History of Consulchess
Consulchess and how it came about - a philosophical reflection
The old masters already had the idea of reforming traditional chess. Bobby Fischer, for example, wanted to introduce new variations and difficulties into the game by swapping the pieces at the player's first rank. This variant, initially called “Fischerrandom”, later became known as “Chess960” and is the only one that has ever been included as an appendix in the FIDE rules of chess. Even before, other chess geniuses like World Champions José Raúl Capablanca or Emanuel Lasker were annoyed back then about the many draws and would have liked to reform the classic game of chess with additional pieces.
In today's age of the Internet and chess computers, the limits of traditional chess have almost been reached. Many millions of games with their openings, middlegames and endgames have been archived and analyzed in databases. Thanks to digitalization, they can be accessed in seconds. The amount of chess knowledge, communicated by chess books and digital media has reached an almost incalculable level thanks to the participation of several generations of master players and chess computers. Despite the countless ways to play a game of chess, it is becoming increasingly difficult to win a game of chess with classic time control, especially between the strongest players in the world.
Consequently, there are now many versions of the game of chess. Board size and shape, many new pieces moving differently, new starting positions and even more than two players are known. Since “Star Trek” you can also play chess in three dimensions.
Hungarian-born Tibor Nagy, who has been living in Germany for a long time, had the idea of inventing a new chess piece years ago. He often wondered how this piece could be moved on the chessboard. There are already a number of chess versions with one or more new pieces, but somehow these variations had never really been able to inspire the chess world.
One day, however, Tibor watched a documentary on television that talked about military and the range of weapons. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration touched his mind: he invented a piece that moves in the same way as the queen, which has a shorter range but can jump over other pieces. This piece is a heavy piece that has approximately the same strength as a queen, but is stronger in close combat due to its jumping options. Now all that was left was to find a suitable name for this new contender. Names like Mandarin, Marshall, Sherif, General and Consul ran through his mind. After much consideration, he decided to give this piece the dignified name “Consul”. The naming was deliberately chosen because the consul was the highest official in the Roman Republic until late antiquity before the imperial era.
Consulchess deviates significantly less from traditional chess than other variants. The two consuls are placed between king and bishop and between queen and bishop in the starting position. The chessboard accordingly expands by two files to ten. The number of rows remains unchanged at eight. The new playing material for German-Hungarian chess (as Tibor initially named his new chess variant) consists of a 10x8 chess board with 80 fields and a total of 40 pieces: 20 pawns, 4 knights, 4 bishops, 4 rooks, 4 consuls, 2 queens and 2 kings. The consul moves like the queen, but with a smaller range up to a maximum of three squares. The consul is allowed to jump, not as “crooked” as the knight, but diagonally, horizontally and vertically within the limits of his reduced range. It may only jump over one or two pieces placed nearby without jumping over free squares.
The inventor Tibor Nagy had yet another sensational idea. For the first time since the invention of castling, king and rook can swap places on almost the entire first row. In Consulchess there're not only two, but 47 ways to castle. The other rules for castling remain the same. 21 different castlings are now possible for the king's side and 26 different castlings for the queen's side. This rule brings other very interesting variants into play.
Consulchess is a very successful extension to traditional chess. The probability of a draw is significantly lower! It's great fun to play! Anyone who knows the rules of chess will quickly find their way around this new version of chess and experience chess in a completely new way.