Grand Alamos Chess
Christian Freeling's 10x10 Grand Chess addresses the problems of Rook mobility and King safety not with a castling rule, but by putting the Rooks on an otherwise empty rank behind the rest of the pieces. This way, the Rooks can more easily move toward the center of the board, and the King can more easily duck behind the other pieces and scurry toward the corner. This basic idea can also be applied to the standard 8x8 board..
Setup
Rules
Same as FIDE, except that the pieces and pawns on the middle 6 files all start 1 rank further forward, the middle 6 pawns have no initial double-step ability (but the side pawns still do), and there is no castling.
The initial position here is achievable in FIDE chess through a sequence of legal moves. The rules here are exactly as if such a sequence had been played in FIDE chess.
Notes
I chose the name "Grand Alamos Chess" since this variant strikes me as a hybrid of Grand Chess and Los Alamos Chess. It has the Rooks on a mostly-empty back rank like Grand Chess, and most of the pawns start only 3 ranks away from each other like Los Alamos Chess. If one applied the design principles of Grand Chess using Los Alamos Chess as the starting point rather than classic Chess, or vice-versa, this might be the result.
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By Jeff Cornell.
Last revised by Jeff Cornell.
Web page created: 2020-09-14. Web page last updated: 2023-09-20