Switching Chess

By Tony Quintanilla

Setup

All the normal rules of Chess apply with the following exceptions:

In addition to all their normal moves, each piece may also switch places with an adjacent friendly piece.
Pawns may promote if switched into the last rank.
Pawns may make the double move if starting in the first or second rank. This may result in a Pawn making more than one double move in a game.
Like pieces may not switch places, as this would result in no move being made.

Some readers suggested that switching makes checkmate harder and offered the following suggestions.

Variant suggested by Gregory Strong:

Variant suggested by João Pedro Neto: