The History of Chess Variants

Since Chess, as it is currently played, is not the original game, the history of Chess variants starts with the history of Chess. As H. J. R. Murray puts it after calling the majority of Asian people chess players in A History of Chess, It is in the wider sense, in which I have just used the word, that I propose to use chess in this book. I include under it all the games which I traced back to the Indian chaturanga, and all the freak modifications that have been attempted from time to time (pp. 28-29).

From Chaturanga to Chess

The name of Chess most strictly refers to a game that took its present shape in Europe and has its rules codified by the World Chess Federation (known by its French acronym of FIDE). This game can be traced back to an Indian game called Chaturanga, whose name meant the four arms of the military. It comes from chatur, meaning four, and from anga, meaning arms, used in reference to the military, just as the English word army is. In fact, this was a common term for the Indian army at that time, because it had four main parts, these being the infantry, the horses, the elephants, and the chariots. Notably, these are all represented in the game, which underscores its invention as a board game simulation of warfare.

This game was played on an 8x8 uncheckered board called the ashṭāpada. Although there is no historical documentation of the game from its earliest days, the most trustworthy accounts describe it as being very similar to Chess, differing mainly by having weaker pieces and a few differences in rules. Some have claimed that Chaturanga was originally a four-player game, Chaturanga for four players, but this seems less likely, because the four player game has not had the influence or spread of the two player game, and the inclusion of the number four in the name Chaturanga is not a reference to the number of players. But since the Indians did not keep any extensive writings on the game, we may never know for sure what the original form of Chaturanga was.

The Persians picked up the two player game from contact with India, calling it Chatrang, which was a Persian corruption of the Sanskrit name. According to Henry Davidson, Persians began the practice of informing the opponent when his King was attacked by saying the Persian word for king, shaw. Later, to avoid disputes over whether someone had said shaw, they made it illegal to move the King to an attacked space. This changed the object of the game from capture of the King to checkmate. While our words check, checkmate, and chess do derive from the Persian shaw, Davison's claim that the Persians introduced check and checkmate into the game lacks adequate documentation, and other Chess historians claim that checkmate was the rule in the Indian game.

Muslims picked up Chatrang during their conquest of Persia (633-654 CE), calling it Shatranj, which was an Arabic approximation of the Persian name. Unlike the Indians and the Persians, the Muslims took up an active interest in the game, and they started to produce lots of literature on it. It is mainly thanks to Muslim writings that we have knowledge of early Chess. Although we are lacking original documentation on Chaturanga, we are not lacking any on the rules of Shatranj, which is the earliest form of Chess we have detailed accounts of. While Muslims did play some Chess variants, such as the large Tamerlane Chess and the circular Byzantine Chess, they did not, as best we can tell, make any changes to the rules of Shatranj itself. The main Muslim influence on Chess was on piece design. Because artistic representations of people and animals were forbidden in Islam, they adopted the practice of representing the pieces more abstractly. This influence can be seen in today's Staunton pieces, which are mostly abstract.

As with most other games, some Muslims considered Chess forbidden (haram), but this ruling was disputed by other Muslims. First of all, the Muslims did not discover Shatranj until after the death of Muhammed (632 CE). So, there was no mention of it in the Qu'ran or the Hadiths. While Islam does forbid gambling, games of chance, and idle amusements, some Muslims supported the playing of Shatranj by pointing out that it is a game of perfect information, not one of chance, and it is a simulation of war, not an idle amusement. Since people do enjoy playing games, and Shatranj was one of the few games allowed in the Muslim world, this may explain why it became more popular with the Muslims than it had been with the Indians or Persians before them. Besides that, the Muslims were unified by religion, not by geography, and they tried to spread their religion by military conquest. As they succeeded in this, they would also spread knowledge of Shatranj to other lands, and as these other lands became Muslim, Shatranj would gain the same favoritism in these lands that it already received under Islam.

Thanks to the Umayyad conquest of Hispania (711-788 CE), Islam spread to the Iberian peninsula, where Spain and Portugal are currently situated. This is the likely time when knowledge of Shatranj made it to Europe. For several centuries, Europeans played the game by essentially the same rules as the Muslims. There were sometimes tweaks to the rules, and there were some large variants that didn't gain the same popularity as the 8x8 game. In the 12x8 German variant Courier Chess, the Courier piece moved just like the modern Bishop. In Grant Acedrix, described in a medieval codex made for Alfonso X (1221 - 1284) of Castile, the Crocodile piece also moved as the modern Bishop. Each game also had some new pieces that didn't make it into modern Chess.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

During the Renaissance, a new form of Chess emerged in which the Bishop and the Queen gained the same long-distance moves they have now. Van der Lasa dates this around 1475, but Murray didn't think it was any earlier than 1485 (Murray, pp. 777-778). Both dates just happen to fall within the reign of Alfonso's descendant Queen Isabella I (1451 - 1504) of Castile, who in her day became the most powerful queen the world had ever known. This was largely thanks to sponsoring Columbus, who discovered the New World in 1492. Instead of just being the wife of a King, Isabella was heir to the throne of Castile, and through her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon, the two of them ruled a united Spain together as the Catholic Monarchs. One of the main things they did was establish The Spanish Inquisition in 1478. This was initially about identifying heretics among Jews and Muslims who had converted to Christianity. But in 1492 and 1502 respectively, Jews and Muslims were ordered to convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Since the Spanish Inquisition was about enforcing Catholicism among the population, one of its effects was to weaponize the clergy. Around the same time that the world's most powerful queen and her clerical inquisitors were rooting out Muslims, Jews, and heretics, the Muslim form of Chess was rapidly replaced by a European form of Chess that gave much greater power to the Queen and the Bishops. Whether this was cause and effect or just an interesting synchonicity, we might never know.

According to Murray, the game was called scacchi de la donna or alla rabiosa in Italian, axedrez de la dama in Spanish, eschés de la dame or eschés de la dame enragée in French, and welsches Schachspiel in German. (p. 776) Based on the names that do not just mean Queen's Chess, Murray concludes that the new game was probably invented in Italy. But his reasoning doesn't seem sound. First, he seems to think that the French name eschés de la dame enragée, which means Mad Queen Chess, is based on the name alla rabiosa, which means Mad Chess. For one thing, this is a tenuous connection, and it doesn't really tell us which came first. Also, he's assuming that the reference to a mad queen is thanks simply to the greater power of the queen, and he is not considering that there was an actual queen of the time who was regarded as mad, and she was the Queen of Spain. Known as Joanna the Mad (Juana la loca), Joanna of Castile (1479 - 1555) had succeeded her mother Isabella to the throne of Castile and her father Ferdinand to the throne of Aragon. Shortly after becoming Queen of Castile, her husband died, and using the fact or pretext that she was mad, her father had her confined and made himself her regent. After her father's death, her son Charles continued to keep her confined and served as her regent until her death. The Spanish may have avoided a name meaning Mad Queen Chess out of respect for their Queen, or records of a Spanish name with this meaning might be lost. Notably, rabiosa is the Spanish spelling of the word, and Italian spells rabbiosa with an extra b. So, there could have been a Spanish name very similar to the Italian one.

Second, he says the name welsches Schachspiel (Italian Chess) shows that the game spread from Germany to Italy (p. 778). On looking it up, it turns out that welsches Schachspiel is German for Welsh Chess, not for Italian Chess. So this just isn't the smoking gun he thinks it is. His final piece of evidence for an Italian origin is his claim that the main centre of chess activity in the 15th century was neither Spain nor France, but Italy (p. 778). This might be something, but it's still not a lot to go on. So it remains unsettled where the new form of Chess was invented.

In time, other changes were made to Chess, such as castling, double Pawn moves, and en passant capture. Together, these changes to the game helped speed it up and make it more decisive. Whether or not Queen Isabella and the Spanish Inquisition inspired or helped in the spread of the new game, two other factors surely did help it to spread. First, it was a better and more exciting game than the earlier Shatranj. Second, the printing press, invented around 1440, allowed for quicker and more widespread communication than had existed during the Middle Ages. Chess, as we know it in the west, had generally come together in its present form by the 19th century. But it was only in the 20th century, following the formation of FIDE in 1924, that its rules were officially codified.

The Origin of Chess

Although there is solid evidence linking modern Chess to the Indian Chaturanga, this, by itself, doesn't establish Chaturanga as the original game. Although an Indian origin is the prevailing opinion, some have claimed that the game has another origin. Besides India, some of the main options include Persia, Uzbekistan, and China. Persia is the nation that the Muslims learned of Chess from, and some of our Chess vocabulary still has its roots in Persian. Uzbekistan is the location of the earliest Chess set to ever be recovered. West of China and northwest of India, it was once part of the Soviet Union. China is a major power with its own version of Chess that is clearly related to the western versions.

Sam Sloan on a Chinese Origin

In The Origin of Chess (1985), which is online as a single webpage, Sam Sloan argues for a Chinese origin. He claims that the game or a precursor to it was known in China as far back as the second century BC. He says:

There are two references to chess in ancient Chinese literature. The first was from a collection of poems known as Chu Chi. The author was named Chii Yuan. He was the most famous writer in the Chou Dynasty (1046 - 255 BC). He killed himself by jumping into a lake. The second is from a famous book of philosophy known as Shuo Yuan which cited Chu Chi. It is from the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 221 AD). Both are well known to any student of Chinese literature.

Searching the Chu Ci (as an online version calls it) for 象棋, I found it in a poem identified as 29 招䰟. The line with it says 菎蔽象棋，有六簙些。, and it translates to There are six kinds of Chess. Before this, it mentions scholars and women sitting together, and just before the line about Chess, it says Zheng Wei demon plays, come and miscellaneous. [or: Zheng Wei demon play, come to the mischief] The knot of excitement is the first to show alone. When I did a search for Zheng Wei, it came up as a name of a woman. So it could be the name of one of the aforementioned women playing a game. After the mention of Chess, the next line says Divide and advance together, and force each other better in the traditional translation or Divide Cao and advance, and force each other to be more forced in the simplified translation. This line includes the 相 character used for the Minister in Xiangi, whose name also sounds like xiang, though apparently not with that meaning. This line might be about moving game pieces in a board game simulating warfare. The next line translates to Become a lord and make a profit [or: Cheng Cheng and Mu], call five white. When I translated the first clause by itself, I got just the word Success. While it is not clear what is going on, it could be about a woman playing and winning a board game. But even if that is what it is about, it does not describe this game in enough detail to tell if it is related to Chess.

The text of the Shuo Yuan is at the same site. Searching it for 象棋, I found a poem identified as 14 善說. The line that has it says 燕則鬥象棋而舞鄭女 and translates to Yan fights chess and dances Zheng Nu, excites Chu to cut the wind [or: excites the cutting wind], practices color with obscene eyes [or: practices lustful eyes], and streams with ears [or: hears loud ears]. The poem as a whole seems to be about some conflict between Emperor Qin and the king of Chu. While this could be the context in which a Chess game is set, this is not made clear. Also, fighting Chess is only one thing Yan is said to be doing, and the other things don't seem so related to Chess. It is really not clear that this is even describing a board game. So I don't consider these two earlier texts with 象棋 to be solid evidence that the game now known by that name existed back then.

After mentioning these, he says A more recent reference to chess came from the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279 AD). But evidence of Xiangqi in the Song Dynasty is not evidence of a Chinese origin for Chess. By this time, the Muslims had already brought Shatranj to Europe. Although Sloan has decried the absence of early enough Indian literature on Chess, he has failed to produce early enough Chinese literature on Chess. So, on that score, neither India nor China has the advantage.

Lacking adequate literary evidence of a Chinese origin, Sloan argues against an Indian origin by saying horses, horse-carts, and chariots do not exist naturally in either Europe or India. Against this, I will point out that the Bhagavad Gita portrays Krishna as Arjuna's chariot driver. Whether or not horses and chariots were common in India, they both played a central role in Hindu mythology. So, Indians would have known what they were. He later stresses the same point about horses by saying Horses, as stated before, do not exist naturally in India. Tame horses can be found, but not wild horses. To this I will add that tame horses are the ones that people ride and use to draw chariots. This admission that tame horses can be found in India undermines his argument that an Indian would not have created a game with horses serving as steeds and chariots drawn by horses.

Against Chess having its origin in Uzbekistan, he says Uzbekistan is primarily a desert area, like Afghanistan, and its inhabitants were always primarily nomads. It is hard to believe that they invented a game like chess. It seems more likely that they brought it by caravan from some other place. Maybe so, but this is hardly convincing. He also adds, At the same time, elephants existed in India and probably in China, but not in Persia, Pakistan or Uzbekistan, although the Persians had heard of elephants. With this, he believes he has ruled out both Persia and Uzbekistan. But let me point out that Wikipedia has an article called Persian war elephants, and the elephants in the game would have been war elephants, not wild elephants. So, Persia is not ruled out.

David Li on a Chinese Origin

In The Genealogy of Chess (1998), David Li argues that Chess was invented by a Chinese general named Han Xin, who lived in the 2nd century BC. While I have not read the book myself, I did read a review by Peter Banaschak called A story well told is not necessarily true - being a critical assessment of David H. Li's The Genealogy of Chess. Banaschak claims that David Li has practically nothing besides his fertile imagination to back his claim that Han Xin invented chess. Jim Png has written a more detailed article called Origins of Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) 12: General Han Xin, which examines the evidence behind the claims made about Han Xin inventing Chess. He finds that there is no real evidence of Han Xin inventing Chess. Notably, one of the stories about him inventing the game mentions the Cannon as one of the pieces, yet cannons would not be invented until over a thousand years later. So he certainly didn't invent the present form of Xiangqi, and there is no evidence that he invented any predecessor to it.

Jim Ong Hau Cheng on a Chinese Origin

In Understanding the Elephant: A Xiangqi Primer Part 1: History of Xiangqi (2016), Jim Png Hau Cheng claims that Xiangqi may have been descended from earlier Chinese games. In particular, he suggests that Xiangqi could have evolved from Liu Bo, which led to Ge Wu, which in turn evolved into an early form of Xiangqi. Apart from also being a board game, Liu Bo has no obvious connection to Chess or Xiangqi. While its rules are unknown, it was apparently a race game played with dice, which would make it more like Candyland than Chess. Its board was not a grid of spaces over which pieces can move. Its main similarity to the Chess board was a square in each corner, but these squares were not connected by other squares, and the Chess board has even more in common with the Monopoly board. The only resemblance between Liu Bo and Xiangqi of any note is that Liu Bo had waterways, and Xiangqi has a river. However, the river in Xiangqi is a border, not a waterway, and it most likely came about by splitting an 8x8 board into two halves, pulling them slightly apart, and placing pieces on the intersections as in Go. Also, if Liu Bo was an ancestor of Chess, and this was the critical connection between Liu Bo and Xiangqi, it needs to be explained why no other regional variants from Asia or India have the river. Even Janggi, which is the regional variant most closely related to Xiangqi, has no river. So, it doesn't look like there is any good evidence for a connection between Liu Bo and Chess.

He does not provide much of a description of Ge Wu, but it seems that it was also a race game played with dice. Each player had six (or later five) pieces that moved over channels. Its pieces included "figures in the shape of the dragon and tiger." (Kindle Loc 1014) Notably, neither Xiangqi nor Chess has any dragon or tiger pieces. Judging from the description, the game has no clear connection to Chess.

Somehow, these race games supposedly led to the invention of an 8x8 Xiangqi by Emperor Wu of the Zhou dynasty, which lasted from 560 to 578 CE. This would be less than a century before the Muslims picked up Chatrang from the Persians. Of course, it is likely that the Persians picked up Chaturanga from the Indians at an earlier date. So, the invention of an 8x8 Xiangqi by Emperor Wu may be more or less contemporary with the time that Chaturanga was purportedly invented in India. However, there are no extant records of Emperor Wu's 8x8 Xiangqi. He allegedly wrote about it in the Book of Symbolic Chess, but there are no surviving copies of that book. Moreover, it has been common to give Chess various legendary inventors, and Emperor Wu might be just another legendary inventor, not the game's real inventor. Without any records of the game, it is impossible to ascertain its connection to earlier games or even to establish that it ever existed.

He does mention that an 8x8 chessboard found in Gu Jin is, to date, "the earliest finding of any eight by eight chessboard." (Kindle Loc 1241) I presume this is a place in China, but I can find no information on a place called Gu Jin or on the chessboard that was allegedly found there. So, it's not much to go on. The best evidence he can provide shows that Xiangqi, as we know it today, was around during the Southern Song Dynasty. As he says, "The Xiangqi that we play today took form no later than the Song Dynasty, or the Southern Song Dynasty to be precise." (Kindle loc 2182) However, the dates he gives for the Southern Song Dynasty are from 1127 CE to 1279 CE, which are several centuries after the Muslims picked up Shatranj from the Persians. In the intervening time, there was contact and trade between China and the Muslim world, and knowledge of Shatranj could have made it to China through the Muslims.

The Evolution of Chess

One of the main things there is agreement on is that Shatranj and Xiangqi are related. With some variations, Xiangqi has all the pieces of Shatranj. Their names mostly have the same meanings, they move similarly, and they start out in similar positions. The games have similar goals, and the Xiangqi board may be made by dividing the Shatranj board in two, slightly separating the two halves, drawing some diagonals, and placing the pieces on the intersections. While we cannot say with certainty exactly where Chess was invented, it was probably within the vicinity of India, China, or the Silk Road. Notably, India and China share a border, and whichever place it was invented in, it could have made its way to the other country in short time. Wherever it was invented, I believe the original game was more like Chaturanga and Shatranj than it was like Xiangqi.

From the perspective of game design, Xiangqi is superior to Shatranj, and this suggests that Shatranj is closer to the original game than Xiangqi is. Shatranj is flawed by the existence of several weak pieces, which can slow down the game and make it harder for either side to win. Xiangqi fixed this problem by weakening and confining the royal piece and some defensive pieces while also increasing the attacking power of the royal piece and adding a new piece, the Cannon, whose powers favor attack more than defense. The result of these changes weakened defense and strengthened offense, making the game more decisive.

Besides being corrected in Xiangqi, this problem has been independently corrected in both modern Chess and the Japanese game Shogi. Modern Chess fixed it by making the weakest pieces stronger. Shogi addressed the problem of slow-moving weak pieces by allowing players to drop captured pieces back onto the board. This increased the mobility of pieces without changing their basic powers. Shogi weakened defense by making more pieces than just the Pawns forward moving only, and it added power to offense by providing promotion for several piece types upon reaching the other side. These changes kept the pieces weaker where they would be used for defense and made them stronger where they would be used for offense. Given that each of these games each corrected a flaw in Shatranj yet are otherwise similar to it, it is very likely that each one of them evolved from a game similar to Shatranj, which itself is supposed to be close to the Indian Chaturanga.

Besides this, Xiangqi includes elements that are not common to other oriental Chess variants. It is the only one with a river, and it is the only one with its particular powers of movement for the General (King), Elephant, Cannon, and Pawn. It shares some of its other features only with Korea's Janggi. Among regional Chess variants, these are the only two played on intersections instead of spaces, the only two with blockable Knights and Elephants, the only two with Cannons, the only two to give each player only five Pawns, and the only two played on a 9x10 playing area. Also, both games can be played with the same equipment, but extra Pawns and some modifications to the board would be required to play other regional variants. It makes sense that Korea would learn the game from China even if the game was invented in India, because Korea is a peninsula whose only land border is with China, and it lies on the eastern end of China while India borders China in the west. Given that the influence of Xiangqi is not as evident in other oriental Chess variants, it seems unlikely that the original game was like Xiangqi. And given that Korea's Janggi is not nearly as much like Shatranj as many other Asian variants are, it seems unlikely that the original game, being much more like Shatranj, had its origins in China.

It is noteworthy, though, that Japan attributes its acquisition of Shogi to China. Nevertheless, Shogi's similarities with Xiangqi do not include most of its uncommon features. It is played on spaces, it has no Cannons, it does not confine any pieces to a particular area of the board, and it includes new features that distinguish it both from Xiangqi and other Chess variants. So it is unlikely that Shogi is based on a game like Xiangqi, as Janggi clearly was, and it is much more likely that it was based on a game like Shatranj, which the Japanese then modified into Shogi.

Among known oriental variants, the one that looks like the best candidate is Makruk, the Chess variant of Siam, now known as Thailand. It is mainly like Chaturanga, but each player's Pawns start on the third rank, as they do in Shogi, and the Elephant moves as the Silver General does in Shogi. While Thailand is further away from Japan than China and probably also had less political and cultural influence on Japan, the geographies of these two countries would have made them both more sea-faring than the more land-locked China, and this would have facilitated cultural exchanges between them. Furthermore, Makruk's differences from Chaturanga are improvements. The more advanced line of Pawns speeds up the game, and giving Elephants the Silver General's move lets them cover the whole board instead of only a fraction of it. This suggests that Chaturanga is the earlier game.

Another possible candidate for the link between Chaturanga and Shogi is Sittuyin, the regional Chess variant of Burma, now known as Myanmar. Like Makruk, its Pawns start in a more advanced position, and its Elephant moves as a Silver General. But it also goes off in a different direction than either Shogi or Chaturanga, and the sea route from most parts of Burma to Japan would have been longer than the one from Siam to Japan. Comparing Sittuyin with Makruk, Sittuyin seems to be an improvement over Makruk, as it speeds up the game even more by allowing free placement of the pieces behind the Pawns. So, it's likely that Makruk came first, and Sittuyin is based on it. Given these considerations, it seems fairly likely that knowledge of Chaturanga spread from India to Siam by sea, and both the Burmese and the Japanese learned of the game through contact with the Siamese.

If Japan did in fact learn of Chess through contact with Siam or another neighbor in between, that would account for why Shogi does not resemble Xiangqi to nearly the same degree as Janggi does. But there are some traces of Chinese influence. The Japanese name for Shogi is written in Chinese characters, though this could be more due to Japan borrowing its writing system from China. A more telling detail is that the Chinese characters used to write the name for Shogi are exactly the same as the Chinese characters used to write the name for Janggi. This suggests that these games originated from a common source or that one influenced the other. Looking at these two characters, the first one is the 将 character for general. This reflects that the Chinese changed the name of the King to General. The second character is the 棋 character for board game, which is also used in the Chinese name for Xiangqi. Besides that, every Shogi piece with a counterpart in Xiangqi uses one of the same characters that get used for the piece in Xiangqi. Still, these similarities could just be due to Japan's use of the Chinese writing system and to the fact that the meanings of the piece names tended to remain the same across different languages. Even more significant than these linguistic similarities is that the Pawns in Shogi do not capture diagonally, a characteristic that Shogi shares in common with Xiangqi and Janggi, though not with Makruk, Sittuyin, or Chaturanga.

Assuming Japan did learn of Chess through China, there are three possible explanations for why Janggi is much closer to Xiangqi than Shogi is. One is that knowledge of Chess passed from China to Japan earlier than it did to Korea, so that the Japanese learned of a game more similar to Shatranj, while the Koreans learned of a game more similar to modern Xiangqi. The second is that China had a weaker influence on Japan than on Korea. This makes sense given that Japan is not on the mainland, while Korea is on a peninsula off of China. The Chinese were able to march right into Korea, and during its history, it was often a vassal state to the current Chinese dynasty. This ties into the third possible explanation, which is that Japan, being a sea-faring nation with several trading partners, gained knowledge of multiple regional Chess variants and synthesized elements of them into their own variants.

One last thing to look at is how culture spread between India and China. India appears to have had the greater influence. Buddhism quickly spread from India to China, then to Japan and Korea. But Confucianism and Taoism, which were of Chinese origin, did not gain footholds in India. They did, however, spread east, Taoism influencing Zen Buddhism in Japan and Confucianism becoming dominant in Korea during the Joseon period. Turning to games, Wei Qi was a hugely popular game in China, spreading to Japan, where it became known as Go, and to Korea, where it became known as Baduk. Yet Wei Qi did not spread to India. It is a very different game than Chess, and the only regional Chess variants to show any influence from it are Xiangqi and Janggi, which both place pieces on the intersections. Given this and the other considerations raised here, it seems more probable that the origins of Chess go back to India than that they go back to China.

Reformers

Because of the extensive analysis that has been done on Chess and the knowledge of opening moves that is required to do well in Chess competitively, some Chess players have proposed replacing Chess with a new game that would provide more challenges and require more original thinking. Examples of this include Capablanca's Chess, Fischer Random Chess, and Seirawan Chess.

Fairy Chess

Some Chess variants were not intended for actual play but were created for the sake of creating fairy chess problems. The term fairy chess was proposed in 1914 by Henry Tate. In December 1918, T. R. Dawson took up this term and published his first article on fairy chess in The Chess Amateur. In it, he mentioned that problemists had occasionally been producing unorthodox problems in a haphazard way, as editors allowed them, and this did not give them much incentive to compose many of them. So, within the pages of this magazine and later The Fairy Chess Review, Dawson provided a place for Chess problems that introduced different rules, terrains, or pieces, and these were collectively known as fairy chess problems.

Chess Variants in Science Fiction

Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was writing books about John Carter's adventures on Mars, centered one book, The Chessmen of Mars, on the Martian game of Jetan, which was similar to Chess in many respects. Some of the fans of his book took up an interest in the game he described therein. When Star Trek aired on TV, it showed Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock playing a three-dimensional form of Chess on a board with multiple levels. Although this was just a prop, fans of the series took up an interest in it and developed rules for Star Trek 3D Chess.

Correspondence Play

In 1960, Robert Lauzon and Jim France started an organization for correspondence play of Chess called kNights of the Round Table, abbreviated NOST. They were looking to create a friendlier organization that focused more on friendship and conversation than on winning. And over time, members of NOST began to play Chess variants with each other. In 1975, the Associazione Italiana Scacchi Eterodossi (AISE) formed. Translated into English, the name means Italian Association of Heterodox Chess. As the name indicates, it was for the play of Chess variants. Since the members of NOST and AISE were playing by postal mail, rule changes that sped up the game proved popular, and some of the more popular games played through them included Avalanche Chess Progressive Chess, and Marseillais Chess. Also, the opportunity to play Chess variants by postal mail helped encourage the creation of many new variants. In particular, Ralph Betza, who was active in NOST, created more Chess variants than anyone before him.

Commercial games

Sometimes, entrepreneurs or toy companies put out commercial Chess variants. These are usually for commercial reasons, though other reasons may factor in. These include Smess, Omega Chess, and Knightmare Chess.

Computer Play

In 1950, Claude Shannon published a paper called Programming a Computer for Playing Chess. In 1953, Alan Turing published Digital Computer Applied to Games, which concerned itself with programming Chess. In 1956, the first program to play a Chess-like game played a smaller variant called Los Alamos Chess. So computers were playing Chess variants before they were playing Chess. But let's now fastforward to the 1990's. By this time, programs were being written for Xiangqi, Shogi, and some other Chess variants. Then, in 1998, Zillions-of-Games appeared. This was the first computer program to provide a Chess-playing engine that could be easily adapted to a variety of puzzles and games. It supported some Chess variants out of the box, but it could also be programmed for new, original games. Still in 1998, Fergus Duniho was the first person to create and publish an original Chess variant for Zillions-of-Games, namely Cavalier Chess. He went on to create several more Chess variants with Zillions-of-Games as a development tool, and he later went on to create Game Courier, which allows people to play Chess variants against each other online. Meanwhile, many other people began using Zillions-of-Games, and some other PBM sites supporting a limited selection of Chess variants appeared on the web. This new environment for playing Chess variants against a computer or with the aid of one made it much more rewarding to people to create new Chess variants.

The Chess Variant Pages

This website was founded in 1995, and it has played an important role in fostering the creation of new Chess variants. It originally began as a collection of rules for Chess variants. Since then, it has built up a large collection of Zillions-of-Games scripts for playing Chess variants, it has become the home for Game Courier, and many rules pages now feature Interactive Diagrams that let you play the game in question. Through hosting design contests, this site has encouraged the development of new variants. Through providing minimal barriers to publication, it has allowed very prolific inventors to publish many more variants than they would have been allowed to in a print medium.

Inspiration

Perhaps the good majority of Chess variants have been created by people who have been inspired with ideas for new games. Sources of inspiration have included literature, science, science fiction, mathematics, geometry, other games, individual pieces, names for potential games, and contests. Inspiration is the source of most Chess variants, because it is the inspired creators who individually create the most Chess variants. While reformers and entrepreneurs may settle for creating just one Chess variant, those who are moved by inspiration go on to create several.

Between 1961 and 1974, Vernon Parton wrote pamphlets describing about 70 original Chess variants, many inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll. During the later part of the 20th century, Ralph Betza created numerous Chess variants. Since the creation of this site in the late 90's, several editors and contributors have each created several different variants. Editors of this site who have created several variants include Peter Aronson, Fergus Duniho, David Howe, Joe Joyce, and Jeremy Gabriel Good. The record for creating the most Chess variants currently goes to Charles Gilman. Go to Chess Variant Inventors for a ranked listing of all the inventors whose games are featured on this site. The ones at the top of the list, those who have created the most variants, are those most likely to have created games out of inspiration.

I'll also note that some Chess variants are created by game inventors who have created several games besides Chess variants. These include Robert Abbott, known for Ultima, R. Wayne Schmittberger, known for Wildebeest Chess, and Christian Freeling, known for Grand Chess and a handful of other variants.