Snake Chess
By Sergey Sirotkin
Introduction
Snake Chess is a variant of orthodox chess
played on a cylindrical board of twelve ranks by two files, with 10 pieces
on a side.
Board and Setup
The Snake Chess board is a cylinder, with the A file effectively sandwiched
on both sides by the B file, and visa versa.
Because the board is actually a cylinder, Knights attack the space immeadiately
in front of and behind them as their wide jumps wrap around.
Additionally, Queens and Bishops make zig-zag up and down the board as their
diagonal movements also wrap around.
This gives them effectively the movement pattern of a Crooked Bishop.
Rules
The game is conducted by rules of International
Chess with the following changes:
-
The setup is different (see the diagram above), with each side having
a King, a Queen, and two Knights, Bishops, Rooks and Pawns each.
-
There is no castling, Pawn double-move or en-passant capture.
-
Pawns promote on the twelfth rank.
The game is won by checkmating or stalemating your opponent.
Notes
A game with some similarity to Snake Chess is Narrow Chess, which is played on a
20 by 2 board.
Zillions of Games
There is an implementation of Snake Chess for Zillions of games. You
can download it here:
Written by Sergey Sirotkin.
HTML Conversion by Peter Aronson.
WWW page created: June 16th, 2001.
Last modified: Sunday, April 1, 2012
