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Anti-King Chess. Each player has both a King and an Anti-King to protect; Anti-Kings are in check when not attacked. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

gnohmon wrote on Sun, May 12, 2002 05:27 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

This is a splendid idea which strikes me as being extremely Partonesque.

The situation of the Anti-King in the opening position also reminds me a
bit of Racing Kings.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Mon, May 13, 2002 04:53 PM UTC:

I do seem in general to have been influenced by Parton. I share his interest in non-replacement capture; although in my case I came to Chess Variant design from a general interest in games, and have looked at many games over the years with many forms of capture. But many of my games seem to owe somthing to Parton: Snark Hunt, Jumping Chess and Interweave in particular. But there could be worse models.

gnohmon wrote on Tue, May 14, 2002 01:58 AM UTC:

> But there could be worse models.

Should I have explicitly stated that the word 'Partonesque' is implicitly a
compliment? 

I thought that would go without saying, like saying you've had an
Einsteinian idea....

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, May 14, 2002 04:27 AM UTC:

Oh, I took Partonesque as a compliment!  It's just my regretable tendency
towards weak statements that made it sound otherwise.  I'm a big fan of
V.R. Parton's work.

Tomas Forsman wrote on Thu, May 30, 2002 03:29 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

This indeed is a great game. I have played it for a few times now and my
favourite way of mating is leaving the Anti-King unchecked with the same
move as I check the ordinary King. Sort of a double check wich, as I
interpret the rules leads to a mate.

Good game

Tomas

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Fri, May 31, 2002 05:28 AM UTC:

Thanks for the kind words, Tomas.  And yes, if you manage to obtain
double-check, your opponent must relieve both of them or it is mate.

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Sun, Jun 2, 2002 03:16 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Nice game. Getting accustomed to the Anti-King's role takes a little unlearning. Its much easier to keep thinking about checkmating or protecting the King. Isolating or keeping one's Anti-King under 'attack' takes more thought. At the begining of the game, one can get lulled into complacency. The end game certainly gets interesting as it gets harder to keep one's Anti-King under attack. The very effort to checkmate the opposing King works against one's Anti-King. Which will happen first? In a way, its a race to the finish.

Andreas Kaufmann wrote on Thu, Sep 11, 2003 10:00 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Great game! Any plans to make PBM-preset for it?

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Sat, Sep 13, 2003 09:39 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Andreas, I have posted a PBM preset for Anti-King I and II. See the related links in 'See also'. Peter, take a look at the Anti-King II setup diagram and description on your page; I think there are errors. Is my interpretation for the preset right?

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Sat, Sep 13, 2003 10:52 PM UTC:

Tony, thanks for the presets! Yes, the locations listed for Antiking Chess II are those for Antiking Chess I instead of what they should be. Your preset is correct.

Andreas Kaufmann wrote on Sun, Sep 14, 2003 08:31 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Thank you, Tony! Your PBM preset is very nice! I like especially Anti-King Chess II, if anybody wants to play it, please invite me to the game!

Roberto Lavieri wrote on Tue, Sep 23, 2003 01:03 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Anti-King Chess II is a very good game. It is nice, deep, interesting and the anti-king adds a new dimension to the game. As almost everybody, I prefer Anti-King II over the other variant, I suggest change the name of Anti-King Chess II to Anti-King Chess, and let the other as the variant II

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Sep 23, 2003 03:32 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I recently finished a game of Anti-King Chess II with Andreas Kaufmann. This game can be found on the Game Courier logs page. I like Anti-King Chess II a lot. It seems to be a very positional game. At the end of our game, only a Pawn on each side had been captured. From the first move, I followed the strategy of moving away any pieces that were attacking the Anti-King. Instead of focusing on material advantage, I was counting up tempos, making sure that I remained several tempos ahead. A tempo advantage meant that in a race to eliminate attacks on each other's Anti-King, I would get done first. As it happened, moving pieces away from the Anti-King also served the goal of piece development. Toward the end of the game, I was positioning pieces in a manner that I hoped would let me win with a move that checked the King and simultaneously removed the last attack on the Anti-King. But Andreas resigned before this could happen.

Andreas Kaufmann wrote on Tue, Nov 11, 2003 10:29 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

The game Anti-King II is very interesting, still it seems to be that Anti-King prevents development of pieces too much. Wouldn't it improve the game by having a 'transparent' Anti-King? All pieces and pawns would be allowed to move throw the position occupied by 'transparent' Anti-King, as if it would be empty.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Nov 12, 2003 09:00 PM UTC:

That's an interesting suggestion, Andreas. Although I'd be somewhat concerned that it might make anti-check easier, by making it harder for the Antiking to trap an attacking piece. It might make an interesting variant.

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Thu, Nov 13, 2003 03:48 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

The problem, if any, would be that it is always the Anti-King which gets
checkmated, and that the King is here only to prevent the players from
discarding all their pieces or to lose by double check. So, if you want to
checkmate the King nearly as often as the Anti-King, it's no use
weakening the Anti-King by allowing the enemy pieces to jump it.
Stronger armies, say with a Cardinal and a Marshal on a 10x8 board - not
10x10 which also weakens the Anti-King, unless you post the Pawns on the
third line as in Grand Chess -, make the King more vulnerable, but the
setups of Capablanca Chess or Gothic Chess make it also more difficult for
the Anti-King to avoid mate, because the Cardinal and Marshal have less
difficulty in escaping the zone of the Anti-King than Rooks, Bishops or
Knights, and it might be better to report them on the outer files.

Mark Thompson wrote on Sun, Sep 19, 2004 02:21 AM UTC:

There's a problem with the graphic for Anti-King Chess II: the Black piece at b8 is a King, but it should be a Knight.

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Mon, Sep 20, 2004 06:36 AM UTC:

Thanks, Mark. It's corrected.

RandomPrecision wrote on Tue, Dec 21, 2004 01:03 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Actually, when I play, the anti-King isn't always the one that gets
checkmated.  I think initiative plays a large role - if you can force the
anti-King to move around, you can move your pieces in for a checkmate
without obstruction, or at the very least, severely impede your
opponent's development.  I alternate fairly equally between which enemy
king I checkmate at the end.

An interesting case that can occur in Anti-King chess is a sort of
checkmate of both the king and anti-king.  In a game I played with the
Java program, a pawn was checking the anti-king, but I moved it forward to
check the king.  The pawn wasn't protected, so the king could take the
pawn, but that would leave the anti-king without check.  Inversely, the
anti-king could have moved into check, but the king would still remain
checked as well.  This, of course, demonstrates that a single pawn can
force mate.

Quite an interesting game.

George Duke wrote on Wed, Jan 12, 2005 07:53 PM UTC:

Though V.R.Parton is mentioned in 2002-2004 comments and the write-up,
Anti-King is extreme form of his CONTRAMATIC Chess 1961, not yet cited:
(Summarized from p.70 Pritchard's ECV)
(1)One's own move, that puts or leaves enemy King in check, loses.
(2)If opponent's King is in check, a player must move to remove that
check. Of course Aronson's version has King too and required continual
checks for A-K etc., but it looks like special case with new array from 
among Parton's Contramatic games.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Thu, Jan 13, 2005 03:07 PM UTC:

Well, I'm afraid I don't see the Contramatic King and the Anti-King as being the same thing at all. The Contramtic King is really the opposite of the Anti-King, if anything. Actually, it looks to me that you have the combination of two conditions here: <ul> <li>Condition 1: Is the checked piece owned by player being checked or their opponent? <li>Condition 2: Is the piece checked when attacked or when not attacked? </ul> Thus we have the following combinations for when a player is in check or equivalent: <table cellpadding=4 border> <tr> <td>King is</td><td>Attacked?</td><td>Not Attacked?</td> </tr><tr> <td>Owned by Self?</td><td>Orthochess King</td><td>Anti-King</td> </tr><tr> <td>Owned by Opponent?</td><td>Contramatic King</td><td>Anticheckmate King</td> </tr> </table> (The Anticheckmate King is from Anticheckmate chess, which Ralph Betza discussed in the comment system, and shows up as the Prisoner in Prisoner's Escape.)

George Duke wrote on Thu, Jan 13, 2005 06:40 PM UTC:

I guess the large bold-face type and spacing convey emotion...or power? Seriously, the 2x2 matrix of alternatives is logical and useful, Peter. Here is even simpler more chess-like logic: in 1961 Parton's Contramatic Chess invents the contrary-win condition, that if the player who has just moved gives check, he loses. Anti-King Chess sets up initial arrays in which both players have that very losing condition imposed at the start. So, inevitable logic (without adding new element beyond the specified array) is that the one who removes that condition for himself, wins. That is how Anti-King derives from and is special or extreme form of Contramatic Chess. Nothing wrong with that: for ex., en passant added to FIDE-like rules is special case or possible logical extension. Four-fold table of most interesting instances for win in this obscure chess byway is absolutely worthwhile.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Thu, Jan 13, 2005 07:09 PM UTC:

<blockquote> I guess the large bold-face type and spacing convey emotion...or power? </blockquote> Or in this case, an odd interaction between the forum HTML and the posting HTML. All the text was the same size when I previewed it. Hmm.

Armin Liebhart wrote on Tue, May 15, 2007 07:47 PM UTC:

I've got a question considering mate.
What happens when a player mates the other player in the same move its own anti-king gets unchecked (thus being mate too).
Who wins then?

David Paulowich wrote on Tue, May 15, 2007 08:10 PM UTC:

'The rules of Anti-King Chess I are identical to those of FIDE Chess, except for the addition of an Anti-King for each side, the movement of the Pawns, the King's special move, and the initial setup.'

'The Anti-King is a King that is in check whenever it is not attacked by opposing pieces. If a player ends their turn with their Anti-King not attacked, they are checkmated and lose.'

It would be simpler to state that it is illegal to make a move leaving or placing your Anti-King in 'check', that is, not attacked by opposing pieces.

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