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

This page is written by the game's inventor, David Short.

Double Chess

David Short invented Double Chess in 1996. This variant is played on two boards, put together, with two sets of pieces, with the second set of kings being replaced with a third set of queens.

For more information, see

Rules

Double chess is played on a board of eight rows of sixteen squares. The setup is as given below:

rnbqrnbqkbnrqbnr
pppppppppppppppp




PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
RNBQRNBQKBNRQBNR

I.e., white has on its first row, from left to right: a rook, knight, bishop, queen, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook, queen, bishop, knight, rook. The second row is filled with pawns. The setup of black is likewise, with kings on the same column.

Except for the setup and board, the game has only one rule that is different from orthodox chess. The king may castle with ANY of the rooks, provided that neither piece has moved, that the king doesn't move over or onto a square controlled by an ememy piece, isn't castling while in check, and that all the squares between are vacant. Of course, each player may only castle once during the game. When inside castling, the king moves two squares. When outside castling, the king moves 4 squares. So, for White, inside kingside castling, king goes to k1 and rook goes to j1. For inside queenside castling, king goes to g1 and rook goes to h1. For outside kingside castling, king goes to m1 and rook goes to L1. For outside queenside castling, king goes to e1 and rook goes to f1. Likewise for Black instead change the "1" to "8".

Play It!

Use Zillions of Games to play this game! If you have Zillions of Games installed, you can download this game and play it.

This game can be played via email on Richard's Play-By-eMail Server.


Written by Hans Bodlaender and David Short.
WWW page created: June 7, 1999. Last modified: July 10, 2000.
Mar 2000: D. Howe added link to Richard's Play-By-eMail Server.