This page is part of the mindsports.info website, a collection of information on mindsports in the UK and beyond.
| SECTIONS |
| Chess |
| Shogi |
| Xiangqi |
| Makruk |
| Jangki |
| Chess Variants |
| Chu Shogi |
| Tori Shogi & Other Variants |
| Sittuyin & Shatar |
There are many varieties of chess played around the world. It is easy to find information about international chess, shogi and xiangqi on the web. But other chess games are less well covered.
I am very grateful to Colin Adams, Phil Holland, George Hodges and Seong-June Kim for the information they provided on some of these games mentioned below.
There is already a lot of information about chess on the web. A good place to start looking for information is the British Chess Federation site.
Shogi is one of the most popular games in the chess family. It originates from Japan, where there are tens of millions of players, including around 200 professionals.
One of the most interesting features of the game is that captured pieces can be re-used by the person who captured them. They can be dropped almost anywhere on the board instead of a move. This leads to the possibility of wild attacking play in the later stages of the game, and is one of the reasons why there are very few draws in shogi.
Xiang Qi comes from China and it is sometimes known as Chinese Chess. It is played in many countries of Asia, and is one of the most popular board games in the world. It is not uncommon to see lots of people playing outdoors in parks and other open spaces in China.
The general, the piece which is equivalent to the king in international chess, is confined to a small fortress area. Another unusual feature of the game is the piece called the cannon which can jump over a piece and capture a piece beyond.
Makruk is the Thai form of chess. It is played by millions of people, not only in Thailand but also in Cambodia, and many books in Thai about Makruk are available.
The game is believed to be at least a thousand years old, and of all the forms of chess still played today it may be closest to the original common ancestor game. The picture shows a Makruk set with a paper board. This type of set is readily available in Thailand. |
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Although Makruk appears similar to chess and can be played with a western chess set, the lack of long-range diagonal-moving pieces completely changes the character of the game.
According to Sam Sloan, the game has a really massive following in Thailand, with national championship games played in sports stadia and moves reported on the TV news. Living chess displays with traditional music, dancing and duelling are also popular. The most famous player of Makruk is Suchart Chaivichit, who was the national Makruk champion for over a decade. Although he played Makruk first, he also excelled at chess and won a gold medal for his performance in the 1988 Chess Olympiad in Greece.
Sam Sloan's Makrook Page includes the rules and the scores of two top-level games from the 1990 Thai national championships. He also has contact details from some of the organisers of the game in Thailand.
At this Thai Hypermarket site you can buy a Makruk set online. Tim Krabbe's page on Makruk in Cambodia includes a good freeware Makruk program that you can download. And this page from the site of the Sriwittayapaknam school in Thailand has the Rules of Makruk explained by the school Makruk champion!
There are also many pages in Thai about the game, for example this one. And another Makruk program is available from here.
Jangki, the Korean form of chess is sometimes known in English as Changgi or Jang-Gi. It has many similarities to Xiangqi. However, there are significant differences which make the two games feel very different to play. One is that the Jangki pawns can move sideways even before promotion - this means that they can support each other in a horizontal chain. Another difference is that the Jangki cannon cannot jump or take an enemy cannon. This makes the cannon less effective as an attacking piece.
One interesting feature of Jangki is that it is legal to pass your turn instead of making a move. So there is no zugzwang or stalemate! Another unique feature is the move of the elephant, which goes one space orthogonal plus two diagonal - like a large-scale version of a knight's move.
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The Korean Jangki Association was founded in 1956. Players are ranked on a dan system similar to that used for Go. In Korea, Go (known locally as Baduk) is the more popular game, but the numbers who play Jangki are also said to run into millions. There are many Korean Web sites which deal with the game, for example http://members.xoom.com/janggi/ and http://user.chollian.net/~zsjang1/. The picture shows a magnetic Jangki set from Korea. It is also common to find sets with pieces which are octagonal rather than round. Note that different characters are used for the corresponding pieces on opposite sides. |
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Here is Roleigh Martin's Korean Chess page. Among other things, this includes the rules and a downloadable freeware program for playing the game. There is also information about Jangki on Hans Bodlaender's Chess Variant Pages.
There are many modern chess variants; here is some information about a few of the better-known ones. I am grateful to Dave Reynolds (Circular Chess), Doug Hyatt (Progressive Chess), Peter Suto (Hexagonal Chess), Lisa Morgan (Gothic Chess) and Daniel Macdonald (Omega Chess) for the information they have given me about some of these games.
The best place on the Web to find out background information about chess variants are the Chess Variant Pages of Hans Bodlaender. These pages have an amazing amount of information about hundreds of chess variants, ancient and modern. Other good sources of information are the magazine Variant Chess, produced by the British Chess Variants Society, and of course David Pritchard's renowned Encyclopedia of Chess Variants.
Two organisations which run tournaments of chess variants are the Associazione Italiana Scacchi Eterodossi (AISE) and the Knights of the Square Table (NOST). AISE produce a magazine Eteroscacco and NOST produce one called NOSTalgia. Both organisations' sites also have information about non-chess-related games.
A superb collection of Java applets which play different chess variants can be found on this Chess Variant Applets page of Ed Friedlander. The games you can try here include ancient regional variants like Shatar and Sittuyin as well as modern inventions like Chessgi and Avalanche Chess. The programs may not provide very strong opposition, but this is an excellent way to try out all sorts of different variants.
There are many sites which deal with one particular variant in some depth. One of the best is this Losing Chess site. These pages, with annotated games, history, strategy, etc., were put together by Stan Goldovski who sadly died in 1999.
A really interesting commercial variant is Omega Chess. This is played on a 10x10 board, and uses new pieces called the wizard and the champion. The game has been endorsed by chess GMs Rohde and Sherzer, and played by Judit Polgar! The site includes rules, game records, strategy hints and ordering information.
Progressive Chess is a variant where White begins the game with one move, then Black plays two moves, then White plays three and so on. You must not move into check during your turn and if you are in check at the start of your turn you must get out of it at once. As each player has more and more consecutive moves on their turn, the game ends quite quickly, so it has always been a favourite for postal play. There are different versions of the rules. You can find out about progressive chess tournaments on Doug Hyatt's WIPCC pages. These wonderful pages have cross tables and game records of all the games played. And if you want to know more about how to play Progressive Chess, have a look at Hyatt's Online Guide to the game. This has very clear explanations of the tactics and strategy of the game, with illustrative games and diagrams.
Fans of Hexagonal Chess, the chess variant invented by Wladyslaw Glinski in the 1930s, will be pleased to know that the game is still being played actively in Eastern Europe.
Circular Chess developed from an old variety of chess played on a circular board, sometimes called Byzantine Chess. This was popular around 1,000 years ago, and the moves of the pieces were different from those of today's chess. In 1983 Dave Reynolds from Lincoln saw a description of Byzantine Chess, and came up with the idea of reviving the game. He retained the original board and layout, but had the pieces move in the manner of modern chess pieces. This became Circular Chess, and a Circular Chess Society was founded in Lincoln. The World Championships began in 1996 when the first winner was Robin Stevens. You can find more about Circular Chess on the Circular Chess Society page on Hans Bodlaender's variant chess pages.
Gothic Chess is played on a 10x8 board. The game uses the additional pieces the archbishop (with powers of bishop plus knight) and chancellor (rook plus knight). These extra pieces are the same as those which Capablanca once suggested should be used in a larger version of chess. The game is organised by the Gothic Chess Association (GCA) who you can find here. This site has rules and annotated games, and information about how to join the GCA and buy Gothic Chess equipment.
Bughouse is the popular chess variant sometimes called Exchange Chess. One partnership of two players plays against another, using two chess sets. If you play white on one board, then your partner plays black on the other. You pass each other the pieces you capture and they can later be dropped on the board instead of a move.
Chu Shogi has been played since at least the 14th century, and in those days was more popular than any other form of Shogi. It is a relative of modern Shogi, but is played on a 12x12 board, with 46 pieces on each side. And it is played without drops. The game has now more or less died out in Japan, although the great Shogi master Oyama Yasuharu (15th Lifetime Meijin of Shogi) made an attempt to revive it in the latter half of the 20th century. He had often played Chu Shogi in his youth and he said it had had a strong effect on his Shogi style.
The rules of the game and moves of all the pieces can be found on Roger Hare's Chu Shogi page. The same site has information about standard Shogi and about other Shogi variants.
There are discussions on Chu Shogi, and on other Shogi variants, at this Shogivar Discussion Group page. And a good way to try out playing Chu Shogi and other variants is to play Steve Evans' excellent freeware program, available from this Shogi Variants home page.
One very interesting feature of Chu Shogi is the piece called the lion. This can take two pieces in one move, or it can take one piece and then return to the square it came from! Another unusual feature is that a piece called the drunk elephant can promote to a crown prince which is essentially a second king.
Historical documents on the game contain more than 200 mating problems, and these have attracted a great deal of interest. The earliest date back to 1675, and the majority of the problems were published without solutions. Some have remained unsolved right up to the present day.
The most famous problem, known as problem C49, is amazingly complex. The longest lines of the solution are 22 moves long. And there are 12 different 22-move mates, depending on the moves played by the defending side. Moreover, there are many plausible-looking lines which only just fail.
The hardest group of problems, 100 problems known as the D group problems, resisted all attempts at solution until fairly recently. In 1999, solutions to most of these problems were at last published. A concerted effort by George Hodges and the late David Murphy, both UK shogi players, had led to about two thirds of the problems being solved. This is quite remarkable as the problems appear to have been unsolved for over 300 years! Of course, the challenge of solving the remaining problems endures ...
Steve Evans and Colin Adams and their Chu Shogi programs have also worked on these problems. Colin's program can in theory solve any Chu Shogi mating program, but in practice it is not fast enough to solve some of the historical problems. Colin estimates that to solve the famous puzzle C49 would take the program six and three-quarter million years! However, the program has corrected many of the previously published solutions to some of the less complex problems.
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Here is Colin's Chu Shogi page, which has a downloadable version of his program. The picture shows the starting position in Chu Shogi. This is a screenshot from Colin Adams' program, reproduced with his kind permission. A new place to play Chu Shogi by e-mail has recently opened. This is the International Chu Shogi Ladder. |
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And Colin Adams is starting to develop a Chu Shogi Library to cover all aspects of the game.
There are several other historical varieties of Shogi, and also modern variant forms. Good places to find more information about these are Roger Hare's Pages, Steve Evans' Page and the Shogivar Discussion Group - all mentioned above in the section on Chu Shogi. Roger's pages and Steve's program describe the rules of many variants.
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A particularly popular Shogi variant is Tori Shogi. This is a small-board historical shogi variant where all the pieces are named after birds. Tori Shogi is said to have been invented at the end of the 18th century by Ohashi Soei, the 9th Lifetime Meijin of Shogi. Scores of top-level games dating back to 1830 have survived to the present day. The picture shows a modern Tori Shogi set. Tori Shogi is also played in the international Postal Shogi League. And the Royston Shogi Club sometimes organises a national Tori Shogi championship in the UK. |
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David Courtney's Tori Shogi site will tell you how to play the game and give hints on strategy and tactics. One opening, analogous to the "poisoned pawn", is dubbed the septic swallow!
The larger Shogi variants feature many exotic pieces. These have many unlikely sounding names - such as free tapir, fragrant elephant, vermillion sparrow and enchanted badger. Pieces in these large-board games often have particularly powerful moves. For example there is the hook mover, which is like a rook that can go round corners! It can move any number of spaces in one orthogonal direction, followed by any number of spaces in a direction at right angles to that.
The biggest Shogi variant is Tai Shogi, which dates back to at least the 17th century. It is played on a board 25 by 25, and each side has 177 pieces - a typical game could take about 1000 moves by each player to finish. To add to the complications, each side has an emperor and a crown prince and you have to capture both of these pieces in order to win! As if this was not bad enough, the emperor has a move that allows it to travel anywhere on the board, so long as it does not capture a protected enemy piece!
The most unusual historical Shogi variant is perhaps Tenjiku Shogi. A particularly fearsome piece in Tenjiku Shogi is the fire demon. The fire demon burns any enemy piece on any of the eight adjacent squares, so it can effectively take several pieces at once. And it can move to any square reachable by three consecutive king moves.
The game also features range-jumping pieces which can jump over any number of intervening pieces to reach their destination. The best place to find out more about Tenjiku Shogi is this excellent downloadable 180-page book The Struggle for Survival by Colin Adams. The book has rules, openings, example games etc. - everything you could want to know about the game.
Georg Dunkel's site has pages on Micro Shogi and Nana Shogi. These two modern games are the smallest Shogi variants - Nana Shogi is played on a 3x3 board!
There are some fun games among the modern Shogi variants played by Steve Evans' freeware program. In Yari Shogi, invented by Christian Freeling, none of the pieces other than the king can move backwards. And in Whale Shogi by Wayne Schmittberger all the pieces are named after species of whales or their close relatives. In this game there is an innocuous piece called the porpoise which transforms into a deadly killer whale when it is captured.
A good contact for more information about Shogi variants, and particularly Chu Shogi, is George Hodges. He has information and equipment for historical Shogi variants, and has produced the excellent Middle Shogi Manual, the definitive book on Chu Shogi.
Here are the rules for Sittuyin, on Hans Bodlaender's chess variant pages. Sittuyin is the Burmese form of chess, and is said to be still played in the north west of the country.
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One notable feature of Sittuyin is the variable starting position - players have considerable choice on the opening configuration of their pieces. The definitive book on the game is the Burmese Chess Guide written by Shwei-gyin U Bha in the 1920s. The picture shows some Sittuyin pieces from Burma. These are from the collection of James Masters, reproduced with his kind permission from his excellent Online Guide to Traditional Games. |
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Shatar is the Mongolian variant of chess. Here are the Shatar Rules by AISE, the Italian variant chess association who have organised e-mail tournaments of the game. Shatar has four different sorts of check, which each have a different status when trying to reach checkmate!
Sittuyin and Shatar are among the many games you can play at this excellent Chess Variant Applets page.
And it is worth remembering that the Far East does not have a monopoly on interesting traditional varieties of chess. For example, here is the home page of Senterej, the traditional form of chess in Ethiopia. Some other African and European countries also have their own traditional chess games.