Gothic Chess - Definition and Overview

Gothic Chess is a commercial chess variant, invented by Ed Trice and patented in 2002. It is played on a 10x8 board with a chancellor (knight + rook) and archbishop (bishop + knight). The chancellor is placed between queen and king, archbishop between king and king's side bishop. All other rules, like en passant capture or castling are the same or similar to chess.

This variant is an improvement over Capablanca chess partly due to all of the pawns being defended in the opening array. The Gothic Chess Federation reports the game to be currently played in 47 countries with over 30,000 gothic chess sets sold by mid 2004.

Value of the pieces

Pieces have, in estimated average, the following values in Gothic Chess (see "What Are The Pieces Worth?" (http://www.gothicchess.org/piece_values.html)):

• Pawn: 1.00
• Knight: 2.50
• Bishop: 3.00
• Rook: 4.75
• Archbishop: 6.50
• Chancellor: 8.25
• Queen: 8.75

Endgames

The principles of chess endgame apply in Gothic Chess. Due to new pieces, some interesting kinds of endgames sometimes happen in the practice, for example Chancellor and pawns endgames or Archbishop and pawns vs. Queen and pawns. These engames are somewhat similar to Queen and pawns engames, where the dominant theme is for the player with more pawns to avoid perpetual check and advance one of his pawns to get a queen.

Endgames with 5 or less pieces were completely analyzed by a computer. Here are some of record positions (see more details here (http://www.gothicchess.org/databases.html)):

• Queen + Pawn vs Queen: mate in 268
• Archbishop vs Bishop + Knight: mate in 202
• 2 Knights vs Pawn: mate in 92

References

• 80-Square Chess (http://www.gothicchess.org/80.pdf), E. Trice in ICGA Journal Vol. 27, No. 2 - June 2004, p. 81-96.

External links

• The Gothic Chess Federation (http://www.gothicchess.org)
• Introduction to Gothic Chess (http://www.chessville.com/GothicChess/GothicChessIntro.htm)
• Gothic Chess | Chess Variant Pages (http://www.chessvariants.org/link2.dir/gothicchess.html)
• Gothic Vortex (http://www.gothicchess.org/gv_release.html) - a program which allows the play of Gothic Chess against the computer.