Hexagonal chess is a group of chess variants played on boards composed of hexagon cells. The best known is Gliński's variant, played on a symmetric 91-cell hexagonal board. Since each hexagonal cell not on a board edge has six neighbor cells, there is generally increased mobility for pieces (that cannot move diagonally) compared to a standard orthogonal chessboard. For example, a rook on a hexboard usually has six natural directions for movement instead of four in the standard 8×8 board. Three colours are typically used on a hexboard so that no two neighboring cells are the same colour, and a colour-restricted game piece such as the orthodox chess bishop usually comes in sets of three per player in order to maintain the game's balance. Many different shapes and sizes of hexagon-based boards are used as variants. The nature of the game is also affected by the 30° orientation of the board's cells; the board can be horizontally oriented (Wellisch's, de Vasa's, Brusky's) or vertically oriented (Gliński's, Shafran's, McCooey's). When the sides of hexagonal cells face the players, pawns typically have one straightforward move direction. If a variant's gameboard has cell vertices facing the players, pawns typically have two oblique-forward move directions. The possibility of a hexagon-based board with three-fold rotational symmetry has also resulted in a number of three-player variants. Because the six edges and six vertices of regular hexagons are equally spaced, directions can be referenced analogously to the 12 cardinal directions of a clock face. For example, on a board made of horizontally aligned hexagons, the forward and backward directions can be referred to as the "12 o'clock" and "6 o'clock" directions. The first applications of chess on hexagonal boards probably occurred mid-19th century, but two early examples did not include checkmate as the winning objective. More chess-like games for hexagon-based boards started appearing regularly at the beginning of the 20th century. Hexagon-celled gameboards have grown in use for strategy games generally; for example, they are popularly used in modern wargaming.
Gliński's hexagonal chess Gliński's hexagonal chess, invented by Władysław Gliński in 1936 and first launched in Britain in 1949, is "probably the most widely played of the hexagonal chess games". The game was popular in Eastern Europe, especially in Gliński's native Poland. At one point there were more than half a million players, and more than 130,000 board sets were sold. Gliński's book Rules of Hexagonal Chess was published in 1973.
Rules The rules are the same as those of orthodox chess except as follows: The game is played on a vertically oriented regular hexagonal board with sides 6 cells long, which has 91 hex cells having three colours (light, dark, and mid-tone), with the middle cell (or "hex") usually mid-tone. The usual set of chess pieces is increased by one bishop and one pawn. The board has 11 files, marked by letters a–l (letter j is not used), and 11 numbered ranks (which bend 60° at file f). Ranks 1–6 each contain 11 cells, rank 7 (filled with black pawns in the initial setup) has 9 cells, rank 8 has 7, and so on. Rank 11 contains exactly one cell: f11.
The moves of the pieces are as follows:
The rook may move any number of cells orthogonally (i.e. through cell edges). The bishop may move any number of cells diagonally (i.e. through cell vertices). The queen may move any number of cells orthogonally or diagonally. The king may move one cell orthogonally or diagonally. There is no castling. The knight may move two cells orthogonally in one direction and then one cell orthogonally at a 60° angle, jumping over intervening pieces. Equivalently, the knight may move to any nearest cell not on an orthogonal or diagonal line on which it stands. The pawn may move one vacant cell vertically forward. If it stands on its starting cell or on the starting cell of any other pawn of its colour, then it is also allowed to move two vacant cells vertically forward. It may capture one cell orthogonally forward at a 60° angle to the vertical, including capturing en passant. It is promoted when it reaches the end of any file. In the pawn diagram, if the pawn on e4 were to capture a black piece on f5, then the pawn would retain the option to move to f7. If the black pawn on c7 in the diagram moves to c5 in a single move, the white pawn on b5 can capture it en passant: bxc6. Stalemate is not a draw in Gliński's chess, but it is still counted as less than checkmate: in tournament games, the player who delivers stalemate earns 3⁄4 point, and the stalemated player (the player without a legal move) receives 1⁄4 point. A numeric (or international) notation exists. Every detail is exactly as in ICCF numeric notation except that there is no castling.
Observations Unlike in orthodox chess, a king and two knights can mate a king. A knight can triangulate. A player's three bishops, confined to different colours, can never defend each other. In the initial setup, the white pawn on f5 cannot make a double step to f7, which is occupied by a black pawn; however, the double-step move could be possible later if f7 becomes empty. There is a Fool's mate consisting of the following moves in algebraic notation: 1.Qe1c3 Qe10c6 2.b1b2 b7b6 3.Bf3b1 e7e6? 4.Qc3xBf9#.
Timeline
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