Are all chess boards 8 x 8, or are there rectangular versions.?

Question

Or even rounded, elliptical versions.
How about a board with some holes in it - cells that no-one can land on ?

Answer 1

Since the invention of chess people have been trying to improve it. Dozens of variants can be found here: http://www.chessvariants.com/alphabet.html

My favorite commercial variant is Knightmare Chess and Knightmare Chess II from Steve Jackson Games: http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/chess.html

Answer 2

I think the most interesting version I ever saw had 2 gear shaped wheels in silver and bronze and there were still 64 squares and the pieces still moved and lined up the same way. However it was much harder to visualize the moved because you had to turn the wheels to move a piece from one half to the other. (Unfortunately I didn't have the $300 to buy it)

One other variant of chess that I saw was 4 man chess. The board was shaped like a cross and and could be used as a standard board or with 3 or 4 players. It is really wild playing that version. A friend of mine has it and we have played it a couple times.

Answer 3

Heck, I think chess with a hole in the center of the board could be interesting -- no piece can land on or go through the four center squares. For sure it would screw up normal chess strategy, since you can't control the center when there is no center to control. I'm also wondering how it would affect the value of the pieces -- without the center squares, long diagonal moves would be impossible, so knights should be significantly stronger than bishops, rooks might be worth almost as much as queens, and the wing pawns should be better than the center pawns. At minimum, it would be a new game to figure out.

Answer 4

Boards for standard chess are, well, standard, but when it comes to chess variations, you can find just about any type of board that can be dreamt of.
I've seen variations where a space can be eliminated so that not only can no one land on it, but no one can cross over it. I've seen round boards, but they make the game unnecessarily difficult to visualize.
There are rectangular boards, most commonly used when additional pieces are thrown in. And there are even weirder things, such as chess on a Klein Bottle board, or a board in which adjacent squares/territories can merge into one, or two (or more!) separate boards on which pieces jump back and forth like balls at a tennis match.
Check out the variants page for even more goodies.

Answer 5

There are variants, but the game called "Chess" is always an 8x8 board.

My favorite variant with a weird board was a variation from the Constantinople Empire with a circular, toroid (donut shaped) board. Oh, that was not "chess." It was a variant.

Answer 6

i'm sure there arwe differant types of chess that use a differant board

Star Trek ( tng serise i think ) had a 3d kinda board with a bunch of raised 3x3 or 4x4 levels.

and i remember my brother and me playing cylinder chess. where the left and right sides where considered to be conected and peices could move past that boarder ( made queens, rooks and bishops really hard to defend against )

Answer 7

I think there are some fancy chess boards, I've seen some with castle-like edge.

Answer 8

whatever shape you choose, but its still got 64 squares...

many years ago i made a 3d board, the whites were raised and the blacks stayed level, we just glued 2 inche squares onto a board.. wow that was different.

i quite fancied makiong one which was a replica of a battlefield, and had the squares inset into the landscape...

Answer 9

why are u up so late asking pointless questions with no real meaning..i deffo don't want a pint of what ur having cos it's messing ur brain up..

Answer 10

I'll have a pint of whatever you're on.