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Kinglet

Kinglet was invented by V.R. Parton in 1953.

In this game, the King is not a royal piece. Therefore, there is no check, checkmate or stalemate.

A player that has no pawns left loses the game immediately. A promoted Pawn is no longer a Pawn, so a player wins when he takes the last Pawn of his opponent, or when his opponent moves his last Pawn to the last rank.

Pawns always promote to Kings. If a player is unable to move, the game is a draw. All other rules are as in orthodox Chess.

Computer Play

Play Online: Kinglet can be played on this site with Game Courier. Fully automated, rule-enforcing presets for this game can be found here. You can also view games that have previously been played on Game Courier here.

Computer Play: Kinglet is fully supported by ChessV, a free open-source program for playing chess variants. Alternatively, if you have Zillions-of-Games, you can download files to support Kinglet here.

Interactive Diagram: You can also play against a very basic AI with this interactive diagram (click on "Play it!" under the diagram):

files=8 ranks=8 promoZone=1 promoChoice=K royal=1 graphicsDir=/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/ squareSize=50 graphicsType=png pawn:P:ifmnDfmWfceF:pawn:a2,b2,c2,d2,e2,f2,g2,h2,,a7,b7,c7,d7,e7,f7,g7,h7 knight:N:N:knight:b1,g1,,b8,g8 bishop:B:B:bishop:c1,f1,,c8,f8 rook:R:R:rook:a1,h1,,a8,h8 queen:Q:Q:queen:d1,,d8 king:K:KisO2:king:e1,,e8

Written by Hans Bodlaender.
Updated by Greg Strong.

WWW page created: 1996-02-16. WWW page updated: 2020-12-23.