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Rettah

Rettah is a FIDE chess variant that relatively maximized the power of the king. Besides the initial set-up and the king's description (including the restriction when answering a check), everything else remained true and identical to the usual (FIDE) chess.

The game was invented by V. R. Parton. The word Rettah comes from the inversion of the word Hatter, pointing to the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, a book that was a major source of inspiration for many of Parton's chess variants. (His most well-known variant also is called Alice.)

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The Setup

The King

The Rettah king could move and capture like the queen and knight of FIDE chess. In other words, the king could make any move/capture that any other piece could. See the figure below.

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The King

When the king is being checked, the checking piece must be captured, either by the king or by another piece. Such is capture is obligatory, even if this means that the king can be captured afterwards. The winner is the player that captures the king of the opponent.

Future Update

If the description of the Rettah interested you, please visit this page more often for the latest update. For the future updates, you would expect  to see more information on Rettah and its implimentation (zrf-file) in Zillions-of-game. If you have any more information on Rettah, please do let me know.


Written by Vu Q. Vo. Edited by Hans Bodlaender. Thanks are due to Matthew Lovell for sending information on Rettah.


WWW page created: May 31, 1999. Last modified: June 7, 1999.