Intro: The invention of Gentlemen's Chess spawned out of boredom of the tradition form of chess. The problem was that the regular rules for chess didn't inspire any creativity in game play and the games all seemed to go the same way. Bishop captures bishop, then pawn captures bishop back. Pieces of equal value were simply being 'traded', until the board was simplified and fewer (more valuable) pieces remained. It seemed too easy to lose your pieces and instead of fighting to protect a knight, we would just capture their knight in successive turns so that there was no net loss. Well clearly this wouldn't do. So we had to make a new rule. We said you couldn't trade pieces... what did that mean? It meant that a piece that was protected, couldn't be captured for whatever reason. It was permanently safe. A lovely notion. A piece that wasn't protected however, was fair game. We loved this idea and immediately started playing our new way. Almost immediately, we realized that this would create a stale-mate. Both players would move in such a way that all their pieces were protected all the time. This meant, that vast pawn-knight formations covered the entire board and it was impossible to move about. This lead to a second rule. Pawns can move in all directions. Boom! Suddenly, the board sprung to life and movement was possible, players started taking risks, pieces were lost and checkmates were performed. The game took on this whole new dimension. Strategies formed. Aggressive and defensive strategies were shown to each have their own pros and cons, and ultimately, Gentlemen's Chess was born.
Inventors:
Vincent Collins, Clarence Sng & Matt Hamm invented Gentlemen's Chess back in the 2003-2004 school year at UBC.
Rules:
- If a piece, at the point of being captured by an opposing piece, is protected by a friendly piece, it cannot be captured.
- Pawns are permitted to move in all 8 directions as long as they only capture in the normal forward-diagonal fashion.
- Checkmate occurs when the king is threatened by a protected opposing piece.
Special circumstances:
3rd party protection: If a protected black rook is in between two white rooks, both white rooks are protecting each other. This is because if the black rook were to try to capture one of the white rooks, the other white rook, upon the black rook capturing, would be able to protect that space.
Protected mate: If a black queen is protected and on an adjacent square to a white king, checkmate is automatic, despite any aiding white pieces.
Removal of En Passant: Because pawns can move back and forth, En Passant no longer makes sense for pawn movement. Also, as inventors of the game, we've decided that En Passant doesn't add anything new or exciting to the game and is unnecessary.
Pawn promotion: Pawn promotion is a lot more common in this version of chess and therefore has the potential to sway strategy quite significantly. However, since pawns are so useful, some argue that when a pawn reaches the final row, it shouldn't have to promote (i.e. promote to a pawn). However, we maintain, that pawns must promote, even if that pawn only is sent to the final row to gain a better board position.
It is amazing that it has taken almost 6 years to finally start documenting the rules and history of this game. Please take the time to try playing chess this way. I guarantee you'll enjoy playing it and want to share it with others. :o)
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