Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

External Link: Pillow Chess

I had a thought about Chess on a Pillow, but decided to google it first to see if there is anyone who invented it already. Good for me I did. However, since this page deals with the board strictly in a mathematical concept, I'll write some thoughts about it as a game here.

The board is simply this, you move through the right and left edges like a cylindrical board, and like a circular board through the up and down edges.

The Knight (defined as a piece that moves one step orthogonally then one step diagonally or vice versa,) has a very very strange way of movement. Just see Figure 3 in the page to see the peculiarity of it. And I believe a King and Rook can mate a lone King on this board (because the Rook can control two files at once, unlike the cylindrical board.)

I would assume that it is impossible, or rather illegal, to move diagonally outward from a corner square. (The corner squares are e1,e8,d1,d5,a1,a8,h1,h8. Outward in this context means as south-west means to e1 in a normal board, or north-west to e8.)

The squares surrounding e1 (which is a corner square) are thus, west(w) is d1, n-w is d2, n is e2, n-e is f2, e is f1, s-e is c1, s is d1 (which is doubly adjacent,) and s-w doesn't exist. One could argue that d1 is also diagonally adjacent, but this would make the board too complicated and the bishop too powerful.

Naturally, there is no Castling; it is pointless.

My apologies for writing my own opinion where it is not supposed to be. Enjoy the paper.

External Link: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/mathstats/staff/cairns/dvi/41.pdf


This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.


Author: Abdul-Rahman Sibahi. Inventor: Grant Cairns.
Web page created: 2007-03-06. Web page last updated: 2007-03-06