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This page is written by the game's inventor, Erez Schatz.

Infantry Chess

Infantry chess is an attempt to utilize short-distance pieces in a small board variant. The name indicates the importance of the infantry units, the Pawn and the Fox which can move in any direction and are a very important part of the game in terms of attack, defense and an endgame situation.

Starting setup

The goal of the game is to mate the opponent's King. A stalemate results in a draw.

The columns are marked (from left to right ) as A-I and the rows are marked as (from bottom to top) as 1-9. The white King (K) is on A5, the White Tank (T) is on C2 and so forth.

Pawn (P): Moves one square orthogonally and captures diagonally in any direction. This piece is the same as the Centennial Chess Steward. There's no initial double move, no en-passant capture.

Fox (F): Moves and captures the same as the King.

King (K): Same as FIDE chess.

Knight (N): Same as FIDE chess.

Alfil (PH): Jumps two diagonally. In addition, each Alfil can jump to one additional square which is D5 for white Alfil and F5 for the Black Alfil. Each Alfil has only 5 squares it can reach, 4 in the regular leap and the fifth middle square. The Alfil cannot jump diagonally from the middle square.

Alfil movement

The Diagram shows all 5 possible moves for the white Alfil (marked in X). The Alfil has three possible moves from each of the corners and four possible moves from the middle square.

Assassin (A): Can only move by leaping over a piece located in an adjacent square in any direction to an empty square on the other side of the piece. The Assassin can capture a piece which is located in an orthogonally adjacent square. This is a distance capture. It can either move, capture or move and capture. Both Assassins start and move only on black squares and can only capture pieces that are on white squares.

Assassin movement

In this diagram the white Assassin in the middle square can capture the black Tank below it without moving, or it can jump over it and then capture the Tank. The White Assassin can also jump over the diagonally adjacent black Fox and capture the black Pawn. While it cannot jump over the diagonally adjacent white Fox it can jump over the white Alfil to capture the black Knight. (The possible moves are marked in yellow). Also notice the Black Assassin on the top row cannot move at all.

Tank (T): Moves one or two squares orthogonally as long as those squares are vacant. The Tank can move and capture a piece which is located one Tank move away on the same direction and distance as long as the intervening squares are vacant. The Tank can either move, or move and capture on the same turn. It can never capture by displacement. The capturing move of the Tank is similar in concept to the Quantum Chess Bowman.

Tank movement

In this diagram the Tank on the top row can move one square to the right (marked in Yellow) and capture the pawn located on the adjacent square (marked in red) from a distance. The second row shows the position of the Tank after this move. The Tank on the Third row can move two squares and capture the Knight from a distance. The fourth row shows the position of the Tank after this move The Tank on the fifth row can move one square or two, but it cannot capture the Pawn since whether the Tank moves one or two squares, the distance between the Pawn and the Tank's destination square is not the same as the distance between the Tank's destination square and the Tank's starting square. It also cannot capture the black Knight since the pawn blocks the intervening square.

Notes: There are no promotions and no castling.


Written by Erez Schatz.
WWW page created: Erez Schatz. Last modified: August 23, 2004.