Attending Pawns

by Terry H Jones

"I'll have my man get with your man - and capture him!"

General

Chess pieces (not pawns) are, as you can tell from the names, people of rank and nobility, important in politics, warfare, and religion. Such people do not travel or conduct their business without their retinue, their coterie of followers, their court, their sycophants and toadies - in short, their pawns. But we play at good old FIDE chess have allowed the pawns, the followers, to get out of hand, to follow their own course, often without attending to the needs (real and imagined) of their leaders. This variant seeks to rectify this oversight and return to the noblesse and glitterati their reassuring acretion of suck-ups and administative assistants.

Rules

Each piece above the rank of pawn is known as a Celebrity.
Each Celebrity has a Zone of Personal Space (ZoPS) consisting of the spaces immediately adjacent to the piece. This applies to all pieces, including those that can or must move more than one space at a time.
Pawns do not have ZoPS's.
Each Celebrity has it's own personal assistant, it's own pawn, ever at the Celebrity's beck and call. Each Celebrity's pawn is the one that sets up in front of the Celebrity when setting up the board. Pawns are personal, not part of a Celebrity's rank, i.e., the Queen's Knight's Pawn is the Queen's Knight's Pawn and will not act as the King's Knight's Pawn.
Any time a Celebrity moves, it's pawn is immediately moved to the Celebrity's ZoPS from wherever it may be on the board. The owning player may decide which ZoPS space the pawn is moved to provided:
- it does not move into a space occupied by a friendly Celebrity or pawn;
- it may capture, but only if there are no other spaces available;
- it may not capture the opposing king.
- the moving player's king must not be exposed to check.
If a Celebrity's move is to a space that leaves no legal moves for it's associate pawn, the Celebrity may not make the move.
When a pawn loses it's Celebrity to capture, it can no longer move except to capture. It still gives check, is still willing to fight for the cause, but basically is in mourning and without it's guiding light. (see optional rule below)
When a Celebrity loses it's pawn, it simply "gets on with its life." A pawn is just a pawn, after all. It's not like a Celebrity was harmed.
When a pawn gets promoted, it gets it's own pawn. (Actually, you normally just put the promoted pawn back in play.)

Optional Rules

When a Celebrity is captured, it's pawn voluntarily goes off into captivity with the Celebrity. (Even prisioners need press agents.)
When a pawn is captured, it is immeidately returned to the game in the Celebrity's ZoPS. However, this uses up the turn of the player reclaiming the pawn. (And don't think the Celebrity will miss the opportunity to treat the pawn slike a dog!)

Commentary

Note that pawns can make any legal move a player desires as long as he understands the pawn is always at the beck and call of it's Celebrity.
You will, obviously, have to designate which pawn goes with which Celebrity, which Knight is the King's, which the Queen, etc. Easiest way I've found is to write out the assignments on slips of appropriately sized paper, and set the pawns on them.

Fin

Written by Terry H. Jones. Copied from Terry Jones original site with his permission.

WWW page (copy) made September 8, 1997.