Golden age chess on a really big board Betza also created a second 16×16 variant, which he termed
golden age chess on a really big board. He wrote: "This game is designed to create an open position in which development, initiative, and attack are all-important, the positions are too complex to calculate so you must play by intuition, and you never count Pawns -- in other words, a return to the Golden Age!" The inverted knight in the diagram is the rose from chess on a really big board, and the superknight and archbishop remain the same. The other pieces are as follows: The shortest possible checkmate is: :
1.Wa13 i9 2.Wi13 Ai15 3.Wi12# The shortest game ending in quadruple check and mate is: :
1.Wa3 Np8 2.Wi3 Nxm2 3.Al3 Nk1 4.Bn5 Nxi2 5.Rxi2 i9 6.Rh3 i8 7.Bh5 i7 8.Wi2+ i6 9.Axi6 h14 10.Ad11# Nine-board chess Betza also proposed a 24×24 version of chess on a really big board, although he did not fully design it. His description of the game was "Push 9 boards together in a [3×3] square, symmetrically replicate all the unique pieces from the four-board chess lineup, add a W beside the K, two Fs flanking the K [and] W, and you have a game." The W and F are here the
wazir and
ferz. This description is however not unique: the positions of the roses, superknights, archbishops, chancellors, and queens are not determined, as some of them are equidistant to the king in the four-board chess initial position, and it is not clear if the king should be on the l-file or the m-file. The addition of such weak pieces was intended to balance the duplication of the more powerful pieces.
Four-board Shatranj Betza also suggested a version with even fewer tactics that would eliminate many of the riders, replacing bishops with
alfils and queens with , turning archbishops into knight-alfil compounds, and turning chancellors into either rook-alfil or rook-ferz compounds.
Rule changes Betza remarked that the rules of most chess variants, such as
cylindrical chess or
avalanche chess, could be applied to chess on a really big board; nonetheless, he considered applying the rules of cylindrical chess to the 16×16 board "silly" because it made distances feel even larger, recommending Avalanche chess instead as it shortens the game. Betza also thought favourably of applying the rules of
momentum chess to the 16×16 board. Another possibility Betza mentioned is the rules of
Viennese Kriegspiel, where the middle of the board (the line between the 8th and 9th ranks) is blocked by a screen and players can move their pieces freely up to their first six ranks. Once both players are satisfied with their arrangement (this can be enforced with a timer), the screen is removed and normal play resumes. It would also be possible to play without the screen, which Betza called "Sighted Viennese Kriegspiel". A further possibility Betza entertained was a 3D version of chess on a really big board on a 16×16×16 board, which brought its inspiration full circle. On each level, the 2D setup would be repeated, and the pieces' moves would be translated into three dimensions just as in his idea of 8×8×8 3D chess. Nevertheless, he commented on it: "What an awful idea. Each player has 256 Pawns and 256 pieces. The average length of a game is likely to be more [than] 2000 moves."
Different starting positions Betza also considered starting positions with 16 (one chess set) or 64 (four sets) pieces instead of 32 (two sets), but eventually rejected them. They are as follows:
Three dimensions Betza suggested a 16×16×16 three-dimensional adaptation of the rules of chess on a really big board, which would be formed by pushing eight 8×8×8 boards into a cube and then translating the moves into 3D following how he did so for his version of 8×8×8 3D chess, although he expressed reservations about the likely game length.
Unrealised suggestions Betza also suggested "Four Board Great Chess", which would have more pieces than the rose that could not make their full moves on smaller boards, and having pawns on the third rank and about 24 pieces in the two rows behind them; and similarly, "Four Board Great Shatranj", where the pieces would be weakened further. Another suggestion of his was four-board
chess with different armies, suggesting that one player could use knights and the other could use fibnifs (fbNF; makes longest forward or backward moves as knight, or moves as ferz), though noting that creating completely new armies was not possible in 1996 as the values of long-range pieces on 16×16 boards were not yet known to much precision. However, none were developed beyond ideas. A further variant Betza considered is "Sixty-Four Board Chess", which would be played on a 64×64 board with 4,096 squares (the same as 16×16×16 chess). Betza's comment was: Similarly, he considered a 64×64×64 3D variant, which he put forward as a possible world record for the largest chess variant (having 262,144 cubes), although he did not completely specify the rules, beyond stating that the standard opening setup for orthodox chess would simply be repeated to fill the 64×64 boards. ==Notes==