Cylinder chess

Cylinder Chess is a chess variant of the classic chess on 8 times 8 fields with identical rules, but with the crucial difference that the a- and h- are interconnected. The chessboard Imagine a cylinder rolled before, so that the left and right sides collide. A jumper can thus, for example jump of h2 by b3.

Examples

The following chess compositions illuminate the possible moves on a chessboard cylinder:

Mate in two moves

Here White can not mate with 1 Ta5xa6 Kb1 -c1 - 2 Ta6 a1, because the farmer is covered: 1 ... h7xa6! True is 1 Ta5 - a5! - White makes a round trip and end up back at the starting point. Now Black must first pull ... Kb1 -c1 and is checkmated with 2 Ta5 -a1.

Matt in a train

White dominates all fields around the black king but g2 (f4 by the Lb8 along b8 ( - a7 - h6) - f4, g3 by the Sa2 ). So he has to offer chess and simultaneously take g2 under control.

An obvious appears Db4 ( a4 h4) - g4 #. Unfortunately the train does not go but because the white lady is tied up by her colleague at f8 f8 along the route ( - h6 - a5 ) e1 - delay them away, the white king would be in check. Another idea is Bh5 ( a6 ) - b7 ? , But that fails to Tf6 ( - h6 - a6 ) - c6! . Finally, Sa2 - h4 is? not because kg3! .

The solution is 1 0-0 #! - White castled small with the Ta1. This is legal according to the castling rules, because it is nowhere laid down that white can castle only on the ladies side with the women's tower.

Evaluation of the figures

Compared to the normal chess diagonally pulling figures queen and bishop are clearly enhanced. You can drag namely far beyond the edges and possibly more opposing points simultaneously attack than would be possible in normal chess. The tower loses in relation lot of importance mainly because lack of corners on the chess king and rook no longer can force Matt.

Variants

• Sometimes trains " on the square " as explicitly forbidden in the upper diagram.
• Some players play chess cylinder without any castling. Perhaps there are those who only play with the normal castling.
• When one thinks addition, he was a twisting of the board at the " connection " is called Möbius chess.

Consequences for chess mathematical tasks

For the Springer problem there is in Cylinder Chess a much larger number of solutions than on the normal chessboard. In contrast, there is no single solution more for the ladies problem.

Historical

Cylinder Chess is very old and has been characterized by the Arab historian Alī Al- Masudi in the 10th century.