Duluth Chess

Duluth Chess

This is how I was taught to play chess as a child by my father and grandfather. My grandfather immigrated to Duluth MN from Norway as a young adult so I'm not really sure where this variant originated. It may be a local variant from Norway, or a local variant from Duluth MN, or a variant that my grandfather invented.

Setup

Pieces

Rules

Basic Rules

Duluth Chess is basically FIDE chess (Western Chess) with the following exceptions.

1. King cannot castle after being in check.
2. King can castle through an attacked square (i.e. d1 or f1 for White and d8 or f8 for Black). Needless to say the king cannot castle out of check or into check.
3. Stalemating your opponent is a Win!
4. The En-Passant move does not exist but the pawn's initial two space move does.
5. Pawns can only promote to friendly pieces that have previously been captured. Thus a player can never have more than 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops and 2 knights on the board at any time.