Ever feel like winning is too much work? Then try losing! In Loser's chess you must try to get checkmated, or else lose all of your pieces! How hard is that? Try it and see.
This is less popular, but interesting, variant of Suicide.
1. Game rules
The game is played with standard chess pieces, starting from standard chess initial position. The pieces move and capture as in standard chess. Castling is allowed.
The aim of the game is being checkmated (in standard chess sense), or losing all the pieces (except the king).
The following rules are in place:
- you are not allowed to put own king under the check,
- if your king is under the check, you must react; if it is possible - by taking the opponent piece, if not - in any way you like,
- if you have legal capture, you must make it; if many captures are possible, you can choose which one to make.
The rules are applied in order given above (so it is more important to escape from check, than to capture).
A draw is by agreement, not by 3-fold repetition or the 50 moves rule.
Stalemate is a win for the stalemated player.
2. Game hints
While the game shares many concepts with Suicide, it is noticeably different. Your king will remain alive and active until the very end of the game! King sacrifice is not possible, and while calculating the cleanup maneouvres one must consider any checks happening in the process.
Beware of locked up pawns, loosing them can be untrivial task.
Natural way to win is to loose all the pieces (except king), forcing mate is very difficult.
3. Example games
are welcome