Notes and papers on chess variants (John)
This page contains material on general variant forms of chess, historical and regional forms, Losing Chess (Giveaway Chess, Antichess), knight's tours, obituaries and other tributes, and miscellanea. Material on tours other than orthodox knight's tours is on the Other Games and Puzzles page.
General variant forms of chess
The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (D. B. Pritchard, 2007, with a supplementary paper Towards ECV3)
A World of Chess (Jean-Louis Cazaux and Rick Knowlton) (book review, December 2017)
Variant Chess magazine (ISSN 0958-8248, 1990-2010)
The Pritchard archive (June 2012)
Historical and regional forms
Thoughts on the origins of shatranj and xiangqi (December 2017 / January 2018, cosmetic revisions June 2021)
Notes on Cambodian Chess, on Gala, and on Nam Dinh Chess (November 2012 / February 2013)
Chess in 19th Century Turkestan
Losing Chess (Giveaway Chess, Antichess)
The Ultimate Guide to Antichess (Vladica Andrejić) (book notice, December 2018)
Losing Chess : 1 e3 is a win for White (reporting work by Mark Watkins, October 2016)
Losing Chess : 1 a3 e6 is a win for Black (reporting work by Klaas Steenhuis, October 2015)
A summary of Losing Chess openings knowledge as at 10 October 2016
A first survey of Losing Chess endgame material published up to the end of 1999 (October 2000), plus some notes and corrections (August/September 2018)
Three-man pawnless endings in Losing Chess (July 1998 / February 1999)
A Losing Chess endgame re-analysed (September 2018)
Fabrice Liardet's French-language site www.pion.ch is an excellent source of further material.
Knight's tours
Two notes on magic knight's tours (March 2012)
Magic Knight's Tours : Update to sources given in Variant Chess 57 (most recent addition May 2018)
An observation on an 8 x 8 knight's tour by Jaenisch (March 2023)
George Jelliss's Knight's Tour Notes are now on his "Mayhematics" site (www.mayhematics.com).
Obituaries and other tributes
Adam Sobey 1925-2015 (July 2015, footnote added April 2016)
Miscellanea
Progressive Chess : How often does the "Italian rule" make a difference? (August 2011)
Each item in PDF format opens in a new window.
The British Chess Variants Society has been dissolved and its site www.bcvs.ukf.net no longer exists, but the site's final contents have been recovered from the backup sticks and mounted on George Jelliss's "Mayhematics" site www.mayhematics.com; furthermore, at the time of writing (May 2013) most if not all of these contents can be recovered from the "Wayback" site web.archive.org (type in "www.bcvs.ukf.net" in response to the "http://" prompt, and click on "Take Me Back" and then on the most recent date highlighted on the calendar displayed).
The contributions of Marc Bourzutschky to chess endgame knowledge (January 2015, supplementary note added April 2021)
An apparently complete verdict on the ending with king and triplet leaper against king (December 2014)
Yet more on two queens against two moves (reporting work by Noam Elkies, September 2102)
Four recent problems exploiting fuddled men (May 2015)
The Variant Proof Games collection of Peter Fayers (updated June 2015)
51 Flights of Chess Fancy (chapters 4-7 refer)
Reminiscences of a puzzle enthusiast (pages 2/4-9/12/15 refer))