Recognized Chess Variants

When you come to this site, you will find hundreds of Chess variants to choose from. But with so many, how do you tell the dross from the gold? How can you be sure to find one that you'll really like? We began the Recognized Chess Variants section to help you find something you'll like without much fuss and bother. A recognized variant is one that we have selected, either by ballot or editorial decision, as one that is worth trying out, or at least worth knowing about. We don't guarantee that the recognized variants are the best of the best. You may well find that the games that become your favorites have never been recognized here. But what we can say of these selections is that they tend to be time-tested, popular, critically acclaimed, or at least of some significant interest. By starting with some of the games here, you are likely to find something that you really like; and once you begin to form your own preferences, it will be easier to decide what to try next.

Current Polls

The Recognized Variants

Here is an alphabetized list of all our recognized variants, listed along with comments about why each variant was chosen:

The recognized variants have been divided into five tiers. In order of decreasing prestige, these are Classic, Vintage, Popular, Acclaimed, and Famous. Please note that being in a more prestigious tier does not mean that a game is better than one is a less prestigious tier. The main factors that differentiate the tiers are time-testedness and popularity. Here are the requirements for each tier and the recognized variants that have been placed in them:

Classic

This is the most exclusive and prestigious of tiers. A Classic must be so massively popular that it is the dominant variant for a large portion of the world, such as one of the world's most populous nations. It must have been played for several generations. It must have a large body of literature about it. And it must be substantially different from any other Chess variant that is more popular than it. Only three Chess variants meet these stringent requirements. These are Chess, Xiang Qi, and Shogi.

Vintage

Popular

Acclaimed

It takes more than excellence to make a game popular. Sometimes an excellent game remains obscure, and sometimes an excellent game is too new for many people to know about it. So you can't always rely on popularity to tell you which games are good, and that's where critical acclaim comes in. This tier is for new and obscure games that have been critically acclaimed by people who know Chess variants. It is for games some of us think should and hope will become popular. The Acclaimed games are Anti-King Chess II, Crazy 38's, Flip Chess and Flip Shogi, Magnetic Chess, McCooey's Hexagonal Chess, and Pocket Mutation Chess.

Famous

Sometimes a Chess variant has been recognized mainly for its fame, and not so much for its appeal or popularity. Famous Chess variants are known to groups of people who may otherwise have no further knowledge of the field of Chess variants. One advantage of knowing these games is that you may be more likely to find someone who already knows how to play the game. And you might be able to use one of these games to spark someone's interest in Chess variants. Each Famous variant is listed below with an explanation of why it is famous.

Recognized Variant of the Month

Each month, we will select one of our recognized variants to be recognized variant of the month. For that month we will work on improving the web page for that variant, display a link to that variant prominently on all our web pages, and encourage our readers to read about, play and explore that variant. Variants of the month are displayed with the special recognition icon:

Recognized Variants of the Month

How Recognized Variants are Chosen

When the list of Recognized Variants began, games were chosen mainly by the editorial decision of Hans Boedlander and David Howe. In time, new additions were chosen by polling the editors, and more recently by polling the members of this site. At present, new additions will be chosen by polling the members with ranked ballot polls counted by the Maximize Affirmed Majorities method. Candidates will be drawn from nominations, from lists of games chosen for tournaments, and from the first-place winners of our various contests.

When the same game ranks last two polls in a row, it will be removed from the candidates list. This applies only to polls for selecting new RCVs, not to polls for selecting an RCV of the month. Once the RCV list begins to grow too large, a weeding process will be introduced. It will probably involve the full ranking of the games in a tier, followed by voting whether to keep or drop the lowest ranked game.

Contributions

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The above was edited/posted by: Fergus Duniho
Created on: April 19, 2002. Last modified on: August 31, 2005.

Comments

Date	Name	Rating	Comment
2005-12-10	Antoine Fourri�re	None	In case candidates are still added by proposition (and not only by making it to a Game Courier Tournament), I would suggest to add Berolina Chess. It is played on Brainking and the Berolina Pawn looks as natural as the Cardinal and the Marshall.
2005-12-10	Fergus Duniho	None	It looks like we don't currently have a page describing Chu Shogi. All we have is a link page to another site. I'll add it to the list of candidates after it is better represented here.
2005-11-25	Alex	None	I think a good game to add is Chu-Shogi. It has international Tornaments, its availible mass market, its been played for centuries, it has depth, strategy, tactics, various opens, and all that other stuff that you associate with chess. It has been the only Shogi other than the modern 9x9 one that we have, to have lasted the test of time. Chu-Shogi lacks the massive feel that other large varients have. It was the most popular form of shogi until they started to use drops to create modern shogi. It was classic, is vintage, popular, aclaimed, and various so on and so forth. As the only surving form of shogi, and as it has international tornament like support, i propose that it be in....
2005-04-04	Fergus Duniho	None	I've removed Chaturanga from the list of recognized variants, because it has recently come to light that we don't know enough about Chaturanga to actually recognize it. The best candidate for the rules of Chaturanga is Shatranj, which remains on this list.
2004-12-29	Sam Trenholme	None	I think one way we may be able to test the quality of variants is with computer analysis. So, if we have a shuffle variant with, say, 100,000 possible permutations, we can have the computer play itself all of those permutations, In order to find one that is playable. Of course, computers play Chess differently than humans, so a computer's idea of playability may be different than a human's. And, computers are generally programmed to find the best move in a given position, so translating that to playest a game may be tricky. Greg Strong is much better qualified to say whether this is feasable or not. :-) - Sam