Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.
Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.
Losing Chess, also known as Suicide Chess, Giveaway Chess, Killer Chess or Take-all Chess is called Vinciperdi in Italian and Qui perd gagne in French, both of which mean the loser is the winner or vice versa. The idea of switching loser and winner is recurrent (you can play Losing Backgammon, Losing Othello, Losing Checkers... not to mention the card games which, like the Australian 500 or the Queen of Spades, offer the possibility of playing for reverse goals). But contrary to Chess, where captures are optional, Losing Chess had to borrow a mandatory capture rule from Checkers.
The rules below are those commonly used for Losing Chess.
There is some controversy about stalemate. It is an important question because the richness of Losing Chess stems from the possible endgames. The following three rules are the most popular.
In 1844, the "Codrus game" (published in the Brede Almanach) is a win for the player whose King is captured.
In 1874, Walter Campbell published the rules of Take me: a player whose piece is to be captured may choose the capturing piece.
Some variants try to reintroduce checkmate, and decree either that checkmate is a win (on the Internet Chess Club) or a loss for the checkmating player.
More interesting seems Anders Ebenfelt's variant:
When stalemate, the stalemated player does not move but the opponent can if he wish to play for win go on moving and do as many moves he wants to do. If the stalemate then disappear, both players move again as usual. So, if white for example has a pawn on h2 and nothing more and black a pawn on h3, pawn on a7 and rooks on a8 and h8 black can win by moving : 1.-,Rh4 2.-, a5. 3.-, a4 4.- Ra5 5.-,a3 6.-,a2 7.-,a1=R 8.-,Rg1 9.-,Rg3 10.hxg3,h2 11.gxh4,Rg5 12.hxg5,h1=Q 13.g6,Qh7 14.gxh7 and black has won.This variant has the advantage that there is often dangerous to let the opponent take all pieces but one if the one left is a pawn which can be blocked. The game will then be more complicated, or sophisticated (the strategy is not only to throw away pieces).
Quite often, a player will suffer an ignominious defeat. One of his pieces will be lured inside the enemy camp and forced to capture the bulk of the enemy army, like a zombie. (The Bishop is particularly at risk, but the Knight and the Rook are also frequent vectors of the disease, and the other pieces aren't completely immune.) Hence, Losing Chess is first and foremost about control (perhaps not unlike Peter Aronson's Anti-King Chess). The players need to maximize their number of options. Not only should they refrain from tossing away their pieces as fast as they can (more material means more opportunities), but they should also develop them a bit (more reachable squares means more opportunities).
Watch Peter Minear translating his material and space superiority and read Richard Lewis' instructive comments.
Another control-related issue is that when a player may capture with two pieces, one of which (and one only) would be immediately recaptured, he should not exchange the second piece. Fabrice Liardet offers the following example on his mostly French-language site.
White to play
The Knight isn't bothersome, because Black is unable to unprotect the Pawn on a7, but there is a real threat that the Bishop will wipe out the entire Black army.
The natural, but wrong, move is 1.Nxa7??, which could lead to 1...Rxa7 2.Bxc1 Ra3! 3.Bxa3 and an easy Black win.
The right move is 1.Bxc1, keeping the Knight for a better time.
Over 1...g5, 2.Bxg5 Kg8 3.Nxa7! Rxa7 4.Bxe7 wins.
(If 1...g6, 2.Nxa7 Rxa7 3.Bxg5 leads to the same result.)
The value of the pieces is too fluctuating to be expressed mathematically.
The late Stanislav Goldovski (1975-1999) offered this recapitulating table:
If material as a whole is usually good, the King seems particularly useful for control, as shown in Lewis' lecture.
Pieces in Losing Chess Piece + - King The most important piece. Its safe moves are often needed to avoid zugzwang. Too slow for other tasks. Queen Very useful for middle-game tactics, for attacking the king, weak squares, etc. Dangerous in open positions, in the endgame. Rook Best endgame piece, quick and powerful. Can easily turn into a 'loose cannon'. Bishop Good for endgame. Also for draws (due to 'oppi-colored' bishops). See for Rook. Much worse even. Knight Very good for destroying pawn formations, for 'forking' weak squares. Too immobile, very bad in the endgame. Pawns Very useful for restriction of the opponent's pieces, and also destroying pawn formations. Slow, immobile. Often dangerous when it comes to promotion.
Mark Watkins finally proved that White can win with optimal play, starting 1.e3. His report is available as a pdf. Any serious play should therefore forbid this starting move (or perhaps take some further variant).
There are those who will like it and those who will hate it, but opening theory is *MORE* important
at Losing Chess than it is at International Chess. One mistake, and your Bishop is lured into the enemy camp
and fed one unprotected piece after another. Thus it has been demonstrated that several first moves, including
1.e4??, 1.d4?? or 1.d3?? for White are automatic seventeen-move losses against best attack.
(You can find the other losing first moves there.)
We present Candidate David Bronstein's solution for Black against 1.e4??.
(You can find the solutions for 1.d4?? or 1.d3?? either on David Pritchard's Popular Chess Variants, on Fabrice Liardet's site or simply through the use of Zillions of Games.)
For a while, the most common opening for White was 1.e3, with the idea 2.Ba6 b7xa6 (2...Nxa6 loses on 3.b4). Again, some answers, like 1...d6??, had been proved to lose. Liardet hints that the answer 1...b5 is misguided (particularly when followed by the beginner's 2.Bxb5 Bb7?, which loses the King and gives several recapturing options to White after 3.Bxc7 Bxg2 4.Bxd8 Bxh1 5.Bxe7 Qxd2, some of which, not surprisingly, are very good), because it gives away too soon the important b Pawn (the b and g Pawns, which control the enemy Bishops and Knights, have a non neglectible value in the opening.) and suggests 1...e6 (the solid modern defence, which had stood the test of time), 1...b6 (the Liardet defence, which allows 2...Ba6 and keeps the aforementioned b Pawn) or 1...c5 (the Polish defence, which allows 2...Nxa6 over 2.Ba6 followed by 3...c5xb4 over 3.b4.)
Other opening theory is discussed at the John and Sue Beasley site.
According to David Pritchard in the 1994 edition of his Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, "The endgame is the most appealing stage of the game, a garden of surprises".
John Beasley writes in A first survey of Losing Chess endgame material published up to the end of 1999:
Excluding as "trivial" positions where the side to move must make an immediate capture or can win by making an immediate sacrifice, the general results for piece against piece are as follows: Q/R/B against Q/R/B is trivial; Q or R wins against N or K; B or K wins against N, draws against K; N against N is a win for whoever is to move when the knights are on squares of the same colour.
(...)Knowledge of the piece-against-piece results enables the results for pawn-against piece and pawn-against-pawn to be worked out.
Beasley wrote a comprehensine study of three-man pawnless endings, but Liardet's array with links is perhaps more accessible.
It should be noted that the side with two pieces has usually the better hand (again, more control), unless these pieces are Knights.
Three-man endings featuring Pawns and four-piece endings defy human systemization. Of the former, Liardet treats King + Pawn vs. King, Rook + Pawn vs. King and Rook + Pawn vs. Pawn. Of the latter, he treats 3 Kings vs. King, 3 Kings vs. Rook, 2 Kings + Rook vs. King and 2 Rooks + King vs. King.)
Three games from the 1998 Geneva International Tournament.
Tossing away one's pieces may backfire.
Even a meek Pawn advance to its third rank may result in fatal attraction.
This game type is oddly characterized as a duel.
A lively AISE game.
Another sharp endgame, with two uncommon features (but uncommon is common at Losing Chess!): a Pawn-only late stage and a promotion to Queen, from David Pritchard's Popular Chess Variants.
Another game where a promotion to King doesn't save Black's last man.
But here, the isolated King saves a draw.
There is a seven-page entry for Losing Chess in David Pritchard's Popular Chess Variants.