Queen is banned from Blitz Chess - Explanation & Information

The Blitz Chess council recognizes that Lichess is a large institution within the realm of competitive Chess battling. Additionally, we understand that banning a core piece such as the Queen will have a substantial impact on the competitive landscape of this generation throughout our tournaments and perhaps other events. Given this, we would like to use this thread to explain the ban of the Queen as well as provide any relevant information for the sake of clarity and transparency.

While the Queen will be banned from the current Blitz Chess format and other timed formats, we do not require individuals to follow our set of rules and restrictions in their own casual games and non-Lichess affiliated tournaments. We recognize that we are not an official International Chess Federation website. Our rating infrastructure is only in place for Lichess formats; our ultimate goal from a rating perspective is to create a competitively balanced community that prioritizes player skill as a determinant of who ultimately wins each game. Removing the Queen from our tournaments helps us accomplish this goal, but that does not mean that you must adhere to this ban or our set of rules and restrictions in general if you are not playing official Lichess formats through Lichess tournaments or the official ladders on Chess.com. There are still other formats in which using the Queen piece is allowed. For example, both Classical and Rapid chess games currently allow for the Queen to be used, or if you wish to play a less restricted game, then you can play alongside your friends using the Custom Game format.

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The Queen was voted on and banned through a process known as suspecting. The process of a suspect involves opening up a formal discussion thread, such as the one here, and conducting a vote among qualified players after the suspect period is over. Qualification is gained through doing well on the ladder, specifically by achieving an ELO of 1500 or higher with a minimum of 1 game. Therefore, individuals who will determine the results of any given suspect will only be doing so through playing their way to an impressive win-loss ratio over a decent sample size of games, thus proving their levels of competency and understanding in order to vote. The list of qualified voters can be found in this thread, an explanation of the ladder rating process can be found in this thread, and the ultimate vote can be found in this thread.

The reasoning behind the Queen ban involves the increase in power, the impact of the secondary effects her positioning has, the defensive merit gained through deploying the Queen, and the element of unpredictability that comes alongside being able to move in any direction any number of squares. As GM Eric Rosen touches on in his post here, Magnus Carlssen discusses in his post here, and JoeMama1997 alludes to throughout his post here many of the Queen's moves can be devastating and she can be moved every turn with no required cooldown. There is no true limit to how potent the Queen's moves can be given that each central square provides different benefits that can potentially be game-changing; some of the most versatile pieces that are already great in the current metagame are made much stronger due to this, which makes finding reliable counterplay a virtual impossibility at times, as touched on by Nakamura in his post here. ChessPlayer42 also goes into detail on the various effects and benefits of Dynamax moves beyond sheer power and versatility in his post here. The ability for the most threatening piece in the game to fire off consecutive attacks, especially without being confined to a single rank or file, opens up a lot of unmanageable breaking possibilities. However, this is just the start as the secondary effects that occur through positioning and controlling the center of the board oftentimes lead to the the game largely being decided by a three-turn opening, especially if the Queen piece is able to deploy on a square where it can attack other pieces. The pawn-attacking aspect of the Queen is so problematic that pawn structure theory has quickly risen to the near the top of the reader statistics, which is a sign of a problematic metagame state as outlined by this post by myzozoa. This overwhelming prospect is also bolstered by the fact that the Queen piece has unlimited movement, allowing for her to avoid being taken out by otherwise troublesome threats as well as opening up the game to many defensive exploits of the Queen.

While all of this is cause for concern, the biggest reason for banning the Queen is perhaps the unpredictability that comes alongside it. TSM Bjergsen correctly identifies that we prioritize skillful play and minimizing guesswork and variance in his post here while also explaining that the Queen being present allows for a lot of variance due to the nature of her movement and its unpredictability. As Kasparov has stated, the uses of the Queen apply to any attacked square at any time. No matter what specific piece we try to get rid of (or even more narrowly prevent from capturing), the remaining set of chess pieces that can control the central squares will always be problematic. It goes way beyond "Pawns and Rooks are terrifying pieces due to their unique movement." Any concept of consistency or stability goes out the window when the player with the losing board can flip that around with the Queen. The existence of the Queen lessens competitive strategy and rewards short term bursts of prediction. Without the thought or planning going into player deduction, opening speculation, and how they relate to strategies regarding what beats what, the game cannot meet the standards of our competitive community. For more reasoning from members of the council, I would recommend reading through this post.

On top of this, we would like to add that this suspect has grouped the Queen with promoted Pawns as they are the same piece, but with the latter only being usable on a smaller case basis. In the games themselves, they function in the same way and are used through the same exact movement within the battle. Tiering them separately was not something we wished to entertain and pawn Promotion will also be banned alongside the Queen moving forward. We did not wish to employ any arbitrarily picked restriction on the level of piece point value or an alternative approach of banning an arbitrarily selected group of pieces as it will simply lead to recurring bans and the metagame being continuously compromised by the presence of the Queen and/or promoted pieces.

Despite the competitive ramifications of the Queen, it is true that individuals throughout the community, including a minority of voters, believed that the Queen should remain in the Blitz Chess format. One of the most common arguments on its behalf was that removing a core piece would strip the historic game of its identity. While we do understand that there may be some individual preference favoring historical preservation such as this, we still believe that finding a competitive balance is the first and foremost priority of tiering. Preserving a game that has player skill as the main determinant of the outcome of battles is of greater importance than preserving a piece to align the generation's identity with, which we deem unnecessary. As NotWolfesAlt and WolfeVGC touched on here, there are noteworthy, fundamental difference between this core piece and others. You cannot change the direction a Rook or Bishop will move, but you can move in any direction with the Queen. Another argument that has been made is that the Queen may promote short term bursts in power, but it also promotes more pro-active play and the metagame without it may be more passive when compared to past generations. While we realize that the metagame in the aftermath of this ban may take time to develop and require further tiering action, that will always be on the table and we will do everything within our power as a tiering council to promote a game that is highly competitive. We cannot keep one element deemed banworthy just to avoid others from arising; instead, we will go through the generation knowing that we may need to remove numerous things in order to find the right overall balance for the metagame. Because of this, you should also keep your eyes open for future discussions and potential suspects moving forward if you are an active player of chess!

Thank you to Antimony 721 for the suggestion to make this post!
 
smh the council banning the queen without even doing proper suspect tests of it. queen gets hard countered by knights, they have no sort of counterattacking ability when a knight is properly brought to bear.

while the queen does outclass bishops and even rooks to an extent, this is balanced due to the proportion of pieces alloted to each player. players may bring two bishops (of altering colors) and two rooks to each game, while the queen has been limited to a single piece due to hundreds of years of meta analysis. secondary queens are only available through in game purchase, and any experience points invested into a pawn by advancing it across the board may be lost at any moment to overzealous defenders and sacrifices. any attempts to remove either the base game queen, or the late game queen are founded on biases and poor sportsmanship.

removing the queen will simply enforce the drawish metagame that we have been experiencing for the past 10 years, and drive more players away from chess and to more promising games like Go, or for the younger crowds, checkers.
 
why am i the only real user in this copypasta, does this go back to the ORAS m-sabeleye ban? I did settle that and you're all welcome.

ps blitz chess isn't real chess, thats why an american can get to #1 at it.
 
Now that the chessboard looks like this:
ZXryf3t.png

I think it might be a good idea to suggest some pieces we can add in to replace the queen. As well as the departure of the queen opening up niches in the meta, I think that it would just be nice to balance out the visual look of the board again. Things look better when they're symmetrical. Here are my suggestions, and remember that I'm always open to new ones:

Suggestion 1: Another Rook
D1u1pJn.png

I've always liked these chaps. It's nice to line them up all in a row on the 7th rank and all. Fun to put them all on the same file. Just might be a nice experience to have a 3rd rook runnin' about in the game.

Suggestion 2: A Second King
3RG9xa0.png

If the king is the most important piece in the game then why is there only one of them? There are 2 bishops, rooks, and knights, and even 8 pawns. But the king, the most important of them all, only gets one piece on the board! It just makes no sense. In this version of the game a second king would more accurately reflect the importance of the king.
Two additional things of note about this version of the game are that you no longer have to deliberate between castling queenside or kingside, because now you can castle in both directions. Each king goes to one side of the board.
You also don't have to worry about that annoying "getting checkmated" thing which my chess program keeps telling me has happened to me (and then my chess program always freezes and I can't move my pieces anymore), because you always have a spare king!

Suggestion 3: The Squire/The Pony
g3maRx0.png

Everyone likes the knights, so why not add a smaller version of the knight, called the squire? And if you're one of the people who always calls the knight a horse, then you can call the squire a pony.
Because the knight can move two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically, the smaller squire will move one vertically and one horizontally in any direction.
Secondly, just to make the game more interesting, I propose that the king be able to mount his noble steed. They can then use their combined powers to create a new piece, kind of like fusion summons in yugioh or how the mighty morphin' power rangers can all combine together. This new piece will still be able to be put in check like the king, but because of the king's stellar horsemanship the new piece will have unlimited movement powers, able to move from any square on the board to any other square.

Suggestion 4: Garry Kasparov
tADSNf7.png

It makes sense that the game should have an homage to such an influential player, so I decided to add none other than Garry Kasparov himself to the game of chess. He won't actually be able to move, but every Kasparov piece will have a small speaker inside that scolds you when you're about to make a bad move.

Suggestion 5: Gen 2 Snorlax
kOB92Im.png


The problem with blitz chess before was that the Queen was an OP piece. But as all GSC players know, having one piece/Pokemon be a step above the rest isn't necessarily a sign of an uncompetitive meta.
When I was pondering ideas for what some new pieces could be, I thought that it may actually be good if there was a high power level piece, so long as it wasn't as broken as the queen. Instead of trying to come up with a new idea for what this piece could be, I decided to go with what works and rip Snorlax directly from gen 2. Snorlax has already proven to be powerful but competitive in another meta, so I don't see why the same shouldn't apply to Chess.
I propose that Chess adopt the classic CurseLax set - the tried and true gold standard.
You may ask why I made this a Snorlax joke instead of a Mega-Rayquaza joke. The answer: because this subforum has a bunch of old people on it. I know my audience.



All smogoff posters, please provide additional suggestions! I'm open to all your ideas for pieces to replace the queen. Ideas which could potentially improve the game of chess for thousands of years to come!

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Captain's Log: AFD 2022

It's true. I made off with everyone's hard-earned PP. They'll never think to look here, in a post that's not even mine! But just in case...

Hello traveler. I'll cut straight to the chase. Your reward? First off, the information that this is my favorite Smogoff post of all time (congrats Sijih). Secondly, the treasure you found here? All the PP? It's yours to do with as you please. Just PM me proof that you were first to find it and I will privately transfer it all to you. After that? Go nuts.
 
So I've been watching a bunch of 5D chess because I have a complexity addiction. In that format, the Queen is actually too powerful as a result of being based on "move in any direction" rather than "rook+bishop" (which are no longer the same due to there being more directions). Implemented replacements included the Princess, a true rook+bishop piece, and the reversed royalty mode, where putting the queen as the central piece prevented it being used for sacrificial plays.

As to the discussion of this format, I would propose the Chancellor as the replacement for the queen. Replacing the option of rook movement with that of a knight reduces the checkmating abilities and sheer amount of covered squares available to the piece, while still keeping it a valuable offensive tool. The Chancellor has seen some success in this teamslot in the "chess 2" format, as a part of Beast-style hyper offense.

Yes, I do spend too much time looking at chess variants because I don't like how solved normal chess is, why do you ask?
 
why am i the only real user in this copypasta, does this go back to the ORAS m-sabeleye ban? I did settle that and you're all welcome.

ps blitz chess isn't real chess, thats why an american can get to #1 at it.
it's cause you're my favorite user :)

I thought about throwing shub in there too but then decided GM Eric Rosen was more important
 
Now that the chessboard looks like this:
ZXryf3t.png

I think it might be a good idea to suggest some pieces we can add in to replace the queen. As well as the departure of the queen opening up niches in the meta, I think that it would just be nice to balance out the visual look of the board again. Things look better when they're symmetrical. Here are my suggestions, and remember that I'm always open to new ones:

Suggestion 1: Another Rook
D1u1pJn.png

I've always liked these chaps. It's nice to line them up all in a row on the 7th rank and all. Fun to put them all on the same file. Just might be a nice experience to have a 3rd rook runnin' about in the game.

Suggestion 2: A Second King
3RG9xa0.png

If the king is the most important piece in the game then why is there only one of them? There are 2 bishops, rooks, and knights, and even 8 pawns. But the king, the most important of them all, only gets one piece on the board! It just makes no sense. In this version of the game a second king would more accurately reflect the importance of the king.
Two additional things of note about this version of the game are that you no longer have to deliberate between castling queenside or kingside, because now you can castle in both directions. Each king goes to one side of the board.
You also don't have to worry about that annoying "getting checkmated" thing which my chess program keeps telling me has happened to me (and then my chess program always freezes and I can't move my pieces anymore), because you always have a spare king!

Suggestion 3: The Squire/The Pony
g3maRx0.png

Everyone likes the knights, so why not add a smaller version of the knight, called the squire? And if you're one of the people who always calls the knight a horse, then you can call the squire a pony.
Because the knight can move two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically, the smaller squire will move one vertically and one horizontally in any direction.
Secondly, just to make the game more interesting, I propose that the king be able to mount his noble steed. They can then use their combined powers to create a new piece, kind of like fusion summons in yugioh or how the mighty morphin' power rangers can all combine together. This new piece will still be able to be put in check like the king, but because of the king's stellar horsemanship the new piece will have unlimited movement powers, able to move from any square on the board to any other square.

Suggestion 4: Garry Kasparov
tADSNf7.png

It makes sense that the game should have an homage to such an influential player, so I decided to add none other than Garry Kasparov himself to the game of chess. He won't actually be able to move, but every Kasparov piece will have a small speaker inside that scolds you when you're about to make a bad move.

Suggestion 5: Gen 2 Snorlax
kOB92Im.png


The problem with blitz chess before was that the Queen was an OP piece. But as all GSC players know, having one piece/Pokemon be a step above the rest isn't necessarily a sign of an uncompetitive meta.
When I was pondering ideas for what some new pieces could be, I thought that it may actually be good if there was a high power level piece, so long as it wasn't as broken as the queen. Instead of trying to come up with a new idea for what this piece could be, I decided to go with what works and rip Snorlax directly from gen 2. Snorlax has already proven to be powerful but competitive in another meta, so I don't see why the same shouldn't apply to Chess.
I propose that Chess adopt the classic CurseLax set - the tried and true gold standard.
You may ask why I made this a Snorlax joke instead of a Mega-Rayquaza joke. The answer: because this subforum has a bunch of old people on it. I know my audience.



All smogoff posters, please provide additional suggestions! I'm open to all your ideas for pieces to replace the queen. Ideas which could potentially improve the game of chess for thousands of years to come!
I think the main point you're glossing over is the hesitance of the Lichess council to simply replace the Queen; they clearly indicated they didn't want to continue banning down the totem pole to find a replacement but rather wanted a surgical extraction of the most unpredictable facet of the metagame. This is evidenced by their removal of Promoted Pawns as well
 
It disappoints me that other alternatives than keeping the status quo or banning the queen were never debated as intensely as they should have.
What about restricting the range of the queen to for example 3 squares? Or making it unable to check a king (which obviously would include not taking or jumping over it)? Or banning it from going to certain squares like f2 and f7? All these options would greatly reduce the effectiveness of cheesy strategies like the scholars mate in blitz chess and at the same time offering a compromise to the conservative people who don't want to see an essential part of the metagame entirely removed.
 
It disappoints me that other alternatives than keeping the status quo or banning the queen were never debated as intensely as they should have.
What about restricting the range of the queen to for example 3 squares? Or making it unable to check a king (which obviously would include not taking or jumping over it)? Or banning it from going to certain squares like f2 and f7? All these options would greatly reduce the effectiveness of cheesy strategies like the scholars mate in blitz chess and at the same time offering a compromise to the conservative people who don't want to see an essential part of the metagame entirely removed.
Sounds like a complex ban, which is evidently against policy.
 
tbh the better path than banning the queen for being op is just playing gothic chess where the chancellor and archbishop also exist and help narrow the wide gap between queen and rook power/create more interesting tradeoffs
 
No you idiots did it wrong. We need to ban the king. It is too overcentralizing because it forces a piece of your army to defend it when they can do more productive things. The king centralizes each and every matchup it appears in and the opponent's entire plan has to involve getting rid of the king or they lose. Also, banning the king also eliminates the annoying problem of getting "checkmated" that smogon account mentioned because you don't even have a king to be trapped. Obviously chess programs should try to fix that stupid bug but from what I can tell it is unfixable because every last chess program is has this bug, and none of them has fixed it.

I suggest replacing both the king and the queen with pawns. It makes sense. The two most overcentralizing pieces replaced with extra support for the army, especially in the center, which people are always so worked up about. Maybe they can update the game so pawns at the 1st rank can move 3 spaces on the first move.
 
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