This is a shuffle variant of normal Chess, which in general destroys the possibility to castle, as the King and Rooks are also shuffled. For uniformity, castling is therefore always forbidden.
Initial setupThere is no fixed setup; the back-rank pieces are randomly shuffled with certain restrictions. Black's setup is the mirror image of white's, though.
Both sides have:
1 King
The Bishops will start on opposite colors. |
Click on a piece below to see its moves
Sliding capture or non-capture, | |||||||||||
Unblockable leap (capture or non-capture) | |||||||||||
Non-capture only | |||||||||||
Capture only | |||||||||||
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Piece | ID | value | Moves (Betza notation) | Remarks |
King | K | - | K | Can castle with Rook, moving 2 steps towards it |
Queen | Q | 9.5 | RB or Q | |
Rook | R | 5 | R | |
Bishop | B | 3.25 | B | Color-bound |
Knight | N | 3.25 | N | |
Pawn | P | 1 | mfWcfF | Promotes to Q, R, B, or N on reaching last rank |
The Back-rank pieces are randomly shuffled on the back rank in the opening setup. There is no castling.
It is not possible to force checkmate on a bare King with just a single Bishop or Knight (in addition to your own King). Two Knights cannot do that either.
Bishops are confined to squares of a single color. Having Bishops on both colors compensates this weakness, and is worth an extra 0.5 on top of their added value.