On a walk through my neighbourhood one afternoon, I saw an arch-shaped window. It occurred to me that a chess-like game could be played on a board resembling that window; hence the idea for WINDOWS CHESS took root.

The board consists of forty-eight square cells and sixteen trapeze cells arranged in four concentric loops of sixteen cells each. Another way to think of it is as a traditional board with eight ranks and eight files, with the files joined at each end - [a] and [h], [b] and [g], [c] and [f], and [d] and [e]. The joined files - the trapeze cells - are called the "polar" regions. The game thus has much in common both with traditional FIDE chess and with the family of variants played on round or cylindrical boards.

At setup, the pieces occupy their traditional home cells and generally retain the movement properties familiar to players of FIDE Chess, albeit with some exceptions explained below. There is one additional piece, the Conqueror, a Queen-Knight compound corresponding to the Amazon in some other varieties of Chess or to the Maharajah in MAHARAJAH AND THE SEPOYS. The Conqueror is purely a promotion piece; on reaching the eighth rank, a Pawn is crowned as a Conqueror.

The sixteen "polar" cells (the trapezes) have a peculiar effect on the movements of the Knight and Bishop, and of the Queen and Conqueror. I got this idea from the behaviour of a compass at the North and South Poles: it goes wild. Every direction from the "pinhead" of the North Pole is SOUTH, so one's sense of direction gets distorted. This gave me the idea of using the "polar" regions of the board to "bend" the paths of the Bishop and Knight. Each polar trapeze acts like a pivot which swivels the Bishop's path, and the corner trapezes (d1, e1, d8, and e8) even allow the Bishop to migrate from cells of one colour to the other. The Bishop is therefore no longer colourbound, and can occupy all 64 cells on the board. The "polar" cells also bend the Knight's L-shaped path back upon itself, so that a Knight in the polar regions can sometimes move to or from an adjacent cell. This works when moving to or from cells c1, d1, e1, f1, d2, or e2 on White's side, or c8, d8, e8, f8, d7, or e7 on Black's side.

I have decided to do away with Castling and En Passant captures. I never liked the En Passant rule, while castling serves to protect the King and bring a Rook into play. On a round board, the former is not so effective and the latter is superfluous, in my opinion. I am willing to reconsider this in future releases if popular demand and/or playtesting with Zillions indicates it to be a desirable feature, however.

WINNING CONDITIONS

Win by checkmating the enemy King. Stalemate and baring the King count as a qualified win - better than a draw but not as good as a checkmate. Award a point for a checkmate or a royal conversion, a half-point for forcing a stalemate or baring the enemy King, and a half-point to both players in the event of a draw.

STILL CONFUSED?

Look in the DIAGRAMS folder (GIF format) for illustrations and detailed explanations about each piece's properties.