Displacement chess

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Displacement chess is a family of chess variants, in which a few pieces are transposed in the initial standard chess position. The main goal of these variants is to negate players' knowledge of standard chess openings. The following variations were tried in master or grandmaster tournaments:

• White's king and queen are transposed. This arrangement was tried in a correspondence tournament in 1935 with the participation of Keres, a chess grandmaster.

• Queen's knight is transposed with king's bishop, so that both bishops are on the queen side and both knights are on the king's side, as shown in the diagram at right. This variant is sometimes called Mongredian, after a tournament in Mongredian in 1868, in which several strong British chess players took part, including Blackburne. According to Pritchard, this is one of the most popular forms of displacement chess.

• The knights and bishops are transposed.

• The rooks and bishops are transposed. This array was suggested by Capablanca after his match with Lasker, but did not become popular.

[edit] References

• D.B. Pritchard (1994). The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (p.88). ISBN 0-9524142-0-1.

[edit] External links

• Blackburne - Potter - displacement chess game (knights and bishops are transposed) with comments by Wilhelm Steinitz.