Game: Cleopatra Chess Created by W. D. Troyka, October 2001. Standard chess rules apply, except as follows: There is no capturing. The Queen seduces any enemy piece (except the Queen) that she attacks at the end of her move. A seduced piece immediately changes sides. You win by seducing the enemy King. Pawns do not promote to Queens. Cleopatra Chess is a pure flipping chess variant in the mold of Benedict Chess and Double Agent Chess, but less chaotic and with more room for thoughtful development of your forces. For an innovative variant combining flipping and traditional capture (and in some cases swapping), check out Keith Carter's Conversion Chess (Kings & Melee versions). Updated 02/02/03 Changed graphics Download Cleopatra Chess Now!
Game: Cloak Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, June 2000 Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. Some or all of the chess pieces are invisible or cloaked. Main Variant: All pieces are cloaked. Zillions shows the range of a piece when you click it. This helps to remember what piece it is. A serious Cloak Chess player plays 'touch-move'! ...and of course you should switch off the moves list and the status bar. (The status bar displays the piece names when you move the mouse across the board). All standard chess rules apply. Four sets of chess pieces come with this game: Standard (King,...), 2-color Cloaked (cKing,...), Fully Cloaked (tKing,...), and Invisible (iKing,..). You can also create your own board setup and mix visible, cloaked and invisible pieces as you like. More freeware as well as real puzzles and games under http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz. Download Cloak Chess Now!
Game: Clockwork Orange Chess Invented and implemented by Fergus Duniho, © 1999-2001. Clockwork Orange Chess is based on the 1971 movie A Clockwork Orange. In this movie, a young hooligan named Alex is released from jail after being conditioned to feel ill and nauseous at the thought of commiting violence. The idea behind Clockwork Orange Chess is that the same conditioning process is used on captured pieces. Captured pieces are replaced with non-capturing counterparts and given back to the player they were captured from, who holds them in hand until choosing to drop one on the board. When a non-capturing piece is captured, it gets replaced with a regular piece. This provides an incentive to not capture non-capturing pieces. In the picture below, White has just checkmated Red. The Abstract piece set is used for regular pieces, and the Magnetic set is used for non-capturing pieces. For more games by Fergus Duniho, goto http://www.duniho.com/fergus/games. Download Clockwork Orange Chess Now!
Game: Coherent Chess Invented by Carlos Cetina, in the 1980s, implemented by Uwe Wiedemann, November 2001 In the game of Coherent Chess we have no knights, but Sissas. A Sissa moves as follows: in one turn, first, the Sissa moves one or more squares like a rook or a bishop, and then the Sissa moves the same number of squares like the other of the two (bishop or rook). So, the Sissa has the following options: First, it moves a number of squares as a rook. Then it makes a corner of 45, 135, 225, or 315 degrees, and then moves the same number of squares as a bishop. All squares that are passed by must be empty, i.e., a Sissa does not jump over pieces. First, it moves a number of squares as a bishop. Then, it makes a corner of 45, 135, 225, or 315 degrees, and then moves the same number of squares as a rook. Again, all squares passed by must be empty. The king goes always three steps in castlings. Coherent Chess is was invented by Carlos Cetina from Mexico in the 1980s. It is the first game where a Sissa is used (still not with this name). Later this piece was named by Cetina after the probable inventor of Chaturanga as Sissa. Download Coherent Chess Now!
Game: Companion Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, October 2000 Object: Capture your opponent's King. You have to move a piece that is adjacent to another of your pieces. Only if this is not possible you may execute any other legal chess move. The king may walk into and through check. You have to capture your opponent's king to win the game. Apart from this, the standard chess rules apply. Companion Chess has 15 variants. In the other variants the supporting adjacent piece must be North, South, East, West etc. Note that for White North is up, but for Black North is down; similar for the other directions. More freeware as well as real puzzles and games at my home page: http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz/. Download Companion Chess Now!
Game: Congo Congo game © 1982-1999 by Demian Freeling Congo art work © 1995-1999 by Christian Freeling Congo.zrf Rules File © 1999 by Ed van Zon The scenery is Africa. The Lion is King. There are also Giraffes, Monkeys, Elephants, Crocodiles, Zebras... This chess variant, invented by a 7-year-old, made it on the cover of Pritchard's "Encyclopedia of Chess Variants". A complete illustrated description of the rules is included in the download. Download Congo Now!
Game: Connected Chess Created by W. D. Troyka, February 2001 Connected Chess follows the rules of standard chess, with one exception: After each turn all isolated pieces (i.e., pieces not adjacent to any piece of either color) are removed from the board. In the variant, pieces that are not adjacent to any friendly piece are removed after each turn. Connected Chess requires careful development of your forces. Pieces typically must work in concert to advance across the board. In the principal game you can move a piece to a space adjacent to an enemy piece, but you should be careful when doing so because the opponent can remove your piece by isolating it. In the variant, you can capture an enemy piece by capturing its only adjacent friend, in which case you get two (or more) captures with a single move. In both the principal game and the variant it is possible to capture up to five enemy pieces in a single move. It is also possible for a piece (not the King) to commit suicide by moving to an isolated space. Checkmate can be unusual. In the principal game, if the opponent King is adjacent to a friend in an otherwise empty portion of the board, you can checkmate the King by capturing the adjacent piece. In this situation, the King has no available move because reciprocal capture or moving away to an unattacked space would leave the King isolated, which is illegal. This situation is a checkmate, as opposed to a stalemate, so long as the initial capturing piece can capture the King on the next move either by direct capture or by withdrawal to a space beyond the King's reach. In the illustration below, White has checkmated the Black King. The King is in check because the Rook can capture it through isolation simply by moving away. Black cannot remove the King from check because capturing the Rook would leave the Knight free to isolate the King, and because all other adjacent spaces are attacked. It is possible for one King to capture the other. A King can move to a space adjacent to the enemy King as long as the enemy King is unable to attack it as a result of the isolation rule. If the moving King is in a position to move away from the enemy King on the next move, and there is no other piece that the enemy King can approach, checkmate will result. If the moving King is not in a position to remove itself from the enemy King, a strange diad may occur: The two Kings must remain adjacent to one another and yet are forbidden from capture by the isolation rule. An example of a game ending in diad can be found in the saved game called "Diad" included in the folder. In the variant, you can checkmate the opponent King by attacking the only piece adjacent to it. If the opponent cannot remove the adjacent piece from attack in a way that keeps it adjacent to the King, or move the King to a space adjacent to\another friendy piece, the King will be checkmated. The board may be switched with the standard Zillions chess board by selecting "Switch Piece Set" from the "View" menu. (NOTE: Benedict Chess has been updated to add a variant and clarify the effect of pawn promotion. Breakthrough has been updated to add an 8x8 variant.) For a 4x8 "half-board" version of Connected Chess, check out Ken Franklin's Half Board Chess. Updated 12/21/02 Board switching implemented in Zillions v2 style (game still works in Zillions v1). Download Connected Chess Now!
Game: Conversion Chess - Kings Invented by Keith Carter. Implemented by Keith Carter, June 2001, with coding help from Dan Troyka. Board graphics by Elizabeth Bourne. This is the second installment of Conversion Chess. After a piece moves all adjacent enemy pieces are converted to the friendly side. Play is very dynamic. Conversion gives each piece an area effect attack. Pieces quickly engage the enemy. More pieces can target the same area creating longer exchange/conversion fights. The game is charcterized by huge shifts in material. The tide of battle can shift on a single move. Kings add significant additional tatical depth to the dynamic play that conversion creates. Targeting a friendly King with friendly pieces denies your opponent all spaces adjacent to that King. A King can convert any attacker within two squares. If your opponent converts your King it gives you two Kings to target while giving your opponent no King to target. The ZRF file contains eight variants tailored to entertain while demonstrating a broad range of impacting factors. Please send comments to keith@spiritone.com. For other chess games using conversion take a look at D.W. Troyka's Benedict Chess and Double Agent Chess. The screen capture features the variant King's Guard. Download Conversion Chess - Kings Now!
Game: Conversion Chess - Melee Invented by Keith Carter. Implemented by Keith Carter, April 2001, with coding help from Dan Troyka. Board graphics by Elizabeth Bourne. Convert or capture the opponents army in the field. After a piece moves all adjacent enemy pieces are converted to the friendly side. Play is very dynamic and captures the feel of a swirling melee. Pieces quickly engage the enemy. Conversion gives each piece an area effect attack. More pieces can target the same area creating longer exchange/conversion fights. The battle ebbs and flows with huge shifts in material advantage. The tide of battle can shift on a single move. The ZRF file contains eight variations. Some of the board setups allow friendly pieces to swap places creating new strategies. Four of the variations use the same "near chess" setup and demonstrate the impact on play that a different board size and/or the ability to swap piece positions makes. Four of the variations use setups tailored to their underlying parameters of board size and whether pieces are allowed to swap. Please send comments to keith@spiritone.com. Download Conversion Chess - Melee Now!
Game: Coregal Chess Implemented by Uwe Wiedemann, June 2001 In the game of coregal chess both the king and queen are royal. Just as the king in usual chess, the queen can be checked and mated. Therefore it is not allowed to make a move such that the queen can be captured. When your queen is attacked, you must play a move such that the queen is no longer attacked. You lose the game when your queen is attacked and you cannot make a legal move that avoids the attack. The rules of check to the king, and mate of the king remain as always. Queens may move across attacked squares. When you promote a pawn to queen, that additional queen also is royal, i.e., subject to check and mate. Thus, underpromotion, e.g., to rook may be in many case a better strategy. Queens can check kings at a distance, but they cannot check queens. Kings and queens may castle, both long and short, following usual castling rules. Download Coregal Chess Now!
Game: Countdown Queens Invented and implemented by Ingo Althofer, May 2003 'Countdown Queens' is like normal chess with one exception: Each queen can make at most 7 moves in the whole game. The red or white number in a queen shows her remaining mobility. Zillions is not so strong in this game, because it often realizes too late that its queen can make only 7 moves. Even human players with Elo rating 1700 have good winning chances against Zillions when they keep the position quiet and patiently wait for Zillion's queen moves... The diagram shows a decisive position from a game which the author won against Zillions. Do you find the winning "sacrifice" for White? The user can generate other starting positions by substituting the Queen7 by other queens, for instance by a Queen3. Download Countdown Queens Now!
Game: Crazy Pawns Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, May 2001 Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. (10 variants) In addition to the standard Pawn move, a Pawn can move to a free space like a Queen. It still captures like in standard chess, however. Variant 2: A Pawn moves like a Rook. Variant 3: A Pawn moves like a Bishop. Variant 4: A Pawn moves like a Knight. Variant 5: A Pawn moves like a King. Variants 6 - 10: Like variants 1-5, but only forward or sideward moves allowed. Apart from this, standard chess rules apply. For more freeware as well as real puzzles and games see my home page http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz. Download Crazy Pawns Chess Now!
Game: Crazyhouse Zrf implementation by Fergus Duniho Copyright © 1999-2001 Crazyhouse is a two-player version of Bughouse. In Bughouse, four people, divided into two teams, play two Chess games. Members of the same team play different games, with one playing Black and one playing White. Whenever a player captures a piece, he gives it to his teammate, who may hold it in hand and drop it into his own game on a subsequent turn. In Crazyhouse, a player gives captured pieces to himself, changing their color, so that they now belong to his side. This makes Crazyhouse a bit less crazy than Bughouse. Crazyhouse is very similar to Chessgi, whose origins are in Shogi rather than Bughouse, but a couple of the rules are different. In Crazyhouse, Pawns may not be dropped on the first or last rank, and promoted Pawns turn back into Pawns when they are captured. The ZRF gives you the option of four different piece sets. These include the motif set pictured below, the magnetic set I included with Magnetic Chess, the abstract set pictured with Mortal Chessgi, and the default Zillions set. For more games by Fergus Duniho, goto http://www.duniho.com/fergus/games Download Crazyhouse Now!
Game: Cross-eyed Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, November 2000 Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. Pawns move and capture as usual. Every other piece type, however, can only move to an empty square. Captures are executed in a mirror-like fashion, exactly opposite to where you move: A move (to an empty square) will capture an opponent's piece if the opponent's piece is diametral opposite to the target square of the move, with the from-position as the center of this point-symmetry. E.g. Rook h4-h3 captures an opponent's piece on h5. Try out a few pieces to see how it works. Friendly pieces are not captured. In variant 2 the Pawns capture in mirror-fashion, too. Note that in this variant even En-passant is mirrored: Pc7-c5 may be answered by Pb7-a8xc6 ! More freeware as well as real puzzles and games at my home page: http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz/. Download Cross-eyed Chess Now!
Game: Crowed Angle Chess Invented and implemented by Uwe Wiedemann, November 2001 In this game, all rules of the normal chess game apply, but Black Pawns move to the right and promote at the j-file. Angle Chess Variant was invented in 2000 by Karl Scherer. This is a more consequent variant of this game on a large board. Download Crowed Angle Chess Now!
Game: Dark Chess Invented by Jens Baek Nielsen and Torben Osted in 1989. Implemented by Andreas Kaufmann, January 2003. The rules as in standard chess, except that you don't see all enemy pieces. You see only positions attacked by your pieces, or positions where your pawns can go to. The capture en-passant is not allowed. The promoted pieces are always visible. You are not told if your king is in check. If you don't move it out of check or put him into check yourself, the opponent can capture him and win the game. To play black, select the second variant: "Dark Chess (Play for Black)" and then switch sides. In the provided endgame variants, dark pieces are located initially on the same positions as yours. For after game replay, press 'Switch Piece Set' button. All pieces in alternative piece set are intentionally visible to let you see what happened in the reality. There are 7 variants in zrf file: Dark Chess Dark Chess (Play for Black) Dark Chess, Pawn Endgame Dark Chess, Knight Endgame Dark Chess, Bishop Endgame Dark Chess, Rook Endgame Dark Chess, Queen Endgame Updated 06/21/03 fixed visibility rule for pawns. Download Dark Chess Now!
Game: Deadly Pawns Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, May 2001 Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. (2 variants) Additionally to the standard Pawn moves, any enemy piece to the Northwest or Northeast of a Pawn is immediately deleted. If a Pawn is diagonally opposite an enemy Pawn, then the Pawn that moved last survives. Apart from this, standard chess rules apply. Variant 2: Any enemy piece adjacent to a Pawn is immediately deleted. For more freeware as well as real puzzles and games see my home page http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz. Download Deadly Pawns Chess Now!
Game: Deep Blue versus Kasparov Created by Ingo Althofer, January 2003. In May 1997 human chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov lost a historic match against IBM's chess computer Deep Blue. In the decisive last round Kasparov was a psychic wreck, resulting in resignation at move 19. The opening in this game (Kasparov being Black): 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nd7 5. Ng5 Ngf6 6. Bd3 e6 7. N1f3 h6 and now White played the sacrifice 8.Nxe6 after which Kasparov completely collapsed. This Zillions game was designed in memoriam of Nxe6. All rules of normal chess apply, however, the board is colored in three different blues. Besides the normal checkmating Black has another winning way: If for one of the three colors White does not have any piece on a square of this color, he has lost immediately. This condition counts even higher than the normal 'checkmating': If in the same moment Black is checkmated and White has no piece on one of the blues then White has lost. Square e6 is a key spot. If White places a knight on it he has won immediately. In the beginning Black has to be very careful to prevent white Knights from a ride against e6. The more pieces White looses (also by exchanges) the more difficult it will become for him to keep all three 'blues' under control. In general Black should have better winning chances. I as a human find it most enjoyable to take the black side - fighting against white Zillions. "Deep Blue versus Kasparov" is a special variant of my other game "Chess on the Rainbows". Please note: Deep Blue versus Kasparov requires Zillions of Games version 2.0 (or higher)! Download Deep Blue versus Kasparov Now!
Game: Defiance and Domain Developed by Arin Sandhop. Implemented by L. Lynn Smith, April 2002. Defiance and Domain is a two player game which takes place upon a playing field of 10x10 cells and 11x11 points. It consists of two type of pieces, Forces and Commands. The Forces are played upon each cell of the field, while the Commands move upon the points. The players are know as the Rebel, which has gray tokens, and the Imperium denoted by the red tokens. Although each player has an equally significant number of Forces, the Rebel player has only one Command and the Imperium player has two. The playing field is divided into four sectors, denoted by the solid yellow lines. Within each sector, there are sixteen key points, represented by the yellow crosses. It is the goal of the Imperium player to capture the Rebel Command. The Rebel player wins if able to place four Forces around one of the sixteen key points within each of the four sectors. The Imperium player is able to freely move the Command to any orthogonally adjacent point upon the field, as long as such a point is not one of the sixteen in a sector which has been successfully surrounded by the Rebel player. The Imperium player may only move onto such a point in order to capture the Rebel Command. The Rebel player is able to freely move the Command to any orthogonally adjacent point upon the field, provided that the destination is both vacant and the path to it is not flanked by the Imperium Forces, or by an Imperium Force and the board's edge. The Rebel player may also move diagonally over a cell to a point, provided the cell is not occupied by an Imperium Force. Force tokens are dropped onto empty cells of the field as a move. Each Force has a directional indicator which is utilized to capture the opponent's Forces. Such captures are accomplished by 'sandwiching' between two Forces which both point toward the opponent piece. Orthogonal capture may be made with only this restriction. Diagonal captures may only be preformed within the sector which is occupied by a friendly Command. Commands which are upon the points of the solid yellow line are not considered within any particular sector. Force tokens upon the playing field may be turned to a desired direction as a move. Captured Force tokens are not removed from play but returned to their player for future use. Each player's turn consist of the following: Placing a Force upon the field, pointing in the desired direction, or turning a present Force to a desired direction. Preforming any legal orthogonal or diagonal Force captures. Move a Command upon the field. Preforming any legal diagonal Force captures It is mandatory that each player perform the above actions if possible. To reiterate, it is the goal of the Imperium player to capture the Rebel Command. The Rebel player wins if able to place four Forces around one of the sixteen key points within each of the four sectors. Download Defiance and Domain Now!
Game: Deflector Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, December 2000 Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. Pawns act as deflectors in the following sense: A Rook, Bishop or Queen may move to a square that is occupied by a friendly Pawn. The piece then has another partial move into a direction that is at right angles to the original direction of the move. The partial move is forced. After the partial move, the temporarily hidden Pawn reappears. Apart from this, all standard chess rules apply. For more freeware as well as real puzzles and games see my home page http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz. Download Deflector Chess Now!
