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This page is written by the game's inventor, Daniil Frolov.

Stylish victory or stylish fail

What is aim of chess game? Of course, it's to checkmate opponent's king. But it's that simple only if machine is playing against machine. Humans like a good show, and a good player will do stylish actions like teasing opponent or making honourable concessions to make a good show. Even if he gets checkmated, spectators could consider him as winner, if he'll lose stylishly.

But what if stylish actions would be necessary formal conditions of winning?..

Rules

Game is played as regular chess, but checkmating is not main object of it. The winner is the player, who will get more points for various achievements, even if he is checkmated. I recommend to play several games, summing points, to make it more interesting, but one game is already enough to make it different from standard chess.

Checkmates

Though checkmating is unnecessary, it's still the most valuable achievement.

Checkmating with newly promoted pawn: as above plus 50 points.

Note that in the list above "checkmating" pieces are the ones attacking the hostile king themselves, even they did not move. But if another piece were moved, unblocking it's path, it gives bonus points (it's more stylish!).

If the moved piece reveals check and also now attacks squares adjacent to opponent's king, that were safe before this move, it gives even more bonus.

Example

----K---
R----Pk-
-----p--
---B----
--------
--------
--------
-------R
Pf7-f8
----KN--
R-----k-
-----p--
---B----
--------
--------
--------
-------R

Checkmate. Rook is checking piece, and it's not adjacent to black king, it gives 110 points. But it did not move, pawn were moved, unblocking rook's path, it gives 50 more points. Square g6 was safe, but pawn has promoted to knight, and attacked this square, it gives 70 more points (there would be same result, if g6 were occupied by unprotected white piece, knight would protect it).
In total, white player gets 110+50+70=230 points for this checkmate.

Double check

In case of double check during checkmate, player gets checkmating points from checking pieces that gives less checkmating points. However, player still gets bonus points of unblocked attack, even if the piece that moved is the one that gave checkmating points.

Other achievements

The remaining achievements are not linked with checkmate.

Capturing bonus

When a piece in a row of the following table captures a piece in a column of the table, the corresponding entry is scored.
pawn bishop knight rook queen
pawn 5 10 10 20 40
bishop or knight 1 5 5 10 20
rook 1 5 5 10 17
queen, diagonally 0 5 3 7 15
queen, orthogonally 0 3 3 10 15
king 3 10 10 20 50

Promotion

In overwhelming majority of cases, pawn is promoted to queen in normal game. Yeah, it's reasonable to promote to stronger pieces.. But more stylish is to tease opponent and promote to weaker piece!

NOTA BENE: promotion bonus should NOT be added if promotion move is checkmating move: think that promotion points are included in bonus of checkmating by promotion.

Draws

Often, if player is seeing that he will lose, he'll try to lead game to draw. But this is done only to "not lose". Well, let's encourage this at least in this game.

In any draw outcome, except for two bare kings or only two kings and one bishop/knight, points are given to the player who has less total value of non-royal pieces (pawn costs 1 point, bishop or knight - 3, rook - 5, queen - 9). Player gets sum of difference of his and opponent's forces and difference of his force and maximal possible force (39). E.g., if one player has one knight, and his opponent has one knight and one pawn, difference between their forces is (3+1)-3=1, and the lack of weaker player is 39-3=36, therefore the weaker player gets 36+1=37 points. In case of two bare kings or two kings and one knight/bishop, the player who made last capture gets 50 points.

Resigning should finish the series of games with summation of points, and resigned player loses regardless of number of points.

Notes

I will accept suggestions of more kinds of style bonuses, or changing rules of existing ones, or changing values of style actions. Originally I wanted to make style bonuses for sacrificing pieces and refusing to capture unprotected pieces (and analogous rules for checkmating), but I decided that it's too difficult for me to not make exchanges chaotic and unbalanced with such rules.

This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.


By Daniil Frolov.
Web page created: 2013-04-05. Web page last updated: 2013-04-05