Chad - chess variant

Chad gameboard and starting position

Chad is a chess variant for two players created by Christian Freeling in 1979. It is played on an uncheckered 12x12 gameboard with one king and eight rooks per side, where rooks are able to promote to queens.

The inventor's aim was "to create a game of tactical and strategical depth that was both simple and elegant to express the concept of mate - the 'pure' chess game". The game was played for many years at the Fanaat games club in the Netherlands and was featured in the periodical The Gamer 6 in May-June 1982.

Game rules

Each player owns a castle consisting of 3x3 squares surrounded by a wall of 12 squares. A king may not leave its 3x3 castle, but the rooks are free to move unimpeded by castles or walls.

• The king can move and capture like a chess king or a chess knight.
• A rook moves like a rook in chess, and if ending on a square in the enemy castle, automatically promotes to a queen.
• A queen moves like a queen in chess, and is unimpeded by castles or walls.
• A rook or queen may capture an opponent's rook or queen only when one of these pieces is on the enemy's wall, and the other piece is in its own castle. Then either player having the turn to move may capture. (In other situations rooks and queens cannot capture, and simply block one another's movement. For example, a queen in an enemy castle is capturable only by the king.)
• Check occurs to a king whenever the king is in the path of an enemy rook or queen. Castle walls do not block checks.

As in chess, White moves first, a capturing piece replaces the piece captured, and checkmate wins the game.