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Fairy chess piece

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A fairy chess piece or unorthodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess, but used in certain chess variants and some chess problems.

Contents

Movement Notation

Taken from David Parlett's The Oxford History of Board Games (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0192129988). Parlett uses an expression of the form m=, where m stands for "move", and the expression is composed from the following elements: On this basis, the traditional chess king moves (1*), queen (n*), bishop (nX), rook (n+), pawn (1>) with option of (2>) initially when not taking, or (1X>) when taking; and knight (1/2).

Classification of fairy chess pieces

It is extremely difficult to classify fairy chess pieces at all, as more and more are invented by chess composers. A specialized solving program, WinChloe, recognizes more than 1200 different fairy pieces. Most (but not all) usual fairy chess pieces fall into one of three classes, although it should be noted that some are hybrid pieces (see the Chinese pieces, for example, which can move without capture as riders yet can only capture as hoppers). It is easy to create a new type of piece by simply combining the movement powers of two or more different pieces.

Leapers

A leaper is a piece that moves a fixed distance and can jump over any pieces between its departure and destination squares. A leaper's move is usually described by giving the number of squares it moves horizontally and vertically per move. For example, the knight in orthodox chess is a (2,1) leaper, meaning it moves two squares in one direction (horizontally or vertically) and one square in the other (note that it could also be described as a (1,2) leaper - there is no significance to the order of the numbers).

In shatranj, a forerunner to chess, the pieces later replaced by the bishop and queen were also leapers: the alfil was a (2,2) leaper (moving exactly two squares diagonally in any direction), and the fers a (1,1) leaper (that is, it can move one square diagonally in any direction).

Some leapers can choose between several different lengths of move - the king in orthodox chess, for example, which can move one square in any direction, could be considered a (1,1) or (1,0) leaper.

Leapers are not able to create pins, although they are often effective forking pieces.

Riders

A rider is a piece that can move an unlimited distance in one direction, providing there are no pieces in the way.

There are three riders in orthodox chess: the rook can move an unlimited number of (1,0) cells and is therefore a (1,0) rider; the bishop is a (1,1) rider; and the queen is a (1,1) or (1,0) rider.

The most popular fairy chess rider is the nightrider, which can make an unlimited number of knight moves (that is, 2,1 cells) in any direction (though, like other riders, it cannot change direction half-way through its move).

Sliders are a noteworthy, special case of riders which can only move between geometrically-contiguous cells. All of the riders in orthodox chess are examples of sliders.

The names of riders are often obtained by taking the name of a leaper which moves a similar cell-size and adding the suffix rider. For example, the zebra is a (3,2) leaper, and the zebrarider is a (3,2) rider.

Riders can create both pins and skewers.

Hoppers

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A hopper is a piece which moves by jumping over another piece, which usually can be any piece of any color (this intervening piece is called a hurdle). Unless it can jump over a piece, it cannot move.

There are no hoppers in orthodox chess, although in xiangqi, the cannon captures as a hopper (when not capturing, it is a rider - the so-called Chinese pieces (see below) share this characteristic).

The most popular hopper in fairy chess is the grasshopper, which moves along the same lines as an orthodox queen, except that it must hop over some other piece and land on the square immediately beyond it. In the diagram to the right, the white grasshopper on d4 can move to the marked squares (b2, d1, d7 and h8), as well as capture the black pawn on a7.

Note that hoppers generally capture by taking the piece on the destination square, not by taking the hurdle (as is the case in checkers). An exception is the locust.

Royal pieces

A royal piece is one which must not be allowed to be captured. If a royal piece is threatened with capture and cannot avoid capture next move, then the game is lost (this is checkmate). In orthodox chess, each side has one royal piece, the king. In fairy chess any other orthodox piece or fairy piece may instead be designated royal, there may be more than one royal piece, or there may be no royal pieces at all (in which case the aim of the game must be something other than to deliver checkmate).

List of orthodox and fairy chess pieces

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Using Parlett's notation:

Ralph Betza's \"Funny Notation\"

Ralph Betza has [described] a method of describing fairy (and, in fact, many standard) chess pieces in terms of the moves of basic pieces with modifiers.

For example, the FIDE Rook, which can be described as a Wazir-rider, can be notated WW, with shorthand R. The FIDE Bishop can be notated as a Fers-rider, or FF. Finally, a FIDE pawn can be notated fmWfcF (or fcFfmW), meaning it is a piece that moves forward like a Wazir, and captures forward like a Fers (and has no other moves). This is setting aside the initial two-square move and promotion.

External links

 

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