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This page is written by the game's inventor, Jake Stevenson.

Stevenson's Four-Player Chess

By

Jake Stevenson

Introduction

Stevenson's Four-Player Chess is form of four-player partnership Chess where each player has a team of eight pieces to control, with two teams to a side, and goal is to capture all of the opposing pieces on both teams.

Setup

Each team starts with four Pawns and four pieces.

  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8 | r |:p:|   |:::| N |:B:| K |:R:|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7 |:k:| p |:::|   |:P:| P |:P:| P |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6 | b |:p:|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5 |:n:| p |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::| p |:n:|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3 |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:p:| b |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2 | P |:P:| P |:P:|   |:::| p |:q:|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1 |:R:| Q |:B:| N |:::|   |:p:| r |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h
White Team 1
Queen (Q): b1
Rook (R): a1
Bishop (B): c1
Knight (N): d1
Pawn (P): a2, b2, c2, d2
White Team 2
King (K): g8
Rook (R): h8
Bishop (B): f8
Knight (N): e8
Pawn (P): e7, f7, g7, h7
Black Team 1
King (K): a7
Rook (R): a8
Bishop (B): a6
Knight (N): a5
Pawn (P): b5, b6, b7, b8
Black Team 2
Queen (Q): h2
Rook (R): h1
Bishop (B): h3
Knight (N): h4
Pawn (P): g1, g2, g3, g4

Rules

The rules of Stevenson's Four-Player Chess are identical to those of International Chess, except when noted below.

The rules do not limit communications between players of a team.

Equipment

This game can easily be played with a standard Western Chess set. It is necessary, however to somehow distinguish the pieces among teams. The simplest approach would be to place a rubber band or a piece of ribbon around the pieces of both side's team 2. Or, pieces from two different Chess sets could be used to distinguish teams.


Written by Jake Stevenson. HTML Conversion by Peter Aronson.
WWW page created: December 28th, 2001.