Four-player chess Four-player chess Four-player chess (also known as Four-handed, Four-man, or Four-way chess) is a family of chess variants typically played with four people. A special board made of standard 8×8 squares with an additional 3 rows of 8 cells extending from each side is common. Four sets of differently colored pieces are needed to play these variants. Four-player chess follows the same basic rules as regular chess. There are many different rule variations; most variants, however, share the same board and similar piece setup. Gameplay can be in teams, but it can also be a free-for-all, with each player out
Courier chess the standard chessboard in place of the old alfil and gave the queen the combined powers of the courier and the rook. This game was so much more exciting than medieval chess that it soon drove the older game off the market. Other improvements were tried out. One was an optional double first step for the pawns. This was at first restricted to the king's, queen's, and rooks' pawns, and then gradually extended to the others. In the early sixteenth century Lucas van Leyden, in the Netherlands, painted a picture called "The Chess Players" in which a woman appears to