What are /r/chessvariants' favorite Products & Services?

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Yes, I play many variants. There are mainly 2 reasons:

1. I suck at normal chess,
2. Variants are fun because they don't have 1000 years of theory behind them.

My favorite is Horde. It has the most unbalanced starting position among all chess variants. But the starting evaluation is about equal. Amazing, especially since there are 36 White pawns on the board!

Plus there is /r/HordeChess and a great book on this variant.

I agree that hex spaces do not seem to fit the chess concept at all. The ones that I've seem seem extremely unintuitive, adding complexity and reducing elegance.

Interesting idea about the spaces sliding. I would like to hear more of your other ideas too.

As of now, it seems like the easiest thing to do is simply make certain spaces impassable. There is no gradient or need to calculate movement speed changes. It's just a space that can't be landed on, and lots of patterns can develop around it. There seem to be a few logical ways to proceed with this idea.

1. Don't get cute with the removed space arrangement. Just remove the center, and play centerless chess.
2. Remove spaces asymmetrically from right to left but symmetrically for each player. This variant does it. Not sure if I like the non-square board though or how extreme the removed spaces are (seems to neuter too much of the strategy).
3. Flip a coin or roll dice to determine which spaces are impassable. You might just do this for the middle two rows on a normal board, or you could design your own rules. This is essentially what I linked to in the OP.

Also, do you know of any good websites or apps (Linux or Android) for playing chess variants?

Can play Kinglet on Chess Remix (android / ios).

Could even remix it into Anarchy chess by changing the promotion rules :)

Game rules are very hard or impossible to patent. That's one reason why you see so many knockoffs for games like 2048.

Also, all of these have been made into apps already.

Kung-Fu chess: www.kfchess.com

Chess960 and Crazyhouse are both supported by chess.com

I highly recommend Jocly's "Chess and Variants" https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jocly.android.app6_vc_as

...and you can make you own variants and add them to the Jocly app http://wiki.jocly.com/index.php/Developing_a_Chess_variant

Also, see chessvariants.org for lots of stuff that has not been programmed before.

My app is a game is called "Half Chess". I am a chess lover and I have created a variation on chess - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipflopapp.halfchess .

I originally worked on it offline as a way to introduce chess to new players in a simpler form (esp. introduce them to thinking deep into chess moves). Later I realized that its a good mental exercise for office goers who don't have much time at their hands and would like to get better at chess. This fits game great in both small screens and small free time slots. This is by far one of the best chess playing experiences you can get on mobile phones.

This is the first version and I plan to build more experiences around the game of chess. Please do engage in a discussion with me to improve the game features. ~ love Naval @ 2017

This reminds me of a time in my High School Chess Club when our chess coach did some rock climbing with the guy who was ranked 16^(th) in the world for speed-chess. The coach convinced him (somehow) to play games against us all... at the same time.

We sat with our tables in a circle, 2 minutes per player on each of the clocks, him in the center of the circle. He would just keep walking clockwise, stopping for only a moment at each table to make a move and hit the clock. He beat all 18 of us, with the largest time consumption (on his clocks) being 1 minute 37 seconds (or maybe 47, it's been a few decades.)

As for your design here, I see the corner armies being particularly problematic as the movement of standard chess pieces are based on a grid assumption. Maybe if you used hexes instead. Pieces like bishops could only move along the points of the hex, while pieces like rooks could only move through the flats of the hex. Then you'd have a way for armies in corners to advance meaningfully. Or maybe you could do something similar with an Octagon+Squares pattern.

I am using outlook.com is there a problem with any specific type of email accounts? I will try deleting the account, but may I use the same email address? I don't have many.

I was a lurker for about a year or so but now I want to put my game up, It is a 3D variant:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/762950/Chess_Cubed/

Hell yeah! Horde Chess! Now I can finally put my knowledge to the test that I learned from the Book

I have made diagonal chess game - a chess variant inventend by
one of the professor at my university. Game allows to play 2 players on
one device and 1 player vs AI opponent. You can try it on android
device, here's the link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ForestfGames.DiagonalChess

This blog post is about S-chess, but both variant introduces the same fairy pieces so it worth a read.

https://www.chess.com/blog/catask/s-chess-ramblings-1

I've created a new HD Version of this project! The complete list of features are here:

• Over 160 piece designs! (165)
• Fully HD Piece Designs from Wikipedia, Alfaerie and Winboard!
• Easy ability to switch piece designs by typing and clicking!
• Fill Pawns in pixel perfect squares!
• Place the King and Queen in pixel perfect squares!
• In-game chess timer for White and Black!
• Over 15 board colors! (19)
• Over 60 backdrops! (66)
• 7 different music tracks!
• Simple dragging controls!
• Free to play in your browser with Scratch!
• Recycle Bin is fully fixed! (All errors are removed)

Here are some features that are no longer available in the HD Version that were available in the Old Version:

• Different board sizes. (Due to the large variety of the piece designs and all the code it would take, project is already very large and may be slow on some devices)
• A few of the piece designs. (The Nightrider by GreenChess and the Snail by me, potentially may add those back in a future update)
• A global game timer. (Replaced with a traditional chess clock with times for each color)

You can play the project here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/343444076/

I had a less radical idea for removing stalemates:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/what-if-chess-implemented-a-try-rule

My first published 3d model was an iconified Chinese Chess set, even before I had a 3d printer. If you don't have one there are ways.

Horde Chess, it's awesome because it looks unbalanced but rhe starting position is actually at 0.0. It's also the only variant with a serious book written on it with strategies and openings (you can find it here)