Have You Heard of Enigma Chess?

Is The Classical Chess Board Setup Flawless? Firstly, enigma chess is a chess variation that incorporates a new piece, the enigma piece. Each player assigns his own chosen power to one enigma piece and both players then have corresponding pieces. The enigma piece can add new dimensions to a chess game. More details on this in the thread . . . But here is a big question: Is the classical chess board setup flawless? Here's why I ask, and the answer may not be black or white, but both black and white: Why should white's kingside castling be to the right, but black's to the left? I see an unevenness in the game here. But if kings faced queens, both sides would castle perfectly even. It's not black or white . . . If two right-handed, or two left-handed players play, why should kings not face queens, and kingside castling be perfectly even (to the same side from each player's perspective?) Here are my thoughts on it: Let's say two armed men, both right-handed, or both left-handed, face each other, and both are carrying both a shield and a sword. When they face each other, will swords face swords, or will swords face shields? But let's say a left-handed man faces a right-handed man, will swords then face shields, or will swords face swords and shields face shields? Or if two couples, a king and a queen, walk up to another, both having their partner on the same side, when they face each other, will kings face kings, or will they face the queens directly? Now why one cannot just shoot down what I'm asking about is because a game like chess involves two people. A car resembles a human in many ways because it is designed to be used by a human and thus needs to mirror many things the human driver's body performs. So a car has 'eyes' (lights), a 'mouth' (the horn), a 'heart' (the engine), 'blood' (the fuel), 'feet' (the wheels), 'eyelids' (windscreen wipers) etc... In the same way, chess is a reflection of the players. So if two right-handed, or two left-handed players play, why should the classical board setup not be as mentioned earlier, in view of these arguments? But if a left-handed player plays a right-handed player, I'd leave it just as it is. Yet even so, black should still have the chance to move first. Hmmm.... Your thoughts?

You mean, an enigma? 😄 @HiramHolliday

What? That would render approximately half a millennia of opening theory useless.

There is no need to for this variant when we have very good established chess variants in xiangqi and Shogi, plus more more local variations. Personally I think Makruk is excellent and it’s played in Indonesia and Thailand.

I think when thinking of chess variant ideas you have to give a reason for people to actually invest time into learning it, an incentive to keep coming back.

I can think of one potential reason to keep coming up with chess variants. For example if you are a programmer and you can write software to analyze and play your variant and then actually see the shape of the decision tree. Basically to try to come up with something which will be very difficult for any modern AI method to become proficient and very good at. That could actually attract players if they think that they can find human, intuition based solutions, that can win against a computer mind.

Although after AlphaGo has become better than humans at the game that used to be considered beyond AI I doubt anyone can come up with a game that an AI won’t be able to solve.

@idi0t “That's rather presumptuous, don't you think?” 😂 #ABeautifulMind. No, I don't believe it would nullify all that or render it useless at all. It would simply add to it. Like I said, the answer may not be black or white, but both black and white. Here is the official Standard Model of Enigma Chess:

STANDARD MODEL OF ENIGMA CHESS The Enigma Chess board is a 10 × 10 square board. The kings stand on either the dark or light square with their queens next to them. Then come the enigma piece, viceroy/vicereine (replacing the bishop, but retaining its movement capability) knight and castle. Pawns may move 2 or 3 spaces on their first move and can move backwards one space at a time until they are back in their original position. They can only take other pieces going forward. Each player assigns his own chosen power to one enigma piece, and both players then have corresponding pieces. The enigma piece must spark the players' creativity and can add new dimensions to the game. One guideline that may be implemented when playing the game is that the enigma piece can match but not be more powerful than the queen. It cannot take more than 1 piece at a time, and it cannot be both immortal and capable of taking other pieces. However, this is merely a guideline to aid inexperienced ones, not a rule. The king castles by moving 2 or 3 spaces to the one side, or 3 or 4 spaces to the other. Enigma Chess has 2 standard layouts to choose from. When kings face queens, corresponding enigma pieces don't face each other when placed on the board. If kings face kings, corresponding enigma pieces do face each other. This standard model comes in handy when deciding the board layout for two right-handed, or two left-handed players, and when a right-handed and a left-handed player play. Each player can abstain from moving as long as he/she likes. Continual abstention on the side of both players would obviously imply a draw. All other Chess rules can be retained. This is a standard model of Enigma Chess. But just like a deck of cards is by no means limited in use to but one type of game, so Enigma Chess too is not limited. Enigma chess can be played on an 8 × 8 square board by replacing the viceroy/vicereine with the enigma piece.

@Drawgood You hit the nail right on the head! Enigma Chess was created, in part, for exactly that reason. Because of its nature, it cannot be fully prepared for, it has the potential to ERROR MESSAGE AI, and it personalizes the game between the two players each time. Human, intuition based solutions are mainly what will guide the players. No need to invest excessive amounts of time into preparing for a game. For someone like me, this very reason makes it worth investing time into 😁 ▪︎ Besides this, here are the official Additional Thoughts on Enigma Chess:

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS Enigma Chess forces players into uncharted territory. It encourages them to expand their imagination, and really have fun delving into the realm of wisdom as they do so. Enigma Chess will favor wisdom over knowledge, because players with exceptional memory power and experience will not necessarily have the upper hand in it. Even though knowledge and memory power will certainly make any player very strong, the enigma piece ensures that each game has the potential to be a particularly unique strategic challenge. Making opening chess moves based on muscle memory cannot work in Enigma Chess, for it forces players to improvise right from the start and come up with their own game strategy. This element of unpredictability is the name of the game.

Has anyone tried playing this interesting variant? A double fairy/enigma piece game with the two players each choosing one power for their piece . . . ?

I like it, but before an invention can become an accepted variant, it really has to have something unique to add to the game.

And I think your might have that.

It can add a level of complexity for those who want to go beyond regular chess.

But the Enigma piece has to be well defined. For example, it can be the product of a slider-rule and a hopper-rule with a maximum amount of available squares. In other words, it has to be programmable. So that when playing online, players can configure their Enigma piece in a few clicks and start playing without too much technicalities. The upside is that you can create early surprise attacks. The downside is that the Enigma's internal rules will be discovered after just a few of its moves. There has to be an OR statement for it to work. For example: it can slide 3 OR 4 squares horizontally, 1 OR 2 vertically, and hop like a knight OR zebra (or any other in the legion of available hopper pieces).

Also, to your question about board setup: Yes, the classical chess setup is pretty much flawless as it is also the product of centuries of academic thinking and evolution. To verify your setup you'd really have to use an engine to discover all the lines. By changing the king and queen setup, often lines towards an early checkmate open up that can be very hard to discover manually. I say this out of experience as I have also invented a few variants.

My main invention was Wizard Chess. One knight is replaced by the Wizard. And because the internal rules of the wizard are akin to those of the knight, the overall gameplay stays the same. It just gets a little more complicated because the hopper-values are determined by the piece's position of the board. Instead of the knight's forward vector of 2 squares, the wizard moves across the board's mirror lines before stepping 1 square laterally. And it can also move and promote like a pawn. With its own board setup, we ensured this variant is unique and distinctive, and it adds the factor of complexity to make this a true grandmaster-level training tool.

You can download a user manual + 3D printable chess piece here:
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/games-toys/board-games/wizard-chess-piece