Wildebeest chess

Wildebeest chess starting setup. For this diagram, camels are represented by horizontal knights; wildebeests by inverted knights. In this position the white camel on h1 can move to g4 or i4; the white wildebeest can move to f3, f4, h3, or h4.

Wildebeest chess is a chess variant created by R. Wayne Schmittberger in 1987. The Wildebeest board is 11×10 squares. Besides the standard chess pieces, each side has two camels and one "wildebeest" - a piece which may move as either a camel or a knight.

The inventor's intent was "to balance the number of 'riders'—pieces that move along open lines—with the number of 'leapers'—pieces that jump". (So for each side, two knights, two camels, and a wildebeest balance two rooks, two bishops, and a queen.)

The game was played regularly in the (now defunct) correspondence game club NOST.

Game rules

Pieces and pawns move and capture the same as they do in standard chess, except for two new pieces, and the pawn's ability to advance to the players' fifth ranks in a single move from either their second or third ranks. Wildebeest chess differs from the standard game in that a win can be achieved either by checkmate or stalemate. In both cases the losing side has no legal moves.

Camel

The camel is a (1,3)-leaper fairy chess piece. It moves and captures like an elongated move of a chess knight – jumping in a 2×4 (squares) rectangular pattern over any intervening men. Each camel is thus limited to squares of one color.

Wildebeest

The wildebeest moves and captures as a camel and a chess knight.

Pawns

• Pawns move as in standard chess, but instead of the usual double move they may advance orthogonally an arbitrary distance as long as the destination square is still in the mover's half of the board. Leapt squares and destination square must be empty.
• En passant captures are possible and work similar as in standard chess. A pawn may move diagonally forward to a square that has been leapt by an opponent's pawn in the directly previous move, thereby capturing that pawn.
• A pawn may promote only to a queen or wildebeest.

Castling

Normal conventions apply when castling, with the only difference that the castling player can choose to slide his king one, two, three, or four squares. As in chess, the castling rook finishes on the opposite side of the king on the square adjacent.

See also

• Parallel worlds chess – another chess variant by R. Wayne Schmittberger

References

Bibliography

• Pritchard, D. B. (1994). "Wildebeest Chess". The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. Games & Puzzles Publications. ISBN 0-9524142-0-1.
• Pritchard, D. B. (2007). "Wildebeest Chess". In Beasley, John (ed.). The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. John Beasley. ISBN 978-0-9555168-0-1.
• Schmittberger, R. Wayne (1992). "Wildebeest Chess". New Rules for Classic Games. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-53621-5.

External links

• Wildebeest Chess by Hans Bodlaender, The Chess Variant Pages
• Recognized Chess Variant: Wildebeest Chess by Glenn Overby, The Chess Variant Pages
• Wildebeest Chess at BoardGameGeek
• Wildebeest Chess a simple program by Ed Friedlander (Java)