Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Dave McCooey.

Mini Hexchess

In April 21, 1997, Hans Bodlaender put a board with 37 squares on (t)his Internet Site on chess variants, asking which of his readers would compose a chess variant on the board by way of birthday present (he became 37 years old that day.) Dave McCooey, while thinking about the board, noticed that 37 is a hexagonal number, and that there is a perfect hexagonal board with 37 hexes. (About twenty years ago, Dave had invented a hexagonal chess variant, whose rules also can be found on the Chess Variant Pages.)

Dave wrote:

I couldn't miss the opportunity: the next perfect hex board will be when you're 61.

Rules

Players have a king, a rook, a bishop, a knight, and five pawns. The initial setup and form of the board is shown below.

The rules of this game are the same as in McCooey's Hexagonal Chess, with the following differences:

  1. There is no initial double step for the pawns, (and hence no en-passant capture.)
  2. A pawn can promote to a rook, bishop, or knight, but not to a queen. All seven hexes on the opponents side of the board are promotion hexes.
For details and movements of pieces, see McCooey's Hexagonal Chess.
Written by Hans Bodlaender, based on an email of Dave McCooey.
WWW page created on May 6, 1997. Corrected: May 23, 1997.