Charismatic Chess

Setup

Each player starts the game with only a king on the board. The starting setup in Charismatic Chess is shown below:

Pieces

Rules

The placement stage

Before making a move on the board, players take turns, starting with the white player, placing five random pieces from their reserve on their half of the board until this reserve is empty, that is, all the players’ pieces are on the board. The sequence of receiving from the reserve and placing pieces is simple: first, White receives five random pieces from his reserve and places them on the board. Then the same procedure is repeated by Black and so on. It is easy to calculate that to place all of their pieces on the board, each player will need only three turns. In the process of placing pieces on the board, it is not allowed to declare check to the opponent's king. Pawns may not be placed on the first row. Bishops can be placed on any square of your half of the board. Thus, two of a player's bishops can be on a square of the same color. Getting five random pieces at the placement stage can be achieved in various ways, which can only be limited by your imagination.

Movement

Once all of both players' pieces have been placed on the board, White moves first. Now the game completely follows the rules of Chess except for castling (see below) and the number of possible movements of chess pieces in a given turn (see below). On his turn, a player can make from one to five consecutive moves with his pieces (castling counts as one move). Any of these moves can be either a simple move of a piece on the board or a capture. The same piece can be moved only once in such a series (which also applies to the pieces involved in castling). In other words, there is only one condition for such a massive movement of material on the board - no piece may be moved twice. The player himself decides what his series will be, that is, how many pieces (from one to five) he wants to move on the board in his turn. Since the starting position of kings is different from standard chess, the concept of kingside and queenside for players will be different. This affects 0-0 and 0-0-0 for black. 0-0 for him will be achieved by moving the king to b8, and 0-0-0 to f8. Capturing en passant is permitted only on the turn immediately after the two-square advance, as in standard chess.

Unlike Progressive Chess, a check to the opponent's king does not interrupt the series of moves, so in his turn, a player can declare check with several of his pieces at once. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent; this occurs when the opponent's king is in check, and there is no legal way to get it out of check. In other words, the player loses the game if, in his turn (when he can make from one to five moves with his pieces), he cannot get rid of the check to his king. During his turn, when a player can play with one, two, three, four or five of his pieces, he is allowed to put his king in check. The main thing is that after his turn, the king of such a player no longer remains in check. Otherwise, such a player immediately loses.

Notes

Thus, playing according to these rules, which include some elements of Unachess, Kingchess, and Progressive Chess, I managed to achieve a super-dynamic chess variant, whose combinatorial complexity does not leave a single chance for the AI. Which means only one thing - machines will never dominate humans in such games, as they now do in standard chess.

Charismatic Chess is NOT Progressive Chess, NOT Kingchess, NOT Unachess, etc.
Charismatic Chess is a variant of chess in which you can control not only the number of moves in a series, but also your king, who is in danger.

Last revised by Ben Reiniger.