Take-All Chess and Progressive Take-All Chess

Take-All Chess is a very natural variant. It can be easily described as Checkers played with the Chessmen (thus, it may be thought as a Checkers Variant as well!).

Rules

The rules of normal chess apply, with the following exceptions:

The King has no special prerogative, in particular capturing the King does not end the game. Consequently, promoting a Pawn to King is allowed.
The game is won by the player who captures all of the opponent's chessmen.
Stalemate is a draw.

Comments

As described so far, Take-All Chess looks very long to play, drawish and rather uninteresting. In order to make it more palatable, the Italian CV player G. Dipilato introduced in the late 70s the Progressive Take-All Chess.
PTAC is nothing but TAC played at the Italian Progressive Chess pace. I.e., white starts with one move, then black makes two moves, then white makes three moves, etc. (For some specific points in the rules, see the rules on Italian Progressive Chess, ignoring the rules about check.
The resulting variant encountered some success in AISE practice.
The game is never so violent or forceful as in Progressive Losing Chess. Also, the choice of openings is wider.
More recently, a different modification of pace led to Marseillais Take-All Chess. Here each player moves twice per turn; see for specific points in the rules the rules of Marseillais Chess, ignoring the rules about check.

Sample Games Progressive Take-All Chess

Sala-Brusca (Aise Championship VIII)
1. Nf3
2. d5 Bg4
3. Ng5 N:f7 N:d8
4. K:d8 B:e2 B:d1 B:c2
5. Ba6 B:b7 B:a8 Na3 N:c2
6. c5 c4 c3 c:b2 b:c1Q Q:a1
7. N:a1 Kd1 Re1 R:e7 R:g7 R:h7 R:h8
8. B:g7 B:h8 B:a1 Bd4 B:f2 Bg3 B:h2 Bg3
9. Resigns (0-1)

Scovero-Buccoliero (AISE Championship IX)
1. c3
2. c5 Nc6
3. a4 a5 a6
4. Qa5 Q:a1 b5 c4
5. Qb3 Q:b5 Q:c6 Q:c8 Q:a8
6. Q:b1 Q:c1 Q:e1 Q:f1 Q:g2 Q:a8
7. h4 Rh3 Rd3 R:d7 R:a7 R:a8 e4
8. f5 f:e4 e3 e:f2 f:g1Q Qa7 Q:a8 Q:a6
9. d4 d5 d6 d:e7 e:f8Q Q:g7 Q:h8 Qf6 Q:a6
10. Kd7 Kc7 Kb7 K:a6 Kb5 Kb4 K:c3 K:b2 Nf6 h5 draw.

Text by Andrea Mori (email removed contact us for address) unito.it and Alessandro Castelli (email removed contact us for address) ink.it, with small modifications by Hans Bodlaender.

WWW page created: February 23, 1996. Last modified: April 8, 1998.

For author and/or inventor information on this item see: this item's information page.
Created on: February 23, 1996. Last modified on: January 04, 2001.