Verney’s eight-handed chess

How Verney’s eight-handed chess works

George Verney’s eight-handed chess of 1884: two Yellow and two White armies against two Red and two Black on a cross-shaped board of 448 squares.

Board and turns

The board is a centre of 16 by 16 squares with an arm three squares deep on each side, 448 squares in all, and all eight queens stand on light squares. Two armies of one colour sit side by side on each side. Yellow on the right moves first, then Yellow on the left, then the two Reds, the two Whites and the two Blacks, clockwise round the board: on every side the player on the right moves first. Pieces move as in ordinary chess, but there is no castling.

Partners

The four players opposite each other are partners: the two Yellows and the two Whites against the two Reds and the two Blacks. So you have three partners, your neighbour and the two across. You cannot capture their pieces, and they never attack your king. No move may expose any partner’s king to a new check, just as no move may expose your own. Bots play the others unless people at this device do.

Pawns

A pawn moves one square at a time, never two, so there is no en passant. It may leap over a partner’s pawn straight ahead onto the empty square beyond. On the back rank of the partners across it turns and walks back towards you, capturing in that direction; back on its starting rank it turns forward again. It becomes a queen only on an enemy’s back rank, which it can reach only by capturing.

A mated player

A checkmated player stays on the board but cannot move and misses every turn. The army’s pieces are inert: they neither attack nor defend, cannot be captured and only block their squares, so enemy pieces may pass between them and even stand in their range. When the mate no longer holds, because a piece that held it was captured or moved away, the army comes back to life and plays again in its turn. Its pieces may then be captured at once.

Winning and draws

A team wins when all four enemy kings are checkmated at the same time. A player who cannot move passes; if no player of a team can move (each mated or stalemated), the game is drawn. The same position three times, fifty moves of every player without a capture or a pawn move, and too little material (no rook or queen, and at most one bishop or knight per team) are draws too.

The story

England · 1884, printed in Verney’s Chess Eccentricities, 1885

When and where

George Hope Verney, the English officer who made four-handed chess popular in Britain, invented chess for eight in 1884. He printed it in his book Chess Eccentricities of 1885, on one page and a folding plate.

How it changed

He doubled his four-handed board: a centre of 16 by 16 squares with an arm three squares deep on each side, 448 squares and 128 men. Two armies of one colour sit side by side on every side; the four players opposite each other are partners, and all the laws of his four-handed game apply.

Today

No game of it is known, and David Pritchard called it “an unlikely assembly”. This app plays it as Verney printed it, the player on the right of each side moving first.

Did you know?

Verney asked for eight sets of men “sufficiently unlike each other to avoid confusion”, though his plate names only four colours.

Sources: G. H. Verney, Chess Eccentricities (1885), p. 185 · D. B. Pritchard, The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (2007)

More games

Chess and variants

• Chess · Classic chess, or Chess960 with a shuffled back rank.
• Chess960 · Fischer random chess: the back rank starts in one of 960 setups.
• Antichess · Losing chess: give away all your pieces, captures are compulsory.
• 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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• Horde · 36 white pawns storm a full black army.
• Dunsany’s chess · Lord Dunsany’s game of 1942: 32 pawns against a full army.
• Los Alamos chess · Chess on 6 × 6 without bishops, the first game a computer played (1956).
• Duck chess · After every move you move the duck, which blocks everyone. No check.
• Marseillais chess · Two moves a turn, with one piece or two; White starts with one.
• 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.
• Old Raumschach · Maack’s cube as played before 1919: five pawns above the pieces.
• Friendly Chess · Nothing is captured: pieces unite and set off chain reactions.
• 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.
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Big chess

• Complete chess · The Arabic chess of the 9th century on 10 × 10, with two dabbābas a side.
• Courier chess · Medieval Germany’s chess on a 12 × 8 board, with the courier, the man and the schleich.
• Grande Acedrex · Alfonso X’s great chess on a 12 × 12 board, with lions, giraffes and a roc.
• 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.
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• 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.