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This page is written by the game's inventor, Claudio Martins Jaguaribe.

Bizarro Chess

In a sleepless night, I've devised this variant based on the Superman's Bizarro character. This can be played as a stand alone variant, but, it's designed to be played vs. FIDE.

Setup

Besides the normal FIDE board there's another board, the Bizarro world.

The Bizarro board is the reverse of the FIDE, so, where the square is white, in Bizarro will be black.

The setup for Bizarro board is:

WGFMÇFGW
AAAAAAAA
...
aaaaaaaa
wgfmçfgw

Pieces

Besides the normal FIDE pieces, in the Bizarro they have counterparts.

Pawns are Arabic Spears (a), also known as pawnriders, move foward as Rooks and captures foward as Bishops,

Rooks are Wazires (w), moves as a Rook, but one squere only,

Knights are Grand Masters (g), see below,

Bishop are Ferzes, moves as a bishop, but one square only,

Queens are Men (m), non-royal Kings,

Kings are King Battlers (ç), Queens with royal restrictions.


Grand Masters (name taken from the highest knight rank in religious orders) are similar to knightriders, but they do a single jump, not a sequence. So, a Grand Master at a1 can jump to any of these cells: b3, c5, d7, c2, e3, or g4.

Rules

The players moves each one piece in each board, white begins in FIDE and black in Bizarro after each player makes its movements they change boards and the game continues.

A piece can ever change with its counterpart (OBS: Bishops and Ferzes can only change with the same color, i.e.,  white with white and black with black), the player moves the piece from one board to the other and vice-versa. If the piece is captured and there's no piece to change with the piece is locked in the board where it is.

As the game is played in double blind, is possible to a player decide to move a piece to a cel and when he gets there, the piece is taken, he takes the oposite piece, and may be locked (Bishop/Ferzes or lack of pieces to trade). Ex.: Black decides to move his Rook fro e3 to A5, but white tales the wazir at A5, when the Rook gets to A5 it takes the white piece.

The promotion of AS is just like pawns, and, as pawns, they can be replaced for any piece from either board, except Kings. They can't change boards when are promoted. Tehy promote and in the next round they change boards with the new piece.

Notes

The idea to move a piece to a weaker board seems like power play, but, most of it is lost to loose a move to do it.


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By Claudio Martins Jaguaribe.
Web page created: 2010-06-01. Web page last updated: 2010-06-01