Really Bad Chess makes chess fun even if you’re really bad

When my daughter was little, we played &quot;turn around chess&quot;. She could, at any time, start her turn by turning the board around and taking over my position. I simply played my best chess (which isn&#x27;t all that great, frankly) and when she felt cornered she would turn the board around and get the opportunity to attack from a superior position while I would try to fight my way out.<p>We both had a lot of fun, and I didn&#x27;t have to do anything fake to make it fun for her.

Martin Gardner noted in one of his Mathematical Games columns that chess variants are great for evening the playing field between players of different skill levels. There are so many variants out there. I like how this one works well with a computer-run game (a physical Really Bad Chess would require lots of extra pieces).

My first college roommate* and I played chess a couple of times. He beat me within a few moves both games. After winning the 2nd game he said to me (in jest): &quot;That&#x27;s called the Fools Mate. You know why it works on you?&quot;<p>I haven&#x27;t play since. This Really Bad Chess looks like it could be fun though...<p>(*) Bob P.: If you read this, I miss ya buddy!

&gt; This gulf in skill and experience meant that the two couldn’t play together in a meaningful way; if they tried, Gage would get crushed, and the match wouldn’t be much fun. So he decided to fix the problem.<p>This problem has already been solved for hundreds of years. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chess_handicap" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chess_handicap</a>

There used to be a game online (that was popular in my childhood) called Kung Fu Chess[0] -<p>This removed the &quot;Turn Based&quot; application of Chess and instead made it real-time online - with only a period of 1-5 seconds of waiting to be able to move a piece again, depending on your settings.<p>The other &quot;novel&quot; feature was the introduction of a 4 player chessboard - it added to the strategy having three other opponents all looking to get the jump on you.<p>The game unfortunately shut down in 2008 - not sure where it ended up.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kung-Fu_Chess" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kung-Fu_Chess</a>

Anti-chess is fun.<p>1. You win if you get rid of all your pieces<p>2. The king is just any other piece. No castling, no check&#x2F;checkmate. A pawn can promote to king.<p>3. If you can capture you must capture. You can only decide if you have more than one capture option.

I like chess960 but I like to go further and randomize the positions of the hind row completely and do it differently. I havent tried varying the composition of the pieces or messing with the pawns, but once I started learning opening books plain ordinary chess became depressing for me.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chess960" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chess960</a> - by Bobby Fischer

I&#x27;d be interested to see how the poster in this article compares to the same poster but with a QR code instead of a tag to tear off.

This looks like such fun, I wish there was a website I could play against others on instead of an iOS app.<p>The idea feels fresh, challenging, curious. It has me thinking about other ways to add variety to old games, similar to the flood of creativity board games have experienced the past couple decades.

Wikipedia: List of chess variants<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_chess_variants" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_chess_variants</a>

usually when I want to play someone at about my skill level I go to one of any number of free chess servers where there are literally hundreds or even thousands of players of nearly every playing level. And if I want to play a game where the pieces are shuffled I play fischer random on said server. But I guess if you&#x27;re clueless about chess but know how to write an app this is what you end up with.

They’re advertising an URL that shows an “Download iOS app” button. This is so dumb, I will gladly take all your down-votes. What were they thinking?!<p>P.S. Progressive Web Apps.