Marseillais chess

How Marseillais chess is played

Marseillais chess is chess with two moves a turn. Everything else is as in chess: the board, the men and their moves, castling, promotion and checkmate.

The turn

Each player makes two moves in a row, with the same piece or with two different ones. White begins with a single move (the Balanced game); after that every turn has two. Your king may never be left in check, not even after the first move of your turn, so a king cannot step into check and out again.

Check

A check given with the first move ends the turn at once: the second move is lost. A player in check must escape it with the first move of the turn, and may then make the second.

En passant

A pawn that made a double step with either move of the opponent’s turn may be taken en passant, but only at once, with the first move of your turn. If the opponent made two double steps, you may take both pawns: the second with your second move, right after the first en passant capture.

Castling

Castling is one move, under chess’ conditions. A king or a rook that moved earlier in the same turn has lost the right.

Mate and stalemate

A player in check who has no legal first move is mated. A player who cannot make both moves of the turn is stalemated, a draw, unless a check with the first move ended the turn: so a king that can step out of check but then has no second move is stalemated, not mated.

Draws

The sources name no other draw, so the app draws when the same position stands at the start of a turn of the same player for the third time, after fifty turns by each player without a capture or a pawn move, and when neither side can mate: king against king, or king and one knight or bishop against king.

Balanced and Classical

In the original game of the 1920s, the Classical start, White’s first turn had two moves too. Robert Bruce gave White a single first move to balance the game, and this Balanced game has replaced the original among expert players. You can choose the Classical start when you set up a game.

Other readings

The app plays the rules most sources give. In the early years a check with the first move was sometimes illegal instead. Pritchard’s Popular Chess Variants (2000) allows en passant only against a double step made with the opponent’s second move, and some programs allow one en passant capture per turn.

The story

Marseille, France · published 1925

When and where

Marseillais chess was first published in 1925 in Le Soleil, a newspaper of Marseille. It is commonly credited to Albert Fortis, a journalist of the city, with the Norwegian I. Rossow, around 1922; a German magazine of 1926 gave a better claim to Jehan de Queylar, said to have set down the rules during the First World War. The credit for making it popular belongs to Fortis.

How it changed

Everything is chess but the turn: each player makes two moves in a row, with one piece or with two. A check given with the first move ends the turn, and a player in check must escape it with the first move. Robert Bruce balanced the game by giving White a single move in the first turn, in the 1950s by Pritchard’s account, in 1963 by others; Alessandro Castelli held that the original game was a win for White.

Today

It was in fashion in Paris in the late 1920s, with tournaments in Paris in 1926 and Hamburg in 1927, and Alekhine, Réti, Znosko-Borovsky and Chéron among its players. Boyer and Klüver revived it in the 1950s, E. T. O. Slater ran events by post, and from the late 1970s the Italian association AISE played it; Castelli wrote its theory in Scacchi Marsigliesi (1996). The balanced game, adopted by the American NOST and by AISE in 1990, has replaced the original among expert players, though Fabrice Liardet still holds tournaments of the original in Geneva.

Did you know?

In Mme Alekhine’s salon Mme Léon-Martin beat Réti and lost only narrowly to Alekhine himself. A game Fortis–Alekhine of 1925 survives, and the magazine Chess reinvented the game in 1939 as “SuperCharged Chess”.

Sources: D. B. Pritchard, The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (2007) · The Chess Variant Pages · Wikipedia · Wikipédia

More games

Chess and variants

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• Chess960 · Fischer random chess: the back rank starts in one of 960 setups.
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• Atomic chess · Every capture is an explosion that clears the pieces around it.
• Crazyhouse · Captured pieces change sides and can be dropped back onto the board.
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• Three-check · Chess where the third check wins, so every check counts.
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• Dunsany’s chess · Lord Dunsany’s game of 1942: 32 pawns against a full army.
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• Progressive chess · One move, then two, then three: each turn is one move longer.
• Fog of War · You only see where your pieces can move. Capture the king to win.
• Kriegspiel · Only your own pieces in sight; an umpire judges every move.
• Alice chess · Two boards: every piece that moves passes through to the other one.
• Raumschach 3D · Chess in a 5 × 5 × 5 cube: five boards stacked, and the unicorn.
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• Ultima · Every piece captures its own way, and the immobilizer freezes.
• Gliński’s hexagonal chess · Chess on 91 hexagons: three bishops, rooks in six directions.
• McCooey’s hexagonal chess · Hexagonal chess closer to chess: seven pawns that take diagonally.
• Shafran’s hexagonal chess · Hexagonal chess on 70 cells, with castling and pawns that step three.
• Spartan chess · Persians against Spartans: chess’ army against two kings and new pieces.
• Legan chess · The armies in opposite corners; pawns step diagonally towards the far one.

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• Courier chess · Medieval Germany’s chess on a 12 × 8 board, with the courier, the man and the schleich.
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• Tamerlane chess · Timur’s great chess on an 11 × 10 board, with giraffes, camels and citadels.
• Carrera’s chess · The first chess on ten files, from a Sicilian priest’s book of 1617.
• Duke of Rutland’s chess · Fourteen files, with the concubine and two crowned rooks a side.
• Bird’s chess · Henry Bird’s ten-file chess of 1874, with the guard and the equerry.
• Capablanca chess · Ten files and two new pieces: the archbishop and the chancellor.
• Gothic chess · Ed Trice’s setup of 2000, today called Trice’s Chess.
• Capablanca Random · Capablanca chess from one of 12,118 shuffled starts.
• Embassy chess · Grand chess’ row of pieces on a 10 × 8 board.
• Janus chess · Two januses a side, each moving as a bishop or a knight.
• Grand chess · Christian Freeling’s 10 × 10 game: pawns promote only to lost pieces.
• S-chess · Chess with a hawk and an elephant in hand, placed as the back rank leaves.

The chess family

• Chaturanga · India’s ancient chess, the root of the family: take the king to win.
• Shatranj · The medieval ancestor of chess, with a weak ferz and a jumping alfil.
• Byzantine chess · Shatranj on a round board: the rook circles, pawns never promote.
• Medieval chess · Europe’s chess before 1475: the ferz and the king may leap on their first move.
• Senterej · Ethiopian chess: no turns until the first capture, then Shatranj.
• Shatar · Mongolian chess: the bers, the camel, and a mate that needs a shak.
• Makruk · Thai chess: a slow, strategic game with a counting rule.
• Ouk Chatrang · Cambodian chess: Makruk with a leap for the king and the met.
• Sittuyin · Burmese chess: set up your pieces, then promote on the diagonals.
• Kar Ouk · Ouk Chatrang where the first check wins: guard your king.
• Malay chess · Chess of the Malay world: the king leaps, a crowned pawn walks back.
• Xiangqi · Chinese chess: a river, palaces and a cannon that jumps to capture.
• Minixiangqi · Xiangqi on 7 × 7 points: no river, no advisors, no elephants.
• Manchu chess · Red’s lone chariot moves as horse and cannon too, against a full army.
• Jieqi · Xiangqi with the pieces face down: each is revealed by its first move.
• Banqi · Xiangqi’s pieces face down on half a board: turn them up, take by rank.
• Janggi · Korean chess: no river, palace diagonals and a cannon that always jumps.
• Shogi · Japanese chess: captured pieces return to the board on your side.
• Minishogi · Shogi on a 5 × 5 board: six pieces a side, short and sharp games.
• Chu shogi · Japan’s great shogi on 12 × 12: no drops, and a lion that moves twice.
• Tori shogi · Bird shogi on 7 × 7: a phoenix, quails and swallows, with drops.

More players

• Chaturaji · India’s four-handed chess: kings can be captured, captures score.
• Four Seasons Chess · Alfonso X’s chess for four from 1283: four seasons, the last king wins.
• Three-player chess · Three armies on a hexagonal board: you against two bots.
• Four-player chess · Four armies on a cross-shaped board: in teams or all against all.
• Bughouse · Two boards, two teams: what you capture goes to your partner's hand.
• Eight-player chess · Eight armies on a board of 516 squares: all against all, in pairs or four against four.
• Verney’s four-handed chess · Verney’s game of 1881: two against two, mate both enemy kings.
• Verney’s eight-handed chess · Verney’s game for eight of 1884: four against four on 448 squares.