Capablanca chess (or Capablanca's chess) is a chess variant invented in the 1920s by former World Chess Champion José Raúl Capablanca. It incorporates two new pieces and is played on a 10×8 board. Capablanca proposed the variant while World Champion, and not as a "sour grapes" rationalization after losing his title as some critics have asserted. He believed that chess would be played out in a few decades and games between grandmasters would always end in draws. The threat of "draw death" for chess was his main motivation for creating a more complex and richer version of the game.
- The chancellor combines powers of a rook and a knight.
- The archbishop combines powers of a bishop and a knight.
The new pieces have properties that enrich the game. For example, the archbishop by itself can checkmate a lone king (king in a corner, archbishop placed diagonally with one square in between).
Read more about Capablanca Chess: Setup of The Pieces
Famous quotes containing the word chess:
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)