27th SEA Games (chess) begins

Chess at the 27th SEA games officially begins today. Five forms of chess are played - International, Traditional, Transfer, Chess960 and ASEAN chess. International chess is the game as we know it.  

Traditional is a form of Myanmar chess where players begin by placing their pieces behind their pawns. Below is an image of the start of a game of Myanmar chess. Knights and rooks behave the same way as International Chess. The General is a queen but limited to only one square diagonally. The elephant moves like the general with the additional possibility of one step forward. Pawns move and captures just like in International.
















ASEAN chess is a derivative of Myanmar and Thai chess. The pawns starts on the third rank. The queen and bishop moves differently. Basically the queen can only move one square diagonally making it the weakest piece. The bishop moves like a queen with the addition of the square directly in front of it.

Chess960 was the brain-child of the late Bobby Fischer who felt that opening theory was taking too much importance in the game. He proposed that the pieces be randomly re-arranged at the beginning of the game giving rise to the name Chess960 since there are 960 possible ways the pieces can be arranged.

Transfer chess is derived from the game of bughouse. The most important difference in Transfer is that dropping a piece which results in the mate of the opponent's king is not allowed.

Our chances of medals in International chess is quite low. However in the other forms of chess which are just as new to the other participating countries, our chances of medalling is just as good as anyone else.

Today's events are ASEAN and Traditional chess so we will know very soon whether I am right.