Internet rapid chess tends to degenerate into wood-chopping. Chess is too deep to be really intellectually rewarding in an Internet chess context. Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) has the advantage that pawns cannot be blocked. It is always lively, and therefore suitable for Internet rapid chess. I am suggesting that we introduce an aspect of Xiangqi into Internet chess, in order to make it more attractive as an Internet game.

I propose the following rule change suitable for rapid chess. If positioned on a knight- or a rook file a pawn can jump like a knight to an empty square, east-north-east or west-north-west. A condition is that the pawn is blocked by an enemy pawn. Compared with standard chess, this means that a flank pawn is endowed with an extra jump move. Hence the flanks cannot easily be blocked, something which greatly enhances attacking play.

There are three different variants of dynamic pawns. The pawn is endowed with the extra jump move to an empty square (1) if blocked anywhere on the file (2) if blocked on the 4th rank onwards (3) if blocked on the enemy side.



The flank pawn can make the oblique jump move to an empty square if blocked. In an alternative variant the pawn can only make this jump move if blocked on the enemy side.

More information and a Zillions program is here:
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/dynamicchess.htm

M. Winther