My son’s not a bad chess player, considering his age and the fact that he’s just as happy to play any other game with me, but he invented a delightful variation this weekend which I’d like to share:
– Set up pieces on first three rows anywhere you want; you can make one adjustment after your opponent does the same.
– Pawns move forwards as normal, but they capture sideways instead of diagonally.
– Night pieces are now queens, and the queen is a knight.
He’s also experimenting with a “towering pieces” move, where you can move your piece (via a legal move) onto another of your own pieces; then, you move that tower forward as the top piece would move, remove the top piece from the board (it’s “taken”), and move the bottom piece from there as the bottom piece would move. But I prefer playing his original variation without it.