Extinction Chess

Chess is very popular on the internet. SchemingMind has a website where people from all over the world play challenges, with a 160 player chess dropout tournament having recently started. As technology has advanced, chess variants have become popular at the Scheming Mind Website. Your pieces can jump to another board in Alice chess, make attacks in the dark in Sun Tzu chess or switch colors in Benedict’s chess.

This story details a game of Extinction chess. The rules are very much like regular chess, but with one major distinction – if you lose all of any type of piece, you lose the game. That means that you cannot have both bishops taken, or all eight pawns, or the king or queen. So checkmates must be delivered from afar, and some odd combinations of play result.

In this game – white is able to queen a pawn while leaving his initial queen open to attack. Thus the loss of a queen is not an extinction of white queens

White: lemme howdt
Black: Altair
Itsyourturn Extinction Chess Ladder Game Sept 2005

1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. e4 e5 4. Qa4 Nc6 5. d5 Bb4 6. Nd2 c3 7. bxc3 Bxc3 8. dxc6 Bxa1 9. cxb7 Bd7 10. bxa8=Q Qxa8 11. Qc4 Qb7 12. Nb3 Bd4 13. Nxd4 exd4 14. Qxd4 Qxe4 15. Qxe4

White responded to the queen pawn opening response 1. d4 d5 with the very questionable 2. c4, offering a temporary pawn for superior development, but opening the king side to attack. After 2... dxc4, the response of 3. e4 e5 is to be expected from both players – Rather than taking the pawn back with the bishop, 4. Qa4 makes for an aggressive assault.

The knight block 4... Nc6 may have been better placed at d7, but then the game wouldn’t have been quite so wild. 5. d5 takes advantage of the pinned piece, but the response of 5... Bb4 directly attacks the king position via the open bishop file. The knight block at 6. Nd2 is followed by a counter-attack 6... c3. This is the key position for the game – all the mayhem is set-up by the aggressive posture of both players, with no defence in either game-plan.

The first pawn exchange 7. bxc3 Bxc3 leaves the bishop attacking the white rook. While most folks might protect the rook, white found the winning line with 8. dxc6. The knight was pinned, but removing it before protecting the rook puts on the squeeze after black gobbles the bait. 8... Bxa1 9. cxb7 gives a discovered attack on the black king, so the block is virtually forced and the question is with which piece. With 9... Bd7, the white queen should be forced to retreat.

10. bxa8=Q places black in a true dilemma – the second queen threatens to take queen, so the bishop on the first queen really cannot take – 10... Qxa8 is forced and 11. Qc4 allows white to scamper away up a knight for a pawn. 11... Qb7 takes up floor space while 12. Nb3 Bd4 sets up for an exchange of pieces on the only terms that keeps black from losing the bishop outright.

After 13. Nxd4 exd4 14. Qxd4, the rook in the corner is trapped once the remaining bishop moves away from the extinction attack. 14... Qxe4 15. Qxe4.

If you would like to try your hand at extinction chess – try http://www.schemingmind.com.