Grand Dice Chess

As a longtime fan of all types of dice chess, I've always had the idea of finding a perfectly balanced chess game using dice. In the variants of dice chess that still exist, neither the board, nor the initial arrangement of the chess pieces, nor the number of dice used in  the game give the game the necessary harmony and dynamics, reducing tactics and strategy to a minimum. After much trial and error, I came to the only true variant of chess with a dice, in my opinion, which could satisfy the various needs of connoisseurs of this exciting game.

Setup

The game uses a 12x12 board.

White and black occupy the 1st-6th and 7th-12th ranks, respectively, as shown in the diagram.

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Dice+Chess&settings=grand_dice

Pieces

Each player has: 4 Kings 24 Pawns 8 Knights 8 Bishops 8 Rooks 4 Queens

Rules

Game rules.

The illustration shows the starting setup.

White starts first.

Opponents make moves alternately, throwing 4 dice.

The piece to move is determined by a die:

1 = pawn, 2 = knight, 3 = bishop, 4 = rook, 5 = queen and 6 = king.

The player makes four moves at the same time based on the indications of the dice. For each die roll, the player may move that type of piece once. Unless the die indicates a pawn move, the player may pass the move indicated. It's not allowed to pass on pawn-moves, except when they are blocked. If multiple dice have the same number, a player may move the same piece again or another piece of the same type. Moves according to the readings of the dice are made in an arbitrary order, in the order that is beneficial to the player.

Chess pieces move across the board as they do in ordinary chess - according to the standard rules of move and capture.

The only minor exception is for a pawn that is not allowed to move forward two squares from its starting position.

Upon reaching the last rank, the pawn can be promoted to any piece except the king and itself.

There is no castling, check and checkmate in the game.

The goal of the game is to capture four enemy kings.

Online Tournaments.

Since the implementation of the game (February, 2022), various correspondence tournaments have been held on the Internet in which everyone can take part.

Notes

Moving in the direction that eventually led me to finding the perfect chess variants in which dice are used to alter gameplay, I constantly asked, strange as it may seem to you, the next question: 'What prevents a dice from revealing its full potential on a chessboard?' The answers did not immediately, but nevertheless began to be drawn more and more clearly as I went deeper into the root of the problem. The first and most important is the size of the board - 8x8 even for a single die, bringing various chess pieces to life, an extremely cramped platform to realize its nature. The second is the initial arrangement, since with the start of the game all the pieces should be more or less mobile. In ordinary dice chess, this is such an acute problem that it spoils the whole picture of the game, turning a chess battle into a farce. And the third obstacle is the rapprochement of the two armies. In a game with dice, this phase should be absent, since it takes a lot of time and patience, which does not correspond at all to the idea of dice - speed and racing.

External Links

• Grand Dice Chess Blog
• Grand Dice Chess at Chess.com
• Play Grand Dice Chess online

Last revised by Fergus Duniho.