to protect each other. The two guards cannot leave the fortress, meaning that they have only five possible positions on the board and are pretty useless. Firing the catapult [[derp|moves it to the destination of the projectile]] [[wat|and you can only fire it if there is something between it and its target.]] The promotion system only applies to pawns and the horse has the same movement pattern as the knight but cannot jump over other units. Since there is no equivalent of the bishop and queen (which means in modern terms, the 'king' would be called a 'monarch' or the 'chief executive', democratically, the 'President' or 'Prime Minister' or for extremes, the Supreme Soviet or Duce) the car (which moves exactly like the rook) and the catapult (that has a pretty retarded movement pattern) are the only pieces that can really help you control the board. Xiangqi also has loads of variants including one with four players, supplies and no river (meaning that the elephants can finally be useful), a version played mostly in Hong Kong that is pretty similar to [[Stratego]], one based on the Three Kingdoms war for three players... Xiangqi is not that different from western chess in that the game is not as awesome as it sounds, and the general is the central piece of the game and is completely useless unless you are a manly man and decide to move your general out of the fortres and checkmate with him. That tactic is called feijiang and contrary to popular belief, does not translate to "flying general" but is chinese for "fuck you".

There is a korean variant of it called Janggi which is nearly identical save for a few things that makes it a bit more interesting : the general/king starts at the center of the castle rather than the back edge ; players place their pieces in turn, one by one because they are allowed the switch the position of the horse and the elephant giving the green (equivalent of white) player the advantage of starting but the red (equivalent of black, duh) player the advantage of reacting to the other guy's choice of where to put his elephants ; the pawns don't get promoted and can move sideways from the beginning ; the catapult [[derp|can only fire AND move if there is a piece in front of it]] ; the rules for stalemate are a bit different ; and most importantly, there is no river meaning you can use the elephants offensively. The biggest difference though is that while xiangqi is alive and well and played in China plus south-east Asia plus by the diaspora from these areas, janggi is mostly played for money by old people while everyone watching bets on the winner, and nobody outside of korean retirement homes gives a shit about it, not even the growing number of koreaboos. Too bad, it's a nifty alternative.

There is also a thai variant that resembles western chess and is actually more interesting, but nobody cares about it.

=== Modern variants ===

Among the more common things some game designers do is try to "fix" various flaws in chess (usually the reliance in top level play of memorizing the opening playbook, and the tendency to stalemate at the endgame) or expand it in some way, by making their own variant. There are many hundreds of these; to give you a general taste of what these look like, here are some notable ones:

* Many, many attempts to make a three-dimensional chess.
* Many, many attempts to make three or four player chess.
* '''Fisher Random Chess''', by '''that''' Bobby Fisher, which randomizes the starting positions.
* '''Grand Chess''', which makes the board 10x10, adds two Queen-equivalent pieces, and removes Castling in an mildly elegant way.
** (There are a large number of 10x8 variants that add two pieces that Grand Chess evolved out of (most notably, '''Capablanca Chess''', designed by '''that''' Capablanca), but Grand Chess is probably more popular, as it adds an element of space missing in most chess variants.)
* '''Marseilles Chess''', in which every move after the first is a double move (that is, you can move one piece twice, or two pieces once).
* '''Hexagonal Chess''', played on a Hexagonal board. There are several versions, that usually differ only by the starting setup and pawn movements.
* '''Circular Chess''', played on a circular board.
* '''Bughouse Chess''', mentioned above, in which two teams of two play, and can place captured pieces from their teammate's opponent on the board.
* '''Alice Chess''', the "other" two board game, in which you change boards each time you move.
* '''Anti-King Chess''', which adds an "Anti-King" to each side, in front of the other side's King's Pawn; if your Anti-King is not in check, you lose.
* '''Ultima''', (not to be confused with '''that''' [[Ultima]]) in which every piece but the King and Pawns is replaced by a piece that moves like a Queen, but captures uniquely--including one that doesn't capture at all, but merely completely immobilizes enemy pieces adjacent to it--and the Pawns have their own replacement that "merely" moves like a Rook.
* '''Maharajah and the Sepoys''', in which White has the ultrapowerful Maharajah, which moves like a Queen or a Knight, but only that, and Black has the regular chess army with slightly weaker pawns. Among skilled players, Black always wins, but the variant is useful in teaching Chess strategy.
* '''Kreigspiel''', in which you can't see your opponent's pieces. Requires a referee.
* '''Martian Chess''', the [[Icehouse]] chess thing covered in our [[Icehouse]] article. [[Icehouse]].
* '''Arimaa''', of interest only because it was designed to be "hard" for computer players to handle. Eventually, somebody made a computer program that could reliably beat the best human players. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
* '''"Chess 2: The Sequel"''', made by people who've made a career out of trying to add random elements and fighting-game logic to board games and otherwise only notable for its preposterously ambitious name.
* '''Chess Boxing''', which alternates rounds of boxing with rounds of Blitz Chess (that is, chess with very aggressive timer).
* '''[[The Duke]]''': Shogi crossed with Concentration of all things, pieces flip on move changing their moves.  Actually a pretty clever game but absurdly complex to actually play.
* '''5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel''', An evil sadistic version of chess in which pieces can be sent back in time creating multiple timelines that are all played on simultaneously.