Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, David Short.

Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess

By David Short

Introduction

This is my second and final entry for the 84 Spaces Contest. This game is an extrapolation of another chess variant I have previously had published on this site, called Slanted Escalator Chess.

It occurred to me that if I added an extra file on each side of the Rook files, and added an extra rank in the middle of the board, the resulting board would have exactly 84 squares.

Board and Setup

Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess setup

       a       b      c       d       e      f      g       h       i     j
   +------+------+------+--------+------+------+---------+------+------+------+
9  |*U****|*R****|*N****|*B******|*Q****|*K****|*B*******|*N****|*R****|*U****| 9
   +------+------+------+--------+------+------+---------+------+------+------+
8  |*C****|*C****|*C****|*C******|*C****|*C****|*C*******|*C****|*C****|*C****| 8
   +------+------+------+--------+------+------+---------+------+------+------+
7  |::::::|      |::::::|        |::::::|      |:::::::::|      |::::::|      | 7
   +------+------+------+--------+------+------+---------+------+------+------+
6   \  ab6 \ bc6  \ cd6  \XXXXXXX|      |::::::|XXXXXXXX/ gh6  / hi6  / ij6  /  6
     \------\------\------\XXXXXX+------+------+XXXXXXX/------/------/------/
5     \  ab5 \ bc5  \ cd5  \XXXXX|      |::::::|XXXXXX/ gh5  / hi5  / ij5  /    5
       \------\------\------\XXXX+------+------+XXXXX/------/------/------/
4       \  ab4 \ bc4  \ cd4  \XXX|::::::|      |XXXX/ gh4  / hi4  / ij4  /      4
     +------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+-----+-----+
3    |      |::::::|      |::::::|      |::::::|       |::::::|     |:::::|     3
     +------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+-----+-----+
2    |:C::::| C    |:C::::| C    |:C::::| C    |:C:::::| C    |:C:::| C   |     2
     +------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+-----+-----+
1    | U    |:R::::| N    |:B::::| Q    |:K::::| B     |:N::::| R   |:U:::|     1
     +------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+-----+-----+
        a       b      c      d      e      f      g      h      i     j
Note that in the above ASCII diagram, BLACK pieces are surrounded by **asterisks**.

Rules

All of the rules are the same as FIDE Chess, with the following exceptions:

Computer Play

An implementation of Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess has been written for Zillions of Games. You can download it here:

The ZRF contains some variants: Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess with White going first, Almost Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess and Sort of Almost Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess. The latter two are combinations of Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess and Ralph Betza's Almost Chess, where the Queens are replaced by Chancellors, and Sort of Almost Chess, where one side gets a Chancellor and the other a Queen. (Since Rooks and Knights benefit the most from Ultra Slanted Escalator Chess' board, Chancellors, which combine both, are great deal of fun on it.)


Written by David Short. HTML conversion by Peter Aronson.
WWW page created: October 25th, 2002.