Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Ralph Betza.

A board with a hole in it

I am sure that all of us have a great number of 4x4 chessboards lying around the house, and can easily make a chessopoly board by pushing 9 of these small boards together in a square with the middle 4x4 board turned face down.

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Put Some Pieces on the Board

Using a regular chess set, we get
 . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
 . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
 . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
 . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
 P P P P         p p p p   8
 K B N R         q b n r   7
 Q B N R         k b n r   6
 P P P P         p p p p   5
 . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
 . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
 . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
 . . . . . . . . . . . .   1

 a b c d e f g h i j k l

Movement

Pawns move clockwise. They turn the corner as they reach the diagonal. Your rearguard Pawns are very vulnerable, aren't they?

Forget about Pawn promotion, double step, and en passant.

Everything else moves the ordinary way. Bishops, Rooks, and Queens cannot go through the hole. A Knight can jump over the hole to make its normal move. For example, a Knight at d7 could make its normal move to f8.

Notation

Should it really use my "N-Board Chess" notation, but with each board a 4x4 board?

Go to Community Chest

To live up to its name this game should have special squares. However, it is already interesting.

You noticed the similarity to the traditional 4x16 spherical chess, of course, and I hope you realize that the really special thing about this game is "Pawns move clockwise".

The setup in my diagram is not a mistake. Things are not symmetrical.


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