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Team-Mate Chess. Variant with 8 different pieces, none of which is able to checkmate a bare king on its own. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 14, 2023 05:42 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Mon Apr 17 06:09 PM:

One thing that has always bothered me about this variant, is that the King + Pawn vs King end-game is automatically a draw, as none of the pieces you can promote to could force checkmate on its own. Because of that we lose one of the most subtle elementary end-games in chess.

Of course it would be possible to add a special rule that would allow the last pawn to promote to a piece that does have mating potential (e.g. a Rook). But this would be against the spirit of the variant. Therefore the following idea occurred to me: don't have the Pawn promote to a single piece, but to a pair. One piece could appear on the promotion square as usual, but as a bonus a Ferz would appear on the square the Pawn came from.