Antichess

Antichess uses the normal board and moves, but captures become compulsory. If any capture is available you must make one, though you choose which when several exist. The king loses its special status: it can be captured like any other piece, so there is no check, no checkmate and no castling, and a pawn may promote to a king as well as to the usual pieces.

You win by losing all of your pieces, or by having no legal move, which counts as a win for the player who is stalemated. That makes the game feel upside down. You want to give pieces away, and you try to force your opponent into capturing so that your pieces disappear and theirs stay on the board.

Antichess goes by other names too, including losing chess and suicide chess, and the details differ a little between versions. Online servers offer it as a casual variant, and it trains forcing play, because compulsory captures make many sequences easy to calculate. Players learn quickly that opening ideas from standard chess no longer apply. Confirm the exact rules before a game, since some versions treat stalemate or check differently.

Also worth reading is Atomic chess. Atomic chess is a variant in which every capture causes an explosion that removes the capturing piece and all non-pawn pieces on the squares around the captured piece.

A neighboring idea is Crazyhouse. Crazyhouse is a chess variant in which a captured piece changes sides and joins your reserve, and on any later turn you may drop it onto an empty square instead of moving.

A neighboring idea is King of the Hill. King of the Hill is a chess variant in which a player wins immediately by moving their king onto one of the four central squares, d4, d5, e4 or e5.

If "Antichess" is the format you play most, the improvement plans by rating band give a weekly routine for your rating range.

Related terms

• Chess variant

  A chess variant is a game played on a chessboard with pieces that move as in chess but with at least one changed rule, setup or goal, such as Chess960, Crazyhouse or Three-check.

• Crazyhouse

  Crazyhouse is a chess variant in which a captured piece changes sides and joins your reserve, and on any later turn you may drop it onto an empty square instead of moving.

• Atomic chess

  Atomic chess is a variant in which every capture causes an explosion that removes the capturing piece and all non-pawn pieces on the squares around the captured piece.

• King of the Hill

  King of the Hill is a chess variant in which a player wins immediately by moving their king onto one of the four central squares, d4, d5, e4 or e5.

• Capture

  A capture happens when a piece moves onto a square held by an enemy piece, which is removed from the board as part of the same move; the king can be attacked but is never captured.

• Stalemate

  Stalemate is a draw that occurs when the side on move has no legal move at all while its king is not attacked, so the game ends on the spot with half a point to each player.

Guides that go further

• Chess time control calculator

  See whether a base time and increment counts as bullet, blitz, rapid or classical.

• Average chess rating and a good chess rating

  What share of active Lichess players are rated above 800, 1200, 1500, 1800 or 2000, by time control.

• Chess ratings explained

  What a rating measures, how FIDE, Lichess, US Chess and chess.com compute theirs, and why the numbers differ.