It’s only a matter of going

• Kenneth Silber, Chess and Its Alternatives, Splice Today, May 20, 2020

Besides the standard game, there are many chess variants: the starting positions of the pieces, or the use of non-standard pieces; the size and shape of the board or boards; the number of players; the rules for such operations as castling, Pawn promotion, draws, checks and checkmates; whether the game retains its symmetry between the contending sides, or its transparency, where all players can see the full board; whether some element of chance is introduced, as with a dice roll determining what pieces can move. This makes for an interesting ferment, though no variant has yet approached the popularity of regular chess. A relatively popular one is Fischer Random Chess, also known as Chess960, invented by the troubled and brilliant late champion Bobby Fischer; relatively moderate in its differences from standard chess, this variant randomizes the initial placement of the pieces behind each row of Pawns, making for a more varied set of game openings. [Read more].

Chess and its alternatives: where complexity borders on chaos. Credit: Splice Today.