Grand Chess

Grand Chess or Großschach is a variant of chess that was invented in 1984 by the Dutch game designer Christian Freeling . It is played on a board 10 by 10 fields .

characterization

The game is considered to be one of the most successful representatives of the "Great Chess Games " , which have an enlarged board and additional fairy-tale chess pieces, like the medieval Grande Acedrex . Freeling wanted to further develop a variant of chess invented by the former world champion José Raúl Capablanca (see also Capablanca Random Chess ). As with this, in Grand Chess, each side has two additional pawns and two new pieces: marshal and cardinal . The Marshal combines the puff by puff of tower and Springer , and the Cardinal can be like a runner pull or as a jumper.

Grand Chess is one of the comparatively popular variants of chess. So far there have been two world championships that were held by email . Game board and figures are available.

regulate

a b c d e f G H i j 10 10 9 9 8th 8th 7th 7th 6th 6th 5 5 4th 4th 3 3 2 2 1 1 a b c d e f G H i j

Grand Chess board with pieces in their starting position. White marshal and cardinal stand on the right, black marshal and cardinal on the left of the king.

While the towers are set up in the corners as usual, the other figures are pushed forward one row with the marshal on the f-line and the cardinal on the g-line, so that the towers on the base row are freely movable and connected. The ten white pawns are on the third row. The black pieces stand symmetrically on rows eight to ten. In addition, there is no castling in this variant of chess .

A pawn may be converted or remain pawn when it reaches the opposing pawn and pawn row, but must convert on the last row, the tower row. Unlike in standard chess , pawns can only be converted into pieces of the same color that have already been captured (for example, there cannot be two queens of the same color on the board). If there are no defeated officers available for conversion, no pawn may be converted, which also means that you cannot move a pawn to the tenth or first row. A pawn on the ninth or second row still offers check if the opposing king is standing diagonally in front of him. As in standard chess, pawns have the right to take a double step on their first move and can capture en passant . As in the standard chess applies Matt as a victory and a stalemate as a draw .

literature

• R. Wayne Schmittberger: New Rules for Classic Games. John Wiley & Sons, New York 1992, ISBN 0-471-53621-0 , p. 205.
• David Pritchard: The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. Games and Puzzles Publications, Surrey (UK) 1994, ISBN 0-9524142-0-1 , p. 129 f.
• Burt Hochberg: "Don't be Scared, It's Still Chess". In: Chess Life . August 1997.
• Grand Chess. In: Chess Variants. No. 63, January 2010, pp. 142–144 ( bcvs.ukf.net ( memento of February 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; 146 kB]).

Web links

• Hans Bodlaender: Christian Freeling's Grand Chess. In: chessvariants.org (English)
• Christian Freeling: Grand Chess. In: mindsports.nl (English; sample games and problems)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This is the translation suggested by Freeling himself.
2. ↑ See representative of the classification of Grand Chess under the "recognized chess variants" (with the categorization as "popular game") on the specialist website, The Chess Variant Pages: Recognized Chess Variants. In: chessvariants.com, accessed on December 14, 2019.
3. ↑ Recognized Chess Variants. Grand Chess. In: The Chess Variant Pages, accessed December 15, 2019.
4. ↑ For a picture of the game board with the basic setup of Grand Chess see boardgamegeek.com ( memento from July 9th 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).