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

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

Snake Chess

By Sergey Sirotkin

Introduction

Snake Chess is a variant of orthodox chess played on a cylindrical board of twelve ranks by two files, with 10 pieces on a side.

Board and Setup

The Snake Chess board is a cylinder, with the A file effectively sandwiched on both sides by the B file, and visa versa.

Snake Chess initial setup.
Because the board is actually a cylinder, Knights attack the space immeadiately in front of and behind them as their wide jumps wrap around.

*
*
N
*
*
Additionally, Queens and Bishops make zig-zag up and down the board as their diagonal movements also wrap around.
*
*
*
B
*
*
*
This gives them effectively the movement pattern of a Crooked Bishop.

Rules

The game is conducted by rules of International Chess with the following changes:

The game is won by checkmating or stalemating your opponent.

Notes

A game with some similarity to Snake Chess is Narrow Chess, which is played on a 20 by 2 board.

Zillions of Games

There is an implementation of Snake Chess for Zillions of games. You can download it here:


Written by Sergey Sirotkin. HTML Conversion by Peter Aronson.
WWW page created: June 16th, 2001.