Wildebeest chess

Wildebeest chess is a chess variant created by R. Wayne Schmittberger in 1987.^[1]^[2]^[3] The Wildebeest board is 11×10 squares. Besides the standard chess pieces, each side has two camels and one "wildebeest" - a piece which may move as either a camel or a knight.

The inventor's intent was "to balance the number of 'riders'—pieces that move along open lines—with the number of 'leapers'—pieces that jump". (So for each side, two knights, two camels, and a wildebeest balance two rooks, two bishops, and a queen.)

The game was played regularly in the (now defunct) correspondence game club NOST.^[a]

Game rules

Pieces and pawns move and capture the same as they do in standard chess, except for two new pieces, and the pawn's ability to advance to the players' fifth ranks in a single move from either their second or third ranks. Wildebeest chess differs from the standard game in that a win can be achieved either by checkmate or stalemate. In both cases the losing side has no legal moves.

Camel

The camel is a (1,3)-leaper fairy chess piece. It moves and captures like an elongated move of a chess knight – jumping in a 2×4 (squares) rectangular pattern over any intervening men. Each camel is thus limited to squares of one color.

Wildebeest

The wildebeest moves and captures as a camel and a chess knight.

Pawns

Pawns move as in standard chess, but instead of the usual double move they may advance orthogonally an arbitrary distance as long as the destination square is still in the mover's half of the board, even if the pawn has already moved. Leapt squares and destination square must be empty.
En passant captures are possible and work similar as in standard chess. A pawn may move diagonally forward to a square that has been leapt by an opponent's pawn in the directly previous move, thereby capturing that pawn.
A pawn may promote only to a queen or wildebeest.

Castling

Normal conventions apply when castling, with the only difference that the castling player can choose to slide his king one, two, three, or four squares. As in chess, the castling rook finishes on the opposite side of the king on the square adjacent.

Fool's mate

C for camel, W for wildebeest.

1. Wf4 h6?? 2. Wg7#

Compare with Omega Chess

Both Wildebeest chess and Omega chess add two new pieces to equalize the number of jumping pieces (leapers) with sliding pieces (riders), and each have one that is color-bound (camel and wizard, respectively) and the other is not (wildebeest and champion, respectively), and the pawn can move up to 3 squares in its first move in both of these two games, but they have many different rules:

rule	Wildebeest chess	Omega chess
board	11*10 (totally 110 squares)	10*10 with 4 extra squares (totally 104 squares)
stalemate	win	draw
second move of a pawn	can move up to 2 squares if the first move only move 1 square	can only move 1 square even if the first move only move 1 square
pawn promotion	can only promote to queen or wildebeest	can promote to every piece except king
castling	king can move 1 to 4 squares	king can only move 2 squares

Notes

^ NOST (kNights of the Square Table), formed in 1960 by Bob Lauzon and Jim France, held an annual convention and enjoyed several hundred active members.^[4]

References

^ Pritchard (1994), pp. 341–42
^ Pritchard (2007), pp. 134–35
^ Schmittberger (1992), p. 206
^ Pritchard (1994), p. 210

Bibliography

Pritchard, D. B. (1994). "Wildebeest Chess". The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. Games & Puzzles Publications. ISBN 0-9524142-0-1.
Pritchard, D. B. (2007). "Wildebeest Chess". In Beasley, John (ed.). The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. John Beasley. ISBN 978-0-9555168-0-1.
Schmittberger, R. Wayne (1992). "Wildebeest Chess". New Rules for Classic Games. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-53621-5.

External links

Wildebeest Chess by Hans Bodlaender, The Chess Variant Pages
Recognized Chess Variant: Wildebeest Chess by Glenn Overby, The Chess Variant Pages
Wildebeest Chess at BoardGameGeek
Wildebeest Chess a simple program by Ed Friedlander (Java)

[5] NOST (kNights of the Square Table), formed in 1960 by Bob Lauzon and Jim France, held an annual convention and enjoyed several hundred active members.^[4]

[FOOTNOTEPritchard1994341–42-1] Pritchard (1994), pp. 341–42

[FOOTNOTEPritchard2007134–35-2] Pritchard (2007), pp. 134–35

[FOOTNOTESchmittberger1992206-3] Schmittberger (1992), p. 206

[FOOTNOTEPritchard1994210-4] Pritchard (1994), p. 210

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