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

This page is written by the game's inventor, Roger Cooper.

Free Placement

An interesting chess variant is Free Placement.

This variant was created by Roger Coop.

Rules

  1. Using the standard chessboard and pieces, each player alternately places the pieces on an empty board.
  2. White places first.
  3. All your men must be setup on the first 4 ranks.
  4. The Kings may start in check.
  5. White's first move can't be a capture.
  6. If either player starts in check, he must escape the check on his first move or lose.

Examples

Here is an example starting position that could be produced through Free Placement.


There are a seemingly endless number of possibilities!!!


Be careful not to get mated before you have a chance to move though... tee hee.


Sources

Roger Coop.

Diagrams were made with Chess Captor.


Written by Roger Cooper. HTML conversion by Chuck Moulton.
WWW page created: December 1, 1999.