When my daughter was little, we played "turn around chess". She could, at any time, start her turn by turning the board around and taking over my position. I simply played my best chess (which isn't all that great, frankly) and when she felt cornered she would turn the board around and get the opportunity to attack from a superior position while I would try to fight my way out.
We both had a lot of fun, and I didn't have to do anything fake to make it fun for her.
That is a great idea, and I wish I had had it in my back pocket about ten years ago.
My daughter invented "coin flip chess" when she was little. I had showed her how to flip a coin to pick between two choices, and she wanted to add it to the game. So before you moved you had to flip a coin, and if you guessed wrong you lost your turn.
Martin Gardner noted in one of his Mathematical Games columns that chess variants are great for evening the playing field between players of different skill levels. There are so many variants out there. I like how this one works well with a computer-run game (a physical Really Bad Chess would require lots of extra pieces).
My first college roommate* and I played chess a couple of times. He beat me within a few moves both games. After winning the 2nd game he said to me (in jest): "That's called the Fools Mate. You know why it works on you?"
I haven't play since. This Really Bad Chess looks like it could be fun though...
I don't remember if he was a roommate or just a suite mate but I played a few times with a friend at school and he could beat me when he was blindfolded. I was "barely passable" at one point but I haven't played in years.
> This gulf in skill and experience meant that the two couldn’t play together in a meaningful way; if they tried, Gage would get crushed, and the match wouldn’t be much fun. So he decided to fix the problem.
In my opinion, there is no acceptable handicap system for chess; its symmetry isn't conducive. It is also something that is almost never done - I've never seen a handicap (beyond time and color) used in any chess club. Allotting more time to the weaker (and less to the stronger) player is probably the best method of balancing skill discrepancy. This is one of the reasons I abandoned chess for go (baduk, weichi, igo, etc.), where the handicap system is fully functional up to 9 additional stones (pieces) for the weaker player. The gameboard sizes can range from 19x19 to 5x5 (refers to the intersecting lines within grid). While this system is almost perfect in go, it is at best a blemish to the game in chess. However, loser's chess can be quite entertaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess
I imagine it's more fun to play with many more interesting pieces.
> Yet, in spite of this, after playing Really Bad Chess for the past week, I’ve found myself with a much better understanding of the game, and how the various pieces interact with each other.
Not to mention that you can potentially learn tactics much quicker with more practice using the interesting pieces.
Thank you for the link. I was unaware of the handicap system. Although I think this is a novel approach because you don't need to first rank the players, both players are equally disadvantaged.
In theory, I still bet that a strong player would win regardless of which pieces are on the board.
When I was about 17 I used to give my 10 year old brother queen-odds (I played without my queen). He apparently remembers it fondly, and I had to really think.
There used to be a game online (that was popular in my childhood) called Kung Fu Chess[0] -
This removed the "Turn Based" application of Chess and instead made it real-time online - with only a period of 1-5 seconds of waiting to be able to move a piece again, depending on your settings.
The other "novel" feature was the introduction of a 4 player chessboard - it added to the strategy having three other opponents all looking to get the jump on you.
The game unfortunately shut down in 2008 - not sure where it ended up.
I like chess960 but I like to go further and randomize the positions of the hind row completely and do it differently. I havent tried varying the composition of the pieces or messing with the pawns, but once I started learning opening books plain ordinary chess became depressing for me.
This looks like such fun, I wish there was a website I could play against others on instead of an iOS app.
The idea feels fresh, challenging, curious. It has me thinking about other ways to add variety to old games, similar to the flood of creativity board games have experienced the past couple decades.
usually when I want to play someone at about my skill level I go to one of any number of free chess servers where there are literally hundreds or even thousands of players of nearly every playing level. And if I want to play a game where the pieces are shuffled I play fischer random on said server. But I guess if you're clueless about chess but know how to write an app this is what you end up with.
We both had a lot of fun, and I didn't have to do anything fake to make it fun for her.