Progression
In an email to me, John Love-Jensen wrote about this variant, that he and his colleagues like to play.
Rules
The rules of orthodox chess apply, but the rules of pawn movement are different.
The movement possibilities of a pawn depend on which row it is. Thus, pawns gain in power when they advance, and lose in power when they retreat (that is also possible).
Below, you see how a pawn moves, depending on what row he is.
| Row 1 | Pawns move and take like pawns. Yes, one can get ones pawns back to the first row. |
| Row 2 | Pawns move and take like pawns, and can make a double step forwards, and be captured en passant in that case. |
| Row 3 | Pawns move and take like pawns. |
| Row 4 | Pawns move and take like pawns. |
| Row 5 | Pawns move and take like knights, and do not move and take like pawns! Note that this can make the defense pawn structure weaker! And it can use its move to move back one or two ranks (standard knight move). |
| Row 6 | Pawns move and take like bishops. |
| Row 7 | Pawns move and take like rooks. |
| Row 8 | Pawns move and take like queens. There is no permanent pawn promotion. |
Note that rows are counted from the side of the owning player, e.g., a white pawn on a3 moves like a pawn, but a black pawn on a3 moves like a bishop. Note also that all effects are temporarily: when a pawn ends its move in a different row from where it started its move, it loses the power of its previous row and gets the powers of its new row.
Written by: Hans Bodlaender, based on a text of John Love-Jensen.
WWW page created: December 17, 1996.