The board is shaped as an irregular hexagon with nine files and ten ranks, comprising 70 cells as opposed to 91 in Gliński's board. If an enemy man blocks a pawn from moving in one of its two forward move directions, then that pawn is automatically blocked from moving in the other direction as well. Castling does not typically increase the king's safety or make the rook more active, but it is present in the game nonetheless, for completeness. The queen combines the moves of the rook and the bishop, and thus can move any number of steps in any orthogonal direction (identical to Gliński's rook). For example (see diagram), the two kings start on e1 and e10; White's rooks start on a1 and i5, and Black's rooks start on a6 and i10. A combination extracted from one of my games. )²=14400 possible setups. A pawn captures diagonally like a bishop, but one step away (one rank and one file). There is no castling in Gliński's chess. The rook can move any number of steps, but only vertically; the bishop can move any number of steps, but not vertically. A pawn captures diagonally forward to the sides (to a cell of the same colour on which the pawn stands). [12] The board is a horizontally oriented regular hexagram, consisting of 37 numbered cells. The knight jumps, two steps in any orthogonal direction, followed by one step in a different direction (identical to Gliński's knight). Other standard chess castling rules and restrictions apply. The nature of the game is also affected by the 30° orientation of the board's cells; the board can be horizontally (Wellisch's, de Vasa's, Brusky's) or vertically (Gliński's, Shafran's, McCooey's) oriented. (So, unless it is a wing pawn, an unmoved pawn has three capturing possibilities; a pawn that has moved, two.) 5. Rank 11 contains exactly one cell: f11. Players may castle either short (0-0) or long (0-0-0). Do Tactics! If a variant's gameboard has cell vertices facing the players, pawns typically have two oblique-forward move directions.) When a pawn makes a multi-step move, it is subject to capture by en passant. But only a pawn on its initial cell may capture straight forward; once a pawn has moved, it may capture only to the sides. The white pawns start at cells 5, 12, 18, 23, and 29; the black pawns at 9, 15, 20, 26, and 33. The king moves one step in any orthogonal direction; there is no castling. Other differences from Gliński's: castling is permitted; kings start on opposite wings of the board; and draws are worth half a point.[8][9]. Rules for piece movement are the same as Gliński's variant, except for the pawns. Invented by Soviet geologist Isaak Grigorevich Shafran in 1939 and registered in 1956. Normal castling rules and restrictions apply. A pawn moves forward to an adjacent cell, or (as its first-move option), two cells forward in the same direction. In tournament games, the player who delivers stalemate earns ​3⁄4 point, and the stalemated player (the player without a legal move) receives ​1⁄4 point. Rook & King vs King; 2 Bishops & King vs King; Make sure you don’t stalemate your opponent in the process! The rhombus-shaped board comprises 81 cells with initial setup as shown, in the revised form of the game. Beth's first contact with chess comes after she sees Mr. Shaibel studying the game by himself. Gliński's hexagonal chess, invented by Władysław Gliński in 1936 and first launched in Britain in 1949, is "probably the most widely played of the hexagonal chess games". files are straight and 30° oblique to the vertical, identified by letters a–l. Hexagonal chess refers to a group of chess variants played on boards composed of hexagon cells.The best known is Gliński's variant, played on a symmetric 91-cell hexagonal board. Many different shapes and sizes of hexagon-based boards are used by variants. In other words, I don't think the two rooks alone can enforce a checkmate on the white king is out of the picture. [2] Gliński's book Rules of Hexagonal Chess was published in 1973.[3]. Castling is permitted, and kings start on opposite wings of the board.[6][7]. Each player calls the left-hand side of the board his "queen's flank" and the right-hand side his "bishops' flank"; note that they do not correlate (White's queen's flank is Black's bishops' flank). The f-pawns are also not defended in the opening array, and in fact smothered mate would result if it were captured by a knight, although this possibility would rarely occur in practical play. All pawns can make a double step from their starting cells. The usual restrictions apply. In the diagram, the black pawn on d8 has three possible moves, but none is safe: after 1... d7 it can be captured 2. exd7; after 1... d6 it can be captured 2. exd7e.p. More chess-like games for hexagon-based boards started appearing regularly at the beginning of the 20th century. As in algebraic notation, each cell is identified by a letter+number combination. (E.g., a rook has six natural directions for movement instead of four.) In Shafran's chess, a pawn's first move can take it to the middle of the file. At one point there were more than half a million players, and more than 130,000 board sets were sold. En passant captures are also possible: for example, if the black pawn on c7 in the diagram moves to c5 in a single move, the white pawn on b5 can capture it: bxc6. or 2. cxd6; after 1... d5 it can be captured en passant by either pawn. Three colours are typically used so that no two neighboring cells are the same colour, and a colour-restricted game piece such as the orthodox chess bishop usually comes in sets of three per player in order to maintain the game's balance. And if black still has the Qc1# or checking threats if white doesn't make a checking move with Ra3+ or moves his king. These endgame studies apply to both Gliński's and McCooey's variants:[11], Starchess is a hexagonal variant invented by Hungarian chess teacher László Polgár. Pawns start on the players' third ranks. Each player has five pawns, a king, knight, bishop, rook, and queen. The first applications of chess on hexagonal boards probably occurred mid-19th century, but two early examples did not include checkmate as the winning objective. The notation consists of Q- or B- (indicating whether the queen's or the bishops' rook is used) followed by 0-0-0 (long castling: the king moves next to the rook and the rook jumps over it) or 0-0 (short castling, the king moves one cell less distance). At the beginning of the game, the players place their other pieces alternately on the cells behind their pawns (White: 4, 11, 17, 22, 28; Black: 10, 16, 21, 27, 34).