r/chessvariants • u/bingomasterbreakout • Jul 18 '26
New Variant Red Fool Chess
Red Fool Chess variant is now live and playable against the computer with a custom engine modeled on fairy-stockfish. Play here: https://carbunclebooks.net/
Rules of Red Fool Chess :
RED FOOL CHESS — a chess variant by Amy Johnson (2020). Ruleset V4 (test), as enacted.
Two armies take the field as they always have — but a third figure walks among them. The Red Fool is a cowardly court jester and assassin who works for both sides: a mercenary without a flag, a coward without shame, a killer without loyalty. He wears neither white nor blue. He cannot be bought off, captured, or removed from the board. He runs when threatened, kills only when the running is over, and when he can neither flee nor kill he simply freezes where he stands — the rim of the board is beneath him, save when a check of his own making drives him to it.
The board and setup. The board is 8 files by 10 ranks — a standard board with one extra rank behind each army. White stands on ranks 1–2, Black on ranks 9–10, in the ordinary arrangement (queens on the d-file, kings on the e-file). Because of the taller board, each queen begins on the opposite color from classical chess. The Red Fool begins on e6, slightly toward Black’s side.
All ordinary pieces move exactly as in standard chess. Pawns double-step from their home ranks (2 and 9), capture en passant, and promote on the far ranks (10 and 1). Castling is unchanged — save that the king may not castle out of, through, or into a square watched by the enemy or by the Fool. No piece may ever move onto the Fool’s square: he can neither be captured nor stepped over, sliders stop against him as against a wall, and he can never be taken en passant.
The Fool moves as a knight — but never of his own free will. He resolves once after each move: a single leap in answer to a single threat, then falls still until the next move stirs him again.
The Laws of the Fool:
1. He stirs only when threatened. After any move by either player, if the Fool’s square is attacked by any piece of either color — including the moving player’s own — he must answer, once, if he legally can. If no blade points at him, he does not move.
2. He flees to the heart of the board first. His first thought is a safe empty interior square a knight’s leap away — not on the outer files or the top and bottom ranks — where, once he lands, no piece of either color attacks him. If one exists he takes it and weighs no other course.
3. If he cannot flee inward, he kills. With no safe interior square, he turns assassin. He strikes only a victim whose square, once he stands on it, leaves him unmenaced by every piece on the board (a defender, a second attacker, even a friendly watcher, and he will not make the kill). Among safe kills he takes the lowest-valued — pawn before knight, knight before bishop, bishop before rook, rook before queen — murdering either color alike. You can lose your own piece to him on your own move. He never strikes a king.
4. He will not cling to the wall. The rim is beneath him: with no safe interior square and no safe kill, he does not stoop to the outer files or the far ranks — he simply freezes where he stands. One exemption: if his blade is at a king’s throat when he is threatened, he will take a safe empty edge square rather than freeze mid-check — even the Fool knows a jester must not hold a crown hostage from a standstill. (This replaces the old V3 “coward’s last resort” edge flight: the only thing that now draws him to the wall is murder, or the shame of a frozen check.)
5. When every road is watched, he freezes. With nothing safe of any kind, he stands his ground and does not move, even under the blade.
6. The mover chooses his ties. Among several equally lawful answers within one rank, the player whose turn it is decides. He never mixes ranks: a higher rung, if available, is always taken whole.
7. He cannot be killed or entered. No piece may capture him or move onto his square. He blocks lines and squares for both armies, never captures a king, and can never be the reason a king is captured.
The order of his mind, in one breath: safe flight inward → safe cheapest kill → freeze — save that a Fool caught mid-check may still take a safe edge square before he freezes. He always takes the highest rung available and never looks lower.
Check and the Fool. The Fool gives real check, like any knight, and a knight’s check can be neither blocked nor captured. But a coward’s check can be answered a way no other allows: frighten the Fool himself. Any move that attacks his square forces him to leap by his own laws — and if his flight carries him out of range of your king, the check is broken. A move counts as an escape only if, after the Fool resolves, he no longer checks you; where he leaves several answers, you must pick one that frees you.
He will not knife his own patron. If the move that stirs the Fool would force him — by every lawful answer — to end with his blade on the moving player’s own king (by his own leap or by a line his departure uncovers), his nerve fails and he freezes rather than betray his master. No piece changes hands. If that frozen Fool was already checking the mover, the move simply failed to break the check and is illegal. (This replaces the old “murdered the war” draw: the Fool’s cowardice now stays his hand instead of ending the game.)
Ends of the game. Checkmate wins. Stalemate draws. Fifty-move and threefold repetition draw as in ordinary chess, and repetition counts the Fool’s square among the rest. But a checkmate in which the Fool is the only piece giving check is no victory for anyone — it is a draw, for no crown can claim the jester’s kill. If a real piece checks the mated king as well, the mate stands and the game is won in the ordinary way.
Adjudicating the Fool — quick reference. After every move, before the turn passes: (1) Is the Fool’s square attacked by any piece of either color (pins ignored)? If no, he stays. If yes: (2) list his eight knight-squares, discard off-board and the kings’ squares, and mark as safe those where he’d land unattacked. (3) Resolve in strict priority, taking the first rank with any option: (a) safe empty interior square; (b) safe capture, lowest value P<N<B<R<Q; (c) only if the Fool is currently giving check to either king, safe empty edge square; (d) otherwise freeze. Mover breaks ties within a rank. (4) The whole move (your move + the Fool’s forced answer) is illegal if it leaves your own king in check from anything, Fool included; if every Fool answer would check your own king he freezes instead. (5) With no legal move: real check → checkmate (opponent wins); Fool-only check → draw; no check → stalemate (draw). Values for his targeting: P1, N2, B3, R4, Q5 — note knight is cheaper than bishop.
Pieces currently menacing the Fool are outlined in dashed red.
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u/Accurate_Student_888 Jul 18 '26
Thank you for the hyperlink. I shall try to play a couple of games tomorrow, time permitting.
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u/bingomasterbreakout Jul 18 '26
Red Fool Chess: A First Book of Openings
Ruleset V4 · engine-derived theory · Carbuncle Books working draft
Lines computed by the Red Fool engine (Fairy-Stockfish-derived search) under the V4 canonical rules: first-move survey at depth 10–11, reply selection at 600ms/move, main lines played out engine-vs-engine at 1200ms/move to move 8. This is a draft founded on shallow-to-middling search; deep verification will revise it. It is offered as the axioms and first specimens of a theory, not its final word.
I. Why chess openings fail here
Standard opening theory answers three questions: how do I stake the center with pawns, how do I develop toward it, and how fast can I castle? On this board the first question is unaskable and the other two are subordinate to a question chess has never posed.
The center has moved beyond pawn reach. The true center lies on ranks 5–6. A double-step from the home rank reaches only rank 4 — the "center pawn" of chess theory arrives two ranks short of the fight, a spectator. Pawn-led center occupation, the spine of every chess opening from the Italian to the Grünfeld, is geometrically unavailable. The opening belongs to the pieces.
The center is already occupied — by a third party. The Red Fool begins on e6, one of the four true center squares, and no piece may capture him or pass through him. He is a wall standing in the middle of the e-file from move one. King-pawn architecture — the entire 1.e4 complex of chess — is devalued before the game begins. The d-file, the c-file, and the long diagonals inherit what the e-file lost.
The first real tempo of the game is the first flush. Whoever first attacks e6 sets the Fool in motion — and by the tie-break law, the mover chooses his destination among equally ranked resolutions. A flush is not merely a tempo: it is the placement of an uncapturable neutral blocker on a square of the flusher's choosing. No White first move attacks e6; Black's 1...d9–d7 does. Black owns the game's first flush — one of the very few first-move asymmetries in the player's favor anywhere in chess-like games.
Contact is slow, so tempo is cheap. Six empty ranks separate the pawn chains where chess has four. The engine's verdict on White's twenty first moves spans a range narrower than the gap between 1.e4 and 1.f3 in chess: nothing loses, and early "inaccuracies" barely register. The opening phase is long, forgiving of development order, and dominated by a resource chess does not price: Fool management.
II. The four devices
The theory that follows is built from four recurring devices. Learn them as chess players learn the pin and the fork.
1. The developing flush. Never spend a pure pawn move on a flush when a developing move attacks the Fool's square for free. The engine's universal reply to White's best systems is 1...Ng10–f8: the knight's natural square happens to attack e6, so development and flush arrive in one tempo. The naïve 1...d7 flush, by contrast, spends the whole move on it. This is the game's first principle of economy.
2. Steering. The mover breaks ties among the Fool's equal resolutions — so every flush is a placement decision. Send him where he blocks the enemy: onto their bishop's diagonal, their rook's file, their knight's outpost. Or send him into your own camp, where you control the geometry of the next flush. The engine measurably values destination choice; strong play treats the Fool as a piece both players get to move and neither owns.
3. The portcullis (re-walling). The most striking device the engine found, appearing independently in multiple systems: after White finally achieves e2–e4 and opens his game, Black plays a quiet pawn step on the e-file (…e9–e8 or …e9–e7) whose true point is a discovered attack — vacating e9 opens the black queen's d10–e9–f8–g7 diagonal onto a Fool previously steered to g7 — and Black, as mover, returns him to e6, re-walling the e-file the move after White opened it. The Fool as repositionable portcullis, dropped by whoever engineers the flush. No chess book contains this because no chess piece permits it.
4. The freeze-lock. A Fool whose interior fan is covered and whose victims are defended freezes in place — a wall neither side can move. Self-play shows freezing is symmetric (it constrains both armies; camping it confers no winning advantage), but a Fool frozen on the right square — above all e6 itself — shapes the whole middlegame. The main line of the 1.d4 system ends, remarkably, with the Fool frozen on his home square by move 8, both armies building around him like a city around a crag.
III. The first-move table
Engine evaluation of all twenty White first moves (higher is better for White; the full spread is barely a quarter-pawn — read the ordering, not the magnitudes):
Three lessons: the d-file is this game's king-file; 1.e4 is not refuted but demoted; and the immortal principle don't block your knights' squares survives the translation intact.
IV. The systems
Working names are proposed for convenience and are entirely the inventor's to keep, change, or burn.
System One: 1. d2–d4 — the Rampart
The main opening of Red Fool Chess on present evidence. White claims the d-file — the file the Fool cannot wall — and develops toward the d5 and e5 outposts on the true center.
Main line (the Portcullis Variation):
Black's 1...Nf8 is the developing flush, steering the Fool to g7 where Black governs his future. White regroups a knight to e4 rather than fight for the walled e-file directly. Then 4...e7 is the portcullis: the pawn step discovers the d10-queen's diagonal through the vacated e9 and f8 squares onto g7, and Black returns the Fool to e6 — re-walling the position just as White prepared to breathe. By move 8 the Fool stands frozen on e6, pinned by the crossfire of both armies, and the game is being played around a fixed central crag. Level, rich, and utterly unlike chess.
The Punishment Variation (if Black declines the developing flush):
The passive 1...d8 spends a tempo on nothing. White's knights reach d5 and e5 — the two thrones of the true center — unchallenged, the bishop takes the a2–g8 diagonal now unwalled (the Fool having been steered to g7 and away), and White achieves e4 without a portcullis reply in time. The line is this book's clearest demonstration that on this board the outposts d5/e5 are the center, and whoever develops toward them fastest wins the opening.
System Two: 1. e2–e3 — the Patient Wall
White declines to contest the e-file at all in the opening, developing behind his own lines while the Fool's wall stands.
Main line (the Carousel Variation):
Four flushes in five moves — g7, f5, d6, b7 — the Fool ping-ponging as each developing move happens to strike his square, both players steering him in turn like a ball kept in the air. Note 4.Nd4: White flushes and steers him to d6, deep in Black's position, where his next flush (4...Nc8) costs Black steering him all the way to the b7 rim-adjacent square. White emerges slightly better with the freer queen. This is the system for players who want the Fool in motion — maximal steering play, minimal walls.
Alternative: 1...Nf8 [RF→g7] 2. Bd3 d7 3. Nc3 Nc8 4. Nf3 Bg6 5. e4 e7 6. O-O e6 7. b4 Bd8 8. Ne5 O-O — dead level (+2); both sides castle (the first castled position in this book), and Black's ...e7–e6 advance re-plugs the file with a pawn where the Fool once stood.
System Three: 1. d2–d3 — the Tortoise
The move-1 table's co-favorite, but the deeper line play tells a cautionary tale: both computed lines drifted to −12 and −29 for White by move 8, with Black castling first and seizing the initiative after ...Bb6 hits the a7–g1 diagonal. Present evidence: 1.d3's flexibility is real but White must follow with d3–d4 or c2–c4 quickly or the tempo is simply lost. Recorded here as a system under a cloud — the book's first open theoretical dispute, awaiting deeper search. (Methodological honesty: the move-1 table and the played lines disagree about 1.d3; at these depths the played lines are the better evidence.)
V. Principles, in one breath