Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
M Winther wrote on Fri, Mar 2, 2007 06:52 AM UTC:
A disappearing corner square seems to be a useful concept. In my Doublebarrel Chess I introduce a similar idea. There are no extra squares, but the extra pieces are placed beside the 8x8 board. When a rook moves away, the extraneous piece is automatically moved to the corner square. Should a rook be captured when it still hasn't left the corner square, then the extraneous piece is removed, too. The Doublebarrel is so powerful in the traditional setup that it was necessary to put it beside the board so that it doesn't run amok in the opening.

Another game which uses diagonal corner squares on a 9x8(!) board is Bolyar Chess (a traditional Bulgarian variant). Here the player gets a special bonus if he promotes a boat on the extraneous corner squares. The boat is then promoted to General (=queen).

An important aspect of the gustavian board is that the extra corner squares provide shelter for the king. This means that it's less dangerous to initiate a pawn storm on the king side. As it's easier to get the king out of the way, this improves mobility of the heavy pieces that can be placed on the knight- and rook files to bolster the flank attack. This strategical aspect, which benefits fighting chess, is a bonus of the gustavian board. Leaping pieces, especially those with long-leaping camel moves, benefit greatly from the extra corner squares, while the sliding pieces have no use for them, except the queen, which is somewhat benefitted. The reason for this is that the leaping pieces can use the extra corner squares when maneuvering./Mats

Edit Form

Comment on the page Hubbub

Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.