Chess'3
In the february'2000 issue of Schaakmagazine, the journal of the KNSB, the Dutch chess federation, a game called Chess'3 is mentioned. One of twenty prototypes of this game was given to the Max Euwe Centrum in Amsterdam. The name with the 3 is to denote that this should be the chess of the third millenium. The game came from Slovenia. It was invented by Redzo Kolokovic.Rules
The game is played on a 10 by 10 board. The game is played with, in addition to the normal set of pieces, two additional pawns and two civilians per player.The opening setup is as follows.
The civilians are placed in the opening setup between the rooks and the knights. A civilian can move like a queen or a knight, but may not give check, take pieces, except that it can defend a piece and take back when a piece that is defended is taken in the directly following move. It can also take a piece if this is the only way to prevent mate.
There are a number of additional rules, different from orthodox chess:
- Pawns can move one, two, or three squares forward from their first square. En passant capture can take place on each of the squares that is passed by.
- It can promote to civilian, queen, knight, rook, or bishop, but only to a piece that is taken.
- A pawn between the 5th and 10th row (seen from the player) can move without taking one square backwards, in addition to its usual movement possibilities.
- When castling, the king always moves three squares, the rook jumps over the king to the nearest square.
Comment
The rule booklet in PDF-format, sent to me by inventor Redzo Kolakovic appeared to me as an excellent piece of work, with a very clear and detailed description of his game. I wonder whether having two strong defensive pieces would increase the amount of draws? But possibly, a civilian could also back up an attack by another piece. The author states that the civilian is the most valuable piece, but given the fact it can only take after a capture by the opponent, one wonders what will be the relative value of this piece, e.g., compared with a queen.
Written by Hans Bodlaender.
WWW page created: February 25, 2000. Last modified: February 19, 2001.