Trade-up Chess

In trade-up chess the goal is to capture your opponent's king. During the game, you can either make a regular chess move or you can trade-up. When you trade-up, you take pieces from your hand and swap them out for pieces on the board with lower value. For instance, a pawn can trade-up to become a knight or bishop.

I originally described my new chess variant on my blog: https://wordpress.com/post/mathsbyollie.wordpress.com/215

Setup

The setup is an empty board, except with kings on their usual starting squares. The remaining pieces (8 pawns, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks and queen) start in the hand; white pieces in white's hand and black pieces in black's hand.

Pieces

All pieces move just as in normal chess.

Rules

On each player's turn they may either make a regular chess move or a trade-up move.

- Regular chess moves do not involve the hand in any way. When a piece is captured it is removed from the game and not returned to the hand. When a pawn promoted, the piece it promotes to does not come from the hand and the pawn does not go to the hand.

- A trade-up move is when two pawns or a piece is taken from the hand and replaces a pawn or piece of lower value. Here are the possible trade-ups:
1) Place up to 2 pawns from the hand anywhere on the 2nd or 3rd ranks. A pawn on a player's 2nd rank may move 2 spaces, like regular chess.
2) Replace a pawn on the board with a knight or bishop from the hand.
3) Replace a knight or bishop on the board with a rook from the hand.
4) Take a rook on the board and turn it upside-down. An upside-down rook is still a rook, i.e., it moves and captures like a rook and if it returns to the hand then it becomes a normal rook.
5) Replace an upside-down rook on the board with a queen from the hand.

- On their first turn, white may only place one pawn from their hand onto the board.

Notes

To get out of check, you can place a pawn from your hand in the way of the checking piece.

An easy way to remember the trade-ups: each trade-up is worth 2 points using the usual piece values, with the upside-down rook worth 7 points.

Last revised by Oliver Clarke.