Jabberwocky Chess
When Alice found a strange book written in mirror writing, she could not even imagine that the poem “Jabberwocky” was only a prologue to a much more ancient and mysterious manuscript, created in the bizarre and endless expanses of the Looking Glass...
Hidden on the withered pages of that ancient manuscript was a description of a strange and unusual game...
Jabberwocky is a fairy chess piece, represented on the chessboard by the King, moves and captures like a regular chess king, but at the end of each move it turns into a different type of chess piece, depending on the previous transformation, following the chain of transformation:
King > Pawn > Knight > Bishop > Rook > Queen > King
Thus, after moving a King, the King is transformed into a Pawn of the same color. After moving a Pawn, the Pawn becomes a Knight, and so on.
Setup
The game is played on an 8x8 chessboard.
At the beginning of the game, each player has 16 kings, located along the first two outer ranks of the chessboard, as shown in the figure below:
Pieces
In addition to kings, other standard chess pieces such as queen, rook, bishop, knight and pawn take part in the game, which gradually appear on the board during the game.
Rules
Players take alternate turns, starting with White.
As stated above, each piece's move is accompanied by its transformation into another piece, following the cycle of transformations:
King > Pawn > Knight > Bishop > Rook > Queen > King
All chess pieces move and capture according to the FIDE Rules of Chess, except that Pawn moves only one square forward and King can be captured like any other piece.
When the King reaches the farthest rank from its original position (the eighth for White and the first for Black), instead of being transformed into a Pawn, it must be replaced, at the player's choice, by a Queen, Rook, Bishop or Knight of the same color, which is equivalent to promoting a pawn in standard chess.
The same is true for the King, which ended up on the farthest rank as a result of the Queen's transformation. Its subsequent movement along the farthest rank must be accompanied by its transformation into a queen, rook, bishop or knight, at the player's choice, but not into a pawn. It can only transform into a pawn by stepping onto the adjacent rank.
There is no castling in the game.
No stalemate, check or checkmate.
Capture is mandatory. If several pieces can be captured, the player chooses any of them.
At the end of his turn, a player must have at least one King of his color on the board. If this condition is not met, then such a player loses the game.
Thus, if, for example, both players have one king left, then the player whose turn it is to move loses the game, since after making a move he will not have a king left on the chessboard.
This situation, in which a player will be left without a single king when making his next move, is called the Jabberwocky Mate.
Notes
The game turns out to be quite unexpected and strange.
Since the cycle of transformations of a chess piece is closed, curious complications may arise in the game that are not found in other chess variations. By the way, it is precisely because of this that the element of mandatory capture was introduced into the game, which at least somehow curbs the endless cycle of transformations of chess pieces and does not allow the game to last forever.
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By Вадря Покштя.
Last revised by Вадря Покштя.
Web page created: 2024-10-02. Web page last updated: 2024-10-02