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Yalta. A three player chess variant. (Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Thu, May 8, 2008 12:44 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
I've just started playing this game and it is a hoot. One decision we came
to quickly is to dispense with the whole notion of check and check mate.
They don't exist. A player loses when his/her king is captured. Why?
Suppose player1 moves a piece which exposes player3's king to a piece of
player2's. Now it's player2's move. Can he take the king? Of course he
can and thus ends the game for player3. Not allowing player2 to capture
the king would be silly. Try this. I'm in check, but another player is
going to intervene before my king can be captured. Do I have to move out
of check? Again only one answer makes logical sense. Of course I really
have to trust the alliance to let my king wave in the wind like that.
There are a thousand variations on this, but they all boil down to the
same thing: you take the king or you don't take the king; there is no
check.

With the exception of not being allowed to castle through check,
everything else about it can be explained as mere convention. Checkmate is
nothing more than the king being captured on the next turn. Check is
nothing more than warning the other person that this is about to happen. I
think the game of chess would work perfectly fine if the conventions of
check and checkmate had never become common.