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

This page is written by the game's inventor, Anooshiravan Ahmadi.

Persian Chess

Persian Chess is a member of the Citadel chess class, designed in 2006 by Anooshiravan Ahmadi in the Hague, the Netherlands. It is played on a 9x9 chess board with 4 corner (Citadel) squares.
This variant is published free and open source. Derivative work requires author's permission, as mentioned in the open source license.
The research and development work of Persian Chess was previously published as "Chess 911" which is now deprecated, but the game rules of "chess 911" still lives as the "Egyptian Eye" sub-variant of Persian Chess.
The chess911.com domain name and webpage are permanently moved to their new home:



Currently there are 4 sub-variants defined and programmed, and it is subject to future development and changes. However, the stablished and programmed sub-variant rules will not be changed in the future unless for bug fixing.
These 4 sub-vaiants are:
- Celtic Citadel
- Persian Princess
- Egyptian Eye
- Oriental Omega

Setup

The start position is shown in the following diagram:

Pieces

In addition to the standard FIDE chess pieces, two well-known compound pieces are added to the game:
1- Princess (white princess on g2 square and black princess on g10 square) which are compound pieces moving like bishop and knight.
2- Fortress (white fortress on a1 and k1 squares and black fortress on a11 and a11 squares) which are compound pieces moving like rook and knight.

Rules

All FIDE chess rules apply to this game. However, there are some exceptions which are as follows:

Rendezvous:
It is similar to castling. When Princess from her home square moves to h2 (for white) and h10 (for black), and if there is a friendly bishop is on those square, then Princess and bishop change places (this move is called Rendezvous).
At the start position of this game, all bishops are dark-square bishops. "Rendezvous" move can transform a dark-square bishop to a white square bishop and can only be played once, by each player in the game.
A difference between rendezvous and castling is that player is allowed to rendezvous even if princess and bishop are moved in the game.
She can rendezvous with any of the dark square bishops. They only need to be placed on g2 an h2 (for white) and g10 and h10 (for black) in any stage of the game.
Players are not allowed to rendezvous when they are in check.

Center square (f6 square):
Only pawns and princess are allowed to move to or capture in center square.

Queen side castling (short castle: king moves 2 squares)
White: king to d2 -> rook to e2
Black: king to d10 -> rook to e10

Princess side castling (long castle: king moves 3 squares)
White: king to i2 -> rook to h2
Black: king to i10 -> rook to h10

Notes

For further information and studying other sub-variant rules, please refer to the homepage: www.persianchess.com

This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.


By Anooshiravan Ahmadi.
Web page created: 2015-08-05. Web page last updated: 2017-04-03