Across the Board: An Intro to the Chess Room

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Introduction

Have you ever wanted to go to a Pokémon website to play chess? Good, because the Chess room is Pokémon Showdown's hub for all chess-related games and discussions. While it's not the most active of rooms, you can come to the Chess room to play a wide variety of formats and talk about a popular classical strategy game that's a little bit older than DPP OU.

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Variants

While plenty of regular chess is played in the Chess room, sometimes that's just not interesting or unique enough and it can be rather confusing to see people challenging one another to a foreign concept like Chess960. These are the most common variants played in the Chess room, all with challenge formats on Lichess.

Atomic

Atomic Chess is fairly popular for its unique strategy and quick game times. Every time a piece is captured, all pieces in a one-square radius are destroyed in the resulting nuclear blast except for the pawns, which undoubtedly absorb the nuclear radiation for the power to transform into a queen if they ever reach the other side of the board. This leads to fast-paced games where both sides focus less on checkmate and more on annihilating the king with one well-placed capture. Beginners games will often go by fairly quickly, as Atomic is one of the harder variations to pick up at first. However, you can soon get the hang of mastering careful defensive positioning to keep your king safe and blasting your opponent to kingdom come.

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King of the Hill

King of the Hill is the variant that is most similar to regular chess. In fact, it almost perfectly follows all of the normal rules except with the tiny twist that whoever legally moves their king to one of the four central squares on the board wins. While you can also go for checkmate with an aggressive mid-game attack, failure will leave the end-game much more difficult. As soon as the queens and a few minor pieces have been traded off, it becomes a game of who can get their king all the way out there faster and which player can block off its movement more effectively. As formats go, it's not the most unique, but racing towards those precious squares can get somewhat intense when you're nearing the end of a hard-fought game.

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Chess960

Also known as Fischer random chess after its world-famous creator, Chess960 encourages you to think outside the square by starting off every game with the position of the major pieces randomized. The starting position is a defining feature of a regular chess game, and not even knowing how the game is going to start changes a lot about the tactics and positions, although most setups will generally have some similar ideal structures. There's plenty of different possible combinations, with the only rules being that both sides are symmetrical, like normal chess, and the bishops must be on different colored squares. Chess960 will often be played in sets, as the variability can keep it fairly fresh for a best of three.

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Racing Kings

The most rarely played and unique of the common chess variants, Racing Kings involves a unique setup position shown here and putting your opponent in check is entirely illegal. The game revolves around being the first person to move their king to the 8th rank rather than going for checkmate. While this may seem in white's favor, if both players are able to move their king to the 8th rank in the same turn, the game is a draw. Because putting the opposing king in check is illegal, racing kings has very unique strategy where the king can pseudo-protect its own pieces if their capture would lead to it being in check.

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Chessmons

Since the Chess room happens to be on a Pokémon site, it naturally follows that somebody would have the idea to create a Pokémon game based on chess. The full rules can be found here, but the basic idea involves each Pokémon representing one of the six pieces. A pawn must be from Little Cup, the knight must be the final stage of the pawn, the bishop may be any Pokémon UU and below, the rook may be any OU Pokémon, the Queen can be any Pokémon from Ubers including Primal formes, and the king must be one of the seven pseudo-legendary Pokémon. Games end when the king has been knocked out, so it's important to play carefully and preserve it until the very end. While there's no official challenge format and some of the best strategies likely haven't been discovered, some of the better pawn-knight combos to use include Vullaby and Mandibuzz, as Vullaby has unusually good bulk for a lower-tier Pokémon, and Abra and Alakazam, as Abra can still perform the role of a Focus Sash revenge killer.

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Puzzles

The Chess room always has a puzzle in the room intro to figure out, which generally changes at least once a week. These can range from somewhat simple checkmate puzzles to more complex tactics, and there will often be some discussion about what the best possible play is. Don't forget to use spoilers so that other people don't have the solutions ruined!

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Room Owner Interviews

For this part, Austin and PenQuin were kind enough to talk to me about their experiences in the Chess room.

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