Lighthouse

How to play something very unusual with only normal chess set? Easily!

Setup

Board with 8 ranks and just 4 files. Simply, it’s compacted chessboard.
4 Pawns per side are placed on 2nd (White) and 7th (Black) ranks. Then white pieces on 1st rank are placed from left to right relative to White’s sight: Bishop, Knight, King, Rook; on 8th row, Black has mirrored setup. Other pieces are put in reserve.

Pieces

They move as in FIDE Chess, except for following differences.

• Bishop moves not only along unobstructed diagonal paths, but it also can step one square straight forward (either with or without taking). Therefore, it combines normal Bishop and Elephant from southeastern chess variants. It’s done also for not making it color-locked: now Bishop can reach all squares.
• There’s no casting: it’s useless.

Rules

They are quite simple. Game goes as in Chess, but, when you capture opposite piece, you put it in reserve box aside from the board, change it to similar piece of another color from this box & put latter in your hand (basically, piece is now your).
You can drop your piece from hand to any desired free square on the board instead of moving. However, Pawns can’t be placed on 1st or 8th ranks (where non-Pawns start).

When Pawn reaches the last rank, it becomes the Queen. There can be just one Queen per side, so if Queen is already placed, other Pawns won't be allowed to go to the last rank (though this won't stop them from checking the King which stands on it). If Queen is captured, it demotes back to Pawn.

Other rules are as in Chess. To win, checkmate the opposite King. Draw occurs by 15 moves without capture (unlike Chess), 3-fold repetition of position (including pieces in hands), stalemate (if it’s possible here), etc.

Last revised by Lev Grigoriev.