![Tic Tac Chec](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Tic_Tac_Chec.jpg)
Minichess is a family of
chess variant
A chess variant is a game related to, derived from, or inspired by chess. Such variants can differ from chess in many different ways.
"International" or "Western" chess itself is one of a family of games which have related origins and could be co ...
s played with regular chess pieces and standard rules, but on a smaller board.
The motivation for these variants is to make the game simpler and shorter than standard chess. The first chess-like game implemented on a computer was the 6×6 chess variant
Los Alamos chess
Los Alamos chess (or anti- clerical chessAnderson (1986), p. 105) is a chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Lab ...
. The low memory capacity of early computers meant that a reduced board size and a smaller number of pieces were required for the game to be implementable on a computer.
3×3 and 3×4 boards
Chess on a 3×3 board does not have any clearly defined starting position. However, it is a
solved game: the outcome of every possible position is known. The best move for each side is known as well. The game was solved independently by Aloril in 2001 and by Kirill Kryukov in 2004. The solution by Kryukov is more complete, since it allows pawns to be placed everywhere, not only on the second row as by Aloril. The longest checkmate on a 3×3 board takes 16 moves. The number of legal positions is 304,545,552.
In 2009 Kryukov reported solving 3×4 chess. On this board there are 167,303,246,916 legal positions and the longest checkmate takes 43 moves.
4×4, 4×5 and 4×8 chess
In 1981 mathematician David Silverman suggested a 4×4 chess variant, as shown on the diagram.
[Pritchard (2007), p. 113] The first player wins easily in this game (1. axb3+ Qxb3 2. cxb3+ Kxb3 (or 2...Kb4 3. bxc3 checkmate) 3. bxa3+ Kc4 4. Qa2 checkmate), so Silverman proposed a variant: Black can select a pawn, and White must make a first move with this pawn. However, in this case Black wins even more easily (select pawn b2, 1.bxa3 (or 1.bxc3) b2+ 2. Qxb2 Qxb2 checkmate). To make the variant more playable, Silverman finally proposed to insert a row between pawns and use the board 4×5. In this variant, pawns can move two squares on their first move, if the target square is free.
The 1995 game ''Tic Tac Chec'', invented by Don Green, is played on a 4×4 board which starts empty. Each player has a knight, a rook, a bishop and a pawn, and players may place a piece on the board on their turn. Once each player has three pieces in play, pieces may be moved. Captured pieces are returned to the opponent, and may be replayed. A player wins if they are able to arrange their pieces into a line of four.
Another chess variant on a 4×5 board, ''Microchess'', was invented by Glimne in 1997.
Castling is allowed in this variant.
There is also variant on a 4×8 board, ''Demi-chess'', which was invented by Peter Krystufek in 1986. Castling is allowed in this variant.
5×5 chess
A board needs to be five squares wide to contain all kinds of chess pieces on the first row. In 1969,
Martin Gardner suggested a chess variant on 5×5 board in which all chess moves, including pawn double-move, en-passant capture as well as castling can be made. Later AISE (''Associazione Italiana Scacchi Eterodossi'', "Italian Heterodox Chess Association") abandoned pawn double-move and castling. The game was largely played in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
(including by
correspondence) and opening theory was developed. The statistics of the finished games is the following:
* White won 40% of games.
* Black won 28%.
* 32% were
draws.
Mehdi Mhalla and Frederic Prost
weakly solved Gardner minichess in 2013 and proved the game-theoretic value to be a draw.
Gardner minichess was also played by AISE with
suicide chess and
progressive chess
Progressive chess is a chess variant in which players, rather than just making one move per turn, play progressively longer series of moves. The game starts with White making one move, then Black makes two consecutive moves, White replies with thr ...
rules. In 1980 HP shipped the
HP-41C
The HP-41C series are programmable, expandable, continuous memory handheld RPN calculators made by Hewlett-Packard from 1979 to 1990. The original model, HP-41C, was the first of its kind to offer alphanumeric display capabilities. Later cam ...
programmable calculator, which could play this game. The calculator was able to play on quite a decent level.
In 1989, Martin Gardner proposed another setup, which he called Baby chess. In difference from Gardner minichess, black pieces are mirrored. Paul Jacobs and Marco Meirovitz suggested another starting position for 5×5 chess shown at the right.
Jeff Mallett (main developer of
Zillions of Games
Zillions of GamesSearch-based Procedural Content Generation: A Taxonomy and Survey', Julian Togelius, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Kenneth O. Stanley, Cameron Browne, '' IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games'' 3(3):172 - 18 ...
) suggested a setup in which white has two knights against two black bishops. Mhalla and Prost proved Mallett chess to be a forced win for White in 25 moves, although theoretically the game is drawn when played perfectly if White is given the bishops and Black the knights rather than vice versa.
5×6 chess
There are several chess variants on 5×6 board. The earliest published one is Petty chess, which was invented by B. Walker Watson in 1930. Speed chess was invented by Mr. den Oude in 1988. Elena chess was invented by Sergei Sirotkin in 1999.
QuickChess was invented by Joseph Miccio in 1991. Pawn double-move and castling are not allowed in this variant, pawns can only promote to captured pieces. The game was sold by Amerigames International and received National Parenting Publications Award in 1993. Miccio obtained a US patent in 1993, which described 3 further chess variant on 5×6 board. Besides two variants similar to ''Speed chess'' and ''Elena Chess'' (same position of white pieces, position of black pieces is symmetrical), the patent claimed one further variant, which have been named later ''Chess Attack''. Miccio advocated these games as educational tools for children to learn chess rules. The smaller board and less pieces would reduce the complexity of the game and allow for more quicker games. The piece setup like in ''Speed chess'' was intended to teach short side castling and setup as in ''Chess Attack'' - long side castling.
Laszlo Polgar published a book in 1994 ''Minichess 777+1 Positions (Quickchess teaches chess quick)'',
[Polgar (1994)] completely devoted to chess on 5×6 board. Besides initial setup as in QuickChess, Polgar proposed to use any other possible setup of pieces, even asymmetrical ones. The book contained problems, combinations and games for 5×6 chess. Polgar recommended to use is as a first book to teach children to play chess.
![Magnus kø](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Magnus_k%C3%B8.jpg)
Chess Attack, which has the same setup as Gardner minichess (but played on a bigger board) is sold by Norway company ''Yes Games AS'' since 2008. In this variant, pawns can make double-moves and en-passant capture is allowed. The game was endorsed by
Magnus Carlsen and
Alexandra Kosteniuk
Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk (russian: Алекса́ндра Константи́новна Костеню́к; born 23 April 1984) is a Russian chess grandmaster who is the former Women's World Rapid Chess Champion in 2021, and the for ...
.
MinitChess published in 2010 based on earlier 2007 and 2009 variants, is played on a Gardner board with the black pieces mirrored. In this variant there is no castling, no double pawn moves, pawn promotion only to queen, victory by king capture or when an opponent has no legal move (including moves which permit the king to be captured—these moves are legal), and draw after 40 moves by each side. In addition, the bishop is replaced by a ''bad bishop'' that has the additional option of moving to any adjacent empty square on its turn, allowing it to change color. This variant is intended to be easy to write computer programs to play and harder for expert human players of standard chess, while still retaining the essential character of the game: several computer tournaments have been held.
6×6 chess
Besides
Los Alamos chess
Los Alamos chess (or anti- clerical chessAnderson (1986), p. 105) is a chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Lab ...
, there are other chess variants played on a 6×6 board. The game Diana chess (or ''Ladies chess'') was suggested by Hopwood in 1870. The initial position is shown above. There are no queens on the board and pawns can't promote to queens either. Pawns cannot move forward two squares on their initial move.
Castling
Castling is a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over. Castling is permitted only if neither the king nor the rook has previously moved ...
is done by switching the positions of the king and rook. The same condition as in
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
apply for castling (e.g., the king should not be under check, neither rook nor king should have moved before etc.)
Serge L'Hermitte suggested in 1969 a game with nearly the same setup as Diana chess, except that the positions of the black king and knight are exchanged from their positions in Diana chess. Additionally, knights cannot move within the first three moves, and the king can move to the knight position without losing the right to castle.
A. Wardley proposed in 1977 a Simpler chess, a family of 6×6 chess variants, in which a pair of pieces is removed from both sides: rooks, knights, bishop or even king and queen. Removing bishops results in
Los Alamos chess
Los Alamos chess (or anti- clerical chessAnderson (1986), p. 105) is a chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Lab ...
; the result of removing rooks, knights, or royals is shown on the diagrams above.
Jeff Mallett proposed the setup knights versus bishops also on 6×6 board. On a normal 8×8 board, bishops are considered slightly more valuable than knights (especially two bishops). However, on 6×6 boards, because of the smaller size of the board, two knights are presumably equal to two bishops.
See also
*
Hexapawn
Hexapawn is a deterministic two-player game invented by Martin Gardner. It is played on a rectangular board of variable size, for example on a 3×3 board or on a regular chessboard. On a board of size ''n''×''m'', each player begins with ''m'' p ...
– played with only pawns on a 3x3 board
*
Los Alamos chess
Los Alamos chess (or anti- clerical chessAnderson (1986), p. 105) is a chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Lab ...
– played on 6×6 board
*
Dōbutsu shōgi
is a small shogi variant for young children. It was invented by :Professional shogi player#Women's professionals, women's professional shogi player , partially to attract young girls to the game. It is played on a 3×4 board and generally follo ...
– played on 3×4 board
*
Whale shogi – played on 6×6 board
*
Microshogi – played on 4×5 board
*
Minishogi – played on 5×5 board
Notes
References
*
*
External links
Knight courtby Jason D. Wittman
by Hans Bodlaender
6 Ranks, remaining variantsby Charles Gilman.
All in one: 4×5, 4x8, 5x5, 5x6, 6x6 boards
{{Chess variants, state=collapsed
Chess variants