Check out Smess, our featured variant for February, 2025.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Sergey Sirotkin.

Ladder Chess

Sergey Sirotkin sent the following chess variant, as a non-competing entry for the contest to design a variant on a board with 40 squares (the entry came a few months after the deadline for submissions.)

Rules

The game is played on the board, shown below, with the given opening setup:

The rules of orthodox chess are used, except that there is no castling.

WWW page made by Hans Bodlaender, based upon email of Sergey Sirotkin; diagram by Sergey Sirotkin.
WWW page created: April 7, 2000.