![Rhombic Chess gameboard and starting position](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Rhombic_Chess_gameboard_and_starting_position.png)
Rhombic chess is a
chess variant for two players created by Tony Paletta in 1980.
[Pritchard (1994), p. 255] The
gameboard has an overall
hexagon
In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°.
Regular hexagon
A '' regular hexagon'' has ...
al shape and comprises 72
rhombi
In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus (plural rhombi or rhombuses) is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The ...
in three alternating colors. Each player commands a full set of standard
chess pieces
A chess piece, or chessman, is a game piece that is placed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. It can be either white or black, and it can be one of six types: king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, or pawn.
Chess sets generally come with s ...
.
The game was first published in ''Chess Spectrum Newsletter'' 2 by the inventor. It was included in ''World Game Review'' No. 10 edited by Michael Keller.
Game rules
The diagram shows the starting setup. As in standard
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 dist ...
,
White
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...
moves first and
checkmate wins the game. Piece moves are described using two basic types of movement:
*
Edgewise—through the common side of adjoining cells. If an edgewise move is more than one step, it continues in a straight line from the side of a cell through its opposite side, the line being orthogonal to these sides.
*
Pointwise—through the sharpest corner of a cell, in a straight line to the next cell. (The paths are highlighted on the board by same-colored cells.)
Piece moves
* A rook moves edgewise only.
* A bishop moves pointwise. It can also move one step edgewise.
* The queen moves as a rook and bishop.
* The king moves one step edgewise or pointwise. There is no
castling in rhombic chess.
* A knight moves in the pattern: one step edgewise followed by one step pointwise (or vice versa), away from its starting cell. Like a standard chess
knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
, it leaps any intervening men.
* A pawn moves forward one step edgewise, with the option of two steps on its first move. A pawn captures the
same as it moves. There is no ''
en passant
''En passant'' (, "in passing") is a method of capturing in chess that occurs when a pawn captures a horizontally adjacent enemy pawn that has just made an initial two-square advance. The capturing pawn moves to the square that the enemy paw ...
'' capture in rhombic chess. A pawn
promotes to any piece other than king when reaching
i (for White) and rank
c (for Black).
Parachess
![Parachess gameboard and starting position](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Parachess_gameboard_and_starting_position.png)
Circa 2000, Paletta created Parachess using the same board geometry but introducing additional ways to move:
These ways to move are highlighted on the board by same-colored cells.
Piece moves
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
External links
Parachessby Tony Paletta, ''
The Chess Variant Pages
''The Chess Variant Pages'' is a non-commercial website devoted to chess variants. It was created by Hans Bodlaender in 1995. The site is "run by hobbyists for hobbyists" and is "the most wide-ranging and authoritative web site on chess variants" ...
''
{{Chess variants, state=collapsed
Chess variants
1980 in chess
Board games introduced in 1980