r/chessvariants

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This is a weird "teamwork" chess.

A Stockfish engine fights for you, making the strongest move every turn (same for opponent's SF).

Here's the twist: The win condition is 3-check, but Stockfish doesn't know.

That's where you step in - before your SF makes its move each turn, you deploy a piece on the board. It can be your piece to strengthen position, or an opponent's piece to bait Stockfish into check.

More detailed rule: Pieces can not be deployed at square where it can directly attack opponent's piece. The farthest rank where you can deploy piece is the farthest rank you "occupy". Pawn is limited to 8.

Think you really understand Stockfish? Come prove it. I'd love to see the tactics people come up with.

Currently local 1v1, while playing both side solo is also highly recommended.

Try it here.

Game my 7 year old has invented and wanted to post.

Rules: Four black pawns are set up in the middle of the board and are surrounded by duplos on each side. In each corner the pawns castle is guarded by the kings and queens.

In each of the cardinal directions, there are two white pawns. Each player controls the pawns on opposite sides of the board (e.g. one player controls the North and South pawns, and the other player controls the East and West pawns). Pawns can move and take in all directions.

The queens and the kings each take 4 hits to defeat, and after each hit the pawn must return to its starting place. Only after all the kings and queens have been defeated, can the white pawns enter the castle to take the black pawns.

The game ends when all the black pawns have been taken! (It’s a cooperative game)

The Basic Principle Behind Grindvakt

Grindvakt is a chess-like board game that, at least for now, uses many familiar chess pieces and movement patterns. However, that is not where the game is meant to stop. Grindvakt is played on a 9×9 board, with two opposing rows of seven pieces each facing one another.

Currently, there is one playable Patron Deck: the King Patron, consisting of 7 Pawns, 2 Rooks, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, and 1 King. However, this is only the beginning. Additional Patron Decks are already in development, including the Queen Patron, Prince Patron, and Shadow King Patron.
In Grindvakt, Patron Decks are not mixed or drafted. Both players begin the game with the same pieces and the same starting formation, ensuring that the focus remains on strategy and the decisions made during the game.

To keep the testing phase focused on the core gameplay, familiar chess pieces were deliberately chosen for the first Patron Deck. Their existing movement patterns provide a familiar foundation, while a few carefully chosen modifications adapt them to Grindvakt’s unique objective.
The Objective

The goal of Grindvakt is to pass through the opponent’s Gate.

Each player has an additional field directly beyond the center of their backline. This is the opponent’s Gate. A piece may only enter the Gate by moving vertically forward, meaning that simply reaching the Gate is not enough — the piece must be able to move through it and leave the board.

This creates a very different objective from chess. While capturing opposing pieces remains an important part of the game, eliminating the opponent’s army is not the goal. Instead, players must create openings, protect their own Gate, and find a way through the opponent’s formation.

For some pieces, passing through the Gate is considerably more difficult — or even impossible — due to their movement patterns. This makes positioning, cooperation between different pieces, and choosing which pieces to send into the attack crucial parts of Grindvakt.

The first Patron Deck is currently being tested through actual games.
The rules are still being refined, and further Patron Decks and pieces are in development.

After a great deal of tinkering, testing, and refining, I'm excited to finally share Kumulus with you.

Kumulus is a chess variant I developed for a compact 7×7 board.

The unique twist is that captured pieces are not simply removed from the game. Instead, they transform, changing their form and strength.

This creates constantly evolving tactical possibilities, where every decision can shift the balance of power on the board.

The objective remains familiar: checkmate your opponent's king. The path to victory, however, is entirely new.

If you enjoy innovative strategy and board games, I would greatly appreciate your support on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kumulus-chess/kumulus-an-innovative-chess-variant-with-new-forms-of-play

If you would like to try Kumulus before supporting the project, feel free to click on the link in the comments.

It's for a test app, so you can experience the game for yourself and see if it appeals to you.

I'm thinking about running small prize tournaments for ChessLuck's Luck Mode.

In Luck Mode, each player chooses a real move and a fake move, so simply following Stockfish isn't enough. This could make engine cheating less effective than in traditional chess.

Would you play in a Luck Mode tournament with prizes?

https://chessluck.com

Hi! I’m the developer of Shift Chess, a chess variant I’ve been working on for a while, and I thought this would probably be the most appropriate place to share it.

The basic idea is simple: alongside normal chess moves, you can spend your turn to shift an entire row or column of the board by one square.

That one rule changes things much more than I originally expected. Pieces can suddenly be brought into or out of attack, lines can open or disappear without any piece moving normally, and the geometry of the position itself becomes something you have to think about.

I eventually turned the variant into a full game, with:

• online multiplayer
• AI opponents
• puzzles
• local analysis
• a puzzle editor
• several customizable rule variants
• notation support for recording positions and games

There’s currently a free demo on Steam, so if the idea sounds interesting, you can try it here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4746450/

The full release will also include a Transformer-based AlphaZero-style AI, trained specifically for Shift Chess — I’m funding the training myself.

I’d especially love to hear what people who already play or design chess variants think about the rules. If you find any strange interactions, broken strategies(well at least my AI didn't find it), or just interesting positions, please tell me!

(sorry I don't use English, this post is translated by AI)

https://botgambit.com/bots

Built a website where chess bots have weird rules. I love playing the regular bots but it gets dull over time without much variation.

For example, one bot starts at 3200 Elo but loses 100 Elo after every move. You’re still playing normal chess, but each bot’s rule adds another dimension to the game and forces you to approach it differently.

Everything is 100% free, no signup, no ads, nothing.

Each bot has 3 difficulty levels so that every player can find a reasonable challenge.

Some other cool features:

• Leaderboards that are validated by the server for integrity and a simple anti-cheat
• Daily challenges (like wordle but bots)
• Analysis + Game Review
• Ability to create your own bots (with your own custom rules) and share them!
• A spectate mode where you can watch two bots battle each other
• Full mobile and desktop support
• Dark Theme

I’d love for you to try it and let me know which bot is your favorite—or what weird bot rule I should add next. Hope you enjoy it! 👍

Hi r/chessvariants! Solo dev here working on Chess Fantasy, my first game: classic chess played inside a 3D fantasy world you customize. It's in free alpha on itch, and the big 0.2 update just landed (full UI overhaul, saved settings, tuned AI difficulties): https://chess-fantasy.itch.io/chess-fantasy

The next major feature is a custom board creator: set up any starting position you want and challenge the AI on it. But before I lock in the design, I want to hear it from the people who actually play and invent variants. So:

• If you could tweak rules and not just positions, what would you change first? Custom piece movement, win conditions, board size, something else?
• What's the one thing every position/rules editor you've used got wrong or was missing?
• Is playing your creations against an AI interesting to you, or does a variant only come alive against humans?

No promises I can build everything (first game, one dev), but the answers here will directly shape what the editor becomes. And if you try the alpha in the meantime, I'd love to hear how it feels to play. I read and reply to everything.

The idea is: every chess puzzle is a card with identity (mate, fork, pin, skewer, etc). Selecting puzzles to solve is forming a 3-card poker hand. Solving each card (puzzle) gives score and poker hand gives Mults. Climbing mechanic it typical for Roguelite (Balatro) games.

1. You are dealt 5 cards
2. You select 3 forming your best 3-card poker hand
3. You solve the puzzles -- you increase the score
4. Goal is to beat three Bouts and hit the score

Playable here: https://foolsmate-e30d2.web.app/

Q1: Would you play anything like that?
Q2: If you tried, does it feel distracting like an attempt to sit on two chairs
Q3: How much is it a shameless clone of Balatro? :)

Chesstris is a chess variant that combines Chess and Tetris (but also has VN parts)
Instead of moving pieces, you drop them in a column and try to checkmate kings while avoiding to checkmating your own. It doesn't have a pvp and is more akin to chess puzzles.
It has story elements but there's a way to play just puzzles. I just released it's demo version on Steam so feel free to try.

I've been told that some of the puzzles are very hard, so just keep it in mind if you decide to try. And if you do I'd be glad to hear your thoughts.

I've been researching the history of three-player chess variants for a book and recently tracked down something I'd only ever seen mentioned in one sentence by David Pritchard.

Pritchard lists an obscure game by E. L. Perry called Modern Chess, but gives almost no information beyond the title.

"Modern Chess [Perry] (Proprietary game, Elizabeth Perry, 1918). Board of 64 hexagons in three colours arranged in a triangle. Set-up not known. (Collection of game rules under ‘CUP 700.g.1’, presumed to be a British Library shelfmark)".

After contacting the British Library and following a few dead ends, I finally obtained a photograph of what appears to be the original board.

Some interesting details visible on the board:

The full title appears to be Khaki Modern Chess.

It credits E. L. Perry, Sole Proprietor.

It gives the address 18 Lytton Road, Leytonstone, London E.11.

The board is an equilateral triangle made from hexagonal cells with three distinct player territories.

Unfortunately I still haven't located the rulebook, so I don't yet know how the pieces moved or exactly how the game was played.

Has anyone here ever encountered this game before?

I'd especially be interested in:

advertisements,

rule sheets,

patents,

newspaper mentions,

or any references to E. L. Perry.

I'm trying to document early three-player chess history as accurately as possible, and this seems to be one of the more obscure surviving designs.

Also pawns cant capture and can only retreat 1 step at a time until they reach 2nd and 7th rank, where they start moving normally

Edit: guys this is not 960 this is just the first way i could get all pieces in the center(although i wasted a few moves the position is the same)

I'm from Latvia and I've been playing chess since kindergarten. A couple of years ago I was looking for something to shake up my usual routine, so I joined a Dice Chess tournament in Riga. Wasn't expecting much, but it turned out to be way more popular locally than I thought. Got hooked, and decided to digitize it with my own take on it: Chess Hero, for mobile.

For anyone who hasn't played it, you roll 3 dice at the start of your turn, and together they show which 3 pieces you're allowed to move that turn. Everything else stays standard chess: same board, same pieces, same goal.

What that does to the feel of the game: you can't fully commit to one long calculated plan anymore, because the piece you need might just not show up on a given roll. You end up keeping a few ideas warm instead of pouring everything into one line, and there's real tension in the roll itself as sometimes it hands you exactly the piece you needed, sometimes your best-placed piece is stuck on the bench for a turn. Still sharp, tactical chess underneath, but it rewards adapting in the moment over pure deep calculation.

Closed beta is opening soon, capped at 1,000 players. Anyone who takes part gets a unique founder skin as a thank-you. Mostly curious how this sub feels about the implementation and happy to compare rules specifics if anyone's played other versions and wants to see how ours differs.

Sign up at chesshero.com if anyone wants to poke at it directly! Closed Beta starts on the 12th of August.