Cross Chess is a Chess variant, played on a cross-shaped board.
David Pritchard, in his Encyclopedia of Chess Variants,
attributes Cross Chess to Leigh Miller, 1985. Cross Chess was at one time sold
by Cross Chess International Pty. It does not seem to be
available any longer from that company.
The diagram was rotated by 90 degrees compared to the original submission, to avoid vertical castling.
General Rules
The rules of Cross Chess are identical to those of
FIDE Chess, except
where noted otherwise below.
Movement of Pieces
Kings, Queens, Rooks, Bishops and
Knights moves as they do in FIDE Chess, except of course
that Queen-side castling is not possible.
Pawns are divided into side-moving Pawns which go left to right
or right to left, and vertically-moving Pawns which go up and
down. Pawns that capture into arms they can't otherwise move
into can be trapped. Pawns have a double initial move as usual
and En passant capture is possible. Pawns promote to
Queen, Rook, Bishop or Knight upon reaching the far side of the
board in their direction of travel.
Pritchard's entry on this game states that play is supposed
to be faster than Orthochess, but experiance with the ZRF
does not seem to support that -- play being generally of the
same length as with Orthochess.
It is curious that all Bishops are on the same color.
Computer Play
There is an implementation of Cross Chess for Zillions of Games
(See below). The author of this page has added some variants with
altered Bishops and Pawns and setups, none of which seem to be as
good as the original game, but might hold some interest for the
experimentally-inclined. Ed Friedlander has also implemented this
game as an applet (see below).
Written by Peter Aronson.
WWW page created: July 25th, 2004.
