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Shafran's Hexagonal Chess. Hexagonal variant from the early Soviet Union.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Max Koval wrote on Thu, Apr 6, 2023 04:31 PM UTC:

[Editor's Note: This was moved from the same page as the previous comment.]

The first written introduction that was widely available for Shafran's chess was published in a Soviet paper named 'Nauka i Zhizn', (Science and Life), and was aimed at young auditory, where you were suggested to construct your own board. I don't own a copy of it, but I found the issue copy in a local library where the article about this variant first appeared. I learned about the article through the Web and I don't remember the issue number though, but it can be found.

Soviet chess player and writer Evgeny Gik showcased both Glinski and Shafran's hexagonal variants in one of his books on mathematical games.

In the Soviet Union, inventions of such fundamental kinds that can be used in propagandistic ways would usually get way more attention than in Western countries, especially due to the extreme popularity of chess in that period, even before Wladyslaw Glinski introduced his game to the general public in the seventies, in which case the promotion of almost the same game by the Soviets could be regarded as a copyright violation. I don't have any information that high-level chess players were interested in this variant, which in my opinion is unusual. I suppose to think they didn't react because this variant was flawed.