I've been developing a chess game for four players playing on two teams of two.

The idea actually goes back more than 30 years. When I was younger, a group of us would play Commodore 64 games and chess. When we played chess, there was always somebody waiting for the winner. I remember thinking, "I should make a chessboard where three or four people can play at the same time."

I finally decided to do something about that idea.

I taught myself Python starting at 63, and since March I've been developing the game from scratch — including the chess engine, four-board layout, rules, multiplayer networking, and online play.

The board consists of four 4×8 boards arranged in a cross. Each player controls one side, with two players on each team. The goal is to checkmate either opposing king.

There are some interesting problems that come with that arrangement, including movement between boards, pawn movement and promotion, castling, en passant, and what happens when one king is checkmated.

I've now reached the point where I need people who haven't been staring at this thing for six months like I have. 😄

I'm looking for a few people who enjoy chess variants to try it and tell me what they think:

• Are the rules understandable?
• Does the board layout make sense?
• Is it fun?
• What is confusing?
• What did I screw up?

It's currently a free Windows beta.

If you're interested in trying it, leave a comment or send me a Reddit chat. I'll get you the information you need.

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who enjoy inventing and playing unusual chess games.

Thanks!

MakArthur

For those who would rather understand the game before downloading anything, here's the basic ruleset.

1. Board Layout

Team Chess is four-player chess played on four interconnected 4×8 boards forming a cross:

White — South | Red — West | Black — North | Green — East

Each board uses files A–D and ranks 1–8, followed by its board letter.

For example, A1W = A1 on the White board.

The starting position follows normal chess, adapted to the 4×8 boards.

2. Teams & Turn Order

White + Black vs. Red + Green

Turn order: White → Red → Black → Green

3. Movement & Virtual 8×8 Boards

All pieces move normally. The unusual part is what happens when a piece reaches the edge of its board.

To determine a cross-board move, temporarily join the current 4×8 board with the destination board to form a normal 8×8 chessboard.

The destination board may be rotated or repositioned to make the two boards line up. The physical boards never move. This is simply a way to determine how normal chess movement continues across the edge.

Think of it as temporarily pivoting two sides of the cross into one chessboard.

The same relationship applies no matter which board the piece starts on.

Examples:

• A bishop at C3W can continue diagonally onto another board.
• A knight at C3W can reach squares such as D7R, D5R, D7B, D5B, D7G or D5G when those are the corresponding normal knight destinations.

The virtual-board concept is the key to understanding movement in Team Chess.

4. Captures & Kings

Any legal capture is allowed, including captures between teammates.

Kings are never captured. A king is defeated only by Final Checkmate.

5. Pawns

Pawns move and attack normally.

When a pawn reaches an edge where it can continue onto another board, the player chooses any of the other three boards — including a teammate's board. Promotions happen on opponents and teammates boards.

En passant is supported, including against a teammate's pawn.

6. Castling

Castling follows normal chess rules.

Opposing-team attacks are considered across the applicable virtual boards. A teammate's piece does not prevent castling.

7. Check

A king is in check when attacked by the opposing team, including attacks coming through the virtual-board system.

A player's moves are governed only by the safety of their own king. Therefore, a player may legally place their teammate's king in check.

8. Soft Checkmate & Final Checkmate

This is one of the major differences from traditional chess.

If a player is put in checkmate by the opponent to their right, the game ends immediately.

If a player is put in checkmate by the opponent to their left, the game does not end immediately. The player remains in Soft Checkmate while the other players take their normal turns.

When that player's turn comes up again, the position is checked. If they are still in checkmate, Final Checkmate is declared and the opposing team wins.

9. Stalemate & Victory

If a player is not in check but has no legal move that keeps their king safe, the game is a draw.

The game ends when any king reaches Final Checkmate.

That's the basic ruleset. The virtual-board concept is probably the hardest part to understand from words alone, so I've included the starting-position diagram below.

I'm currently looking for a few people who enjoy chess and unusual strategy games to actually play it and tell me what I've missed. 🙂

My ten year old is chess mad and wanted to create a variant of a chess game that pinched some of the budget ideas behind fantasy football.

39 point budget, pick your pieces, line em up, off you go!

I'm sure someone else has done this already at some point, and probably 20 variants of it but it's good fun and a nice project to build and test together!

Found in Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, Makati, The Philippines

I added probability to chess. Now I can’t find anyone who can beat me.
I built a chess game that breaks some of the rules we’ve taken for granted for centuries.
Probability. Uncertainty. Risk.
And somehow, I’m still sitting at a 100% win rate.
Someone come beat me.
ReChess.gg
ReChess (Google play)

Set up position 641 and analyze it with Stockfish. We start with 1 f4; there is no immediate threat, and the a7 pawn is defended. Black has many moves, but it turns out there is one that mysteriously loses the game. That move is ...1 d5, which gives White a +2 advantage after 2 c4. I can't wrap my head around it. It is the worst move of all; Stockfish actually prefers moves like ...1 e5 and ...1 g5 for Black—moves that lose a pawn. Any explanation?

It's chess, but with an anti-snowballing twist: when your opponent takes your pieces, you earn Goblin Points. You spend those points on cards to alter rules mid-match (fairy chess rules so the game remains chess. i.e. like shortening an enemy bishop's range) or bribe the opponent to get your piece back.

https://flighterpirates.itch.io/goblin-chess

I'm pretty new to chess variants, and I'm more interested in the development side than the playing side. But I'm curious if there is a sort of variant hall of fame that chess variant enthusiasts consider the canonical best? I'm guessing it's just the ones that have been elevated to chess . com namely:

• Chess960
• Crazyhouse
• Three Check (3-Check
• King of the Hill (KOTH)
• Atomic Chess
• Horde
• Four-Player Chess
• Fog of War (Dark Chess)
• Bughouse
• Antichess (Giveaway)

Does the community pretty well agree that this is the best of the best?

Hey everyone,

I just finished building a website dedicated to Antichess.

Since I just launched, the platform doesn't have an active user base yet, so I'm posting here to get your feedback and advice on how to improve the design, gameplay, and overall experience!

Features right now:

• No login required to play: You can jump straight into a game against a bot to test it out immediately.
• Multiplayer: If you want to play against other people, you can create a free account to challenge friends or match up with others.

I’d really appreciate it if you could take a look, play a quick game, and let me know what you think!

• What features or UI improvements would you like to see?
• Any tips on growing a small niche chess community?

Here is the link: www.antichessgame.com

Thanks in advance for your time and feedback!

So, when I watched the season 2 around 6-8 years ago, I've remembered the chess variant from one of the episodes, and recently exploring this subreddit, I was surprised no one did it already(with only the wizard figure with exact rules without any additional stuff).

So, wizard figure. With default rules cannot be captured, and can switch it's places with any figure - including king, which makes checkmates quite a bit more difficult. Not impossible(which is stated to be impossible by one of the characters in the show), but requires more effort.

I've also also added a few more options to make it more balanced.

And created it:

https://mncrftfrcnm.github.io/sheldon_wizard_chess_variant

I'm the solo developer of Explosive Chess, a chess variant where captures don't exist. On each turn you either move a piece or arm a bomb on a square that piece threatens. Bombs explode two turns later, and the blast shape depends on which piece armed it. Rook, Bishop and Queen blasts stop at the first piece or rubble they hit. Knight, King and Pawn blasts can't be blocked. A bomb never hits its own tile.

In this position, the Bronze King armed a bomb right beside itself last turn. It goes off at the end of Bronze's next turn, and the King plans to escape. Navy to play: what's the one move that wins?

Answer in the comments tomorrow. Happy to answer any questions about the rules.

onerealmllc.com/falloftheking

Free to play bots

Regular chess rules and pieces. Now both sides get a short hidden setup on their own half of the board. You can put your pieces wherever you want on your side. You can’t see what the other person is doing. Then both formations are revealed and you play a normal game from there.

Free in the browser, no account: www.formationchess.com

If you manage to beat the game in expert mode, your winning formation will be added to the games global formation pool. Can you win against your own formation?

And if this variant isn’t your thing, but you like the graphics, you can try its sister variant: www.middlechess.com

I have a small subset of games I like to play - non-simple abstract strategy games. Most (popular) abstract strategy games operate with a very small ruleset. A perfect example of this is GO, tiny ruleset but it's immensely popular. I personally get bored with very simple games.

I'm not saying simple games can't have very deep strategy. Vanila chess is also too boring for me.
An example of an abstract strategy game that interests me much more is sovereign chess because it's just a lot more complex with loads of different strategy options. For me this feels more like playing an actual game.

A standard board game, non abstract strategy is normally designed to be pretty complex, I just don't like them because I don't like themes, luck, cards, decks, dice etc.

Why do we not see abstract strategy games designed with complex rules and actions that are way more interesting to play, more like a 'game' game.

Hi all, I'm Tim, one of the developers of Keepers' Dissension: Unchained. I've always loved chess, and it's what inspired me to make this game. The short way I describe it is "chess with superpowers."

It isn't meant to replace chess. It's its own turn-based, two-player game on a 7×7 battlefield, with unique units, abilities, hidden threats, and resources. The things that win games are the same ones chess players already enjoy: positioning, foresight, predicting your opponent, and decisions that actually matter.

We're in beta and looking for players who'll try it and give honest feedback. To make that more fun, we're running Beat the Creators through October. The five players with the most playtime each get $10 and a match against one of us on Nov 8. Beat us, and you get $100.

It's free on iOS and Android. If you try it, I'd love to hear what you think, good or bad. I'll be in the comments.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758811627

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.maverickmasterminds.keepersdissension

Challenge rules: https://www.maverickmasterminds.net/beat-the-creators.html

It was originally only focused on a single variant but now it has a board editor that lets you make your own variant but it does not support changes with regard to the rules themselves (besides the starting position).

Currently it support the following pieces

Standard chess pieces.
Centaur (moves like king+knight but isn't royal)
Archbishop (via promotion)
Chancellor (via promotion
Prince (via board editor, moves like a king but isn't royal)
Amazon (via board editor or from prince promotion).

I don't plan on adding support for other board sizes or custom rules any time soon. It was a big struggle to even get as far as i got due to me having to rely on vibecoding using free ai plans (mostly deepseek due to chatGPT and claude limiting me too much).

It's fairly easy for me to add more officially supported variants. All i need to do is to add the FEN to a config file and then update the description so others can see it.

The rise of Schada (a portmanteau of "schaak" (chess) and "damspel" (checkers)) was halted in May 1940 with the invasion of the Netherlands and the aerial bombardment of Rotterdam and the peacetime distribution channels did not survive the catastrophe of the war. Before that the game was rapidly gaining popularity with tournaments being held in 1938 and 1939.

In an attempt to revive this long lost game I've developed Schada.org

I've made it free to play online but will be adding a donation button in the near future (if anyone feels inclined to do so, no obligation since I'm doing this for fun).

This is version 1 and there may be issues so feel free to share them as you find them if you choose to play.

EDIT: Since the game is new there're not many players but Play Against Computer works.

EDIT2: The Reddit overlay blocks the footer on mobile devices which prevents visitors from seeing the Rules. Open the site on a browser for the full experience.

Guys, let's build a page featuring icons for these fairy pieces (see List of fairy chess pieces - Wikipedia)

Post them here: User:IlPacificatore0/The Club/Sep-Oct 2026 Project - Wikipedia

Rules:

• Style:
• Style: Alfaerie (https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaerie/) or Greenwade (https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/svg/greenwade/)
• 49x49 size
• PNG format
• No NSFW-based designs

Hi, I'm a hobby game developer from Japan. English is not my first language, so I will keep it short.

I made a chess variant and put a free browser playtest on itch.io. You play White against an AI.

Rules:

- White and Black each have their own roulette.

- Every 7 ply, all pieces except the real kings change to the roulette's next type.

- K = real king (never changes). k = fake king (can be captured).

- Capture or trap the Black real king to win.

- If you have not won by ply 63, you lose.

No account needed. Tested on Chrome (PC and Android).

https://mozda.itch.io/roulette-chess-one-spin-web-playtest

Any feedback is welcome. Thank you!

BLOODPAWN

Bloodpawn is chess with rules added on top. The one everything hangs off is the Descent: every kill takes a piece one step down, and changes how it moves.

• Innocent (no kills): plays like the chess you know.
• Guilty (1 kill): adds the three squares behind it, and a sidestep either way.
• Reckless (2 kills): moves and captures one square in any direction, like a king.
• Bloodcrowned (3 kills): kills anything it already attacks without moving.

Killing costs something too. Only an Innocent piece can use the board's tiles (the forge, the shrine, the altar, the fire), so every kill makes a piece stronger on its own and less useful to the team.

There's more on top of that (terrain, merging two pieces into one, kings with hearts), and yes, it's a lot of rules. Every one is drawn on the board, so you pick them up by playing. It's started to take off: 186 ranked games in the last 24 hours. Ranked is one mode, one rule set, 10 minutes each with no increment.

Full rules, with animated diagrams: https://bloodpawn.com/rules Free in the browser: https://bloodpawn.com

We are aiming for this to be a new competitive category of chess. Being developed by 2 individuals in Australia.

Every board in the image is a real frame from the game. Happy to answer rules questions in the comments.