Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Andy Lewicki.

Chelma

By Andy Lewicki

Introduction

Chelma is a combination of ideas from the game of Halma and the moves of pieces from Western Chess.

The Pieces

Each player has 10 pieces: 2 Pawns, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, 2 Rooks, 1 Queen and 1 King.

Movements of the Pieces

There is no capturing in Chelma.

Pawns can move one square in any diagonal direction to an empty space, and can not jump over other pieces.

Bishops can move one square in any diagonal direction to an empty space and can jump over any diagonally adjacent piece, landing in the square immediately beyond, which must be empty. They may make multiple such jumps in a turn, but they can not both move without jumping and jump in the same turn. They may not make 'circular' jumps and end the turn on the square on which they started.

Knights move just like Knights in Western Chess, including leaping over pieces in the way. They may not make multiple jumps.

Rooks move like Bishops, except instead of moving and jumping diagonally, they move and jump horizontally or vertically.

The Queen combines the moves of Bishop and Rook. It may move one step in any direction to an empty space, or combine any sequence of diagonal or orthogonal jumps.

The King moves one step in any direction to an empty square. It may not jump over other pieces.

Board and Initial Setup

Chelma is played on a standard eight by eight chessboard. 








   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8  | k |:p:| + |:+:|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7  |:p:| q |:+:|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6  | + |:+:|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5  |:+:|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:*:|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:*:| * |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:*:| Q |:P:|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1  |:::|   |:::|   |:*:| * |:P:| K |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h
White
King (K): h1
Queen (Q): g2
Pawns (P): g1 h2
Rooks (R), Bishops (B), Knights (N): e1 f1 f2 g3 h3 h4
Black
King (K): a8
Queen (Q): b7
Pawns (P): a7 b8
Rooks (R), Bishops (B), Knights (N): a5 a6 b6 c7 c8 d8
The Rooks, Bishops and Knights are set up on the squares marked with white circles or *'s for White, and on the squares marked with black circles or +'s for Black.

Play

First White places one of their Rooks, Bishops or Knights on a marked square, then Blacks does the same. They continue alternating until all pieces have been placed, then White starts the game proper by moving any available piece. Play then alternates.

Goal

The goal is to move all of your pieces into opposite corner of the chessboard, moving your King, two Pawns and Queen into any of four squares that the opposing King, Pawns and Queen started in, and moving all your Rooks, Bishops and Knights into any of the six squares that the opposing Rooks, Bishops and Knights started in.

The player who accomplishes this task first wins.

An Issue

Like with Halma, Chelma can be forcibly drawn by a player refusing to remove one of their pieces from the starting zone. The solution used for this problem on itsyourturn.com is to declare a player who still has a piece in their starting area on turn 30 has lost. Any other solution that works for Halma should also work for Chelma.

Comments

There is a lot of tactics involved since the beauty of Halma movements is combined with diversity of Chess pieces with their differing powers of moment. It's my own invention and I never seen anything like that in the past. (Editor's note: Chelma was submitted to us here at the CVP before Vincent Everaert's Chess/Halma hybrid, Emperor of China was published on the Zillions of Games website.)

Written by Andy Lewicki
WWW page created: June 9th, 2003.