Hexagonal Chess

The term hexagonal chess designates a group of chess variants played on boards composed of hexagons. The best known is Gliński's variant, played on a symmetric 91-cell hexagonal board, the most frequently used board by hex chess variant inventors.

Since each hexagonal cell not on a board edge has six neighbor cells, there is increased mobility for pieces compared to a standard orthogonal chessboard. (For example a rook has six natural directions for movement instead of four.) Three colors are typically used so that no two neighboring cells are the same color, and any game piece that is color-restricted (such as the bishop in orthodox chess) usually comes in sets of three per player in order to maintain the game's balance. Many different shapes and sizes of hexagon-based boards are used by variants. The nature of the game is also affected by the 30-degree orientation of the boardcells. (For example, when the sides of hex cells face the players, pawns typically have one straightforward move direction. If a variant's gameboard has cell vertices facing the players, pawns typically have two oblique-forward move directions.) The six sidedness of the symmetric hexagon gameboard has also resulted in a number of three-player variants.

The first applications of chess on hexagonal boards probably occurred mid-19th century, but two early examples did not include checkmate as the winning objective. More chess-like games for hex-based boards started appearing regularly at the beginning of the 20th century. Hex-celled gameboards have grown in use for strategy games generally; for example they are popularly used in modern wargaming.