normal Normal chess wildcastle Shuffle chess, king can castle from d file nocastle Shuffle chess, no castling allowed fischerandom Fischer Random shuffle chess bughouse Bughouse, ICC/FICS rules crazyhouse Crazyhouse, ICC/FICS rules losers Lose all pieces or get mated (ICC wild 17) suicide Lose all pieces including king (FICS) giveaway Try to have no legal moves (ICC wild 26) twokings Weird ICC wild 9 kriegspiel Opponent's pieces are invisible atomic Capturing piece explodes (ICC wild 27) 3check Win by giving check 3 times (ICC wild 25) shatranj An ancient precursor of chess (ICC wild 28) xiangqi Chinese Chess (on a 9x10 board) shogi Japanese Chess (on a 9x9 board & piece drops) capablanca Capablanca Chess (10x8 board, with Archbishop and Chancellor pieces) gothic similar, with a better initial position caparandom An FRC-like version of Capablanca Chess (10x8) janus A game with two Archbishops (10x8 board) courier Medieval intermediate between shatranj and modern Chess (on 12x8 board) falcon Patented 10x8 variant with two Falcon pieces berolina Pawns capture straight ahead, and move diagonal cylinder Pieces wrap around the board edge knightmate King moves as Knight, and vice versa super Superchess (shuffle variant with 4 exo-pieces) makruk Thai Chess (shatranj-like, P promotes on 6th rank) fairy A catchall variant in which all piece types known to XBoard can participate (8x8) unknown Catchall for other unknown variants
NOT ALL BOARDSIZES PROVIDE A COMPLETE SET OF BUILT-IN BITMAPS FOR ALL
UN-ORTHODOX PIECES, though. Only in boardSize
middling and bulky
all 22 piece types are provided, while -boardSize petite has most
of them. Archbishop, Chancellor and Amazon are supported in every
size from petite to bulky. Kings or Amazons are substituted for
missing bitmaps. You can still play variants needing un-orthodox
pieces in other board sizes providing your own bitmaps through the
bitmapDirectory
or pixmapDirectory
options.
In the shuffle variants, XBoard now does shuffle the pieces, although
you can still do it by hand using Edit Position. Some variants are
supported only in ICS mode, including bughouse, and
kriegspiel. The winning/drawing conditions in crazyhouse (off-board
interposition on mate) are not fully understood, but losers, suicide,
giveaway, atomic, and 3check should be OK.
Berolina and cylinder chess can only be played with legality testing off.
In crazyhouse, XBoard now does keep
track of off-board pieces. In shatranj it does implement the baring
rule when mate detection is switched on.
remoteShell
. The default is your local user name.