Atomic Chess

Home * Games * Atomic Chess

Atomic Chess, a chess variant which applies the standard rules of chess, but capturing a piece leads to an explosion with the effect that, in addition to the captured piece, the capturing piece and all non-pawns on neighboring squares are removed from the board. For en passant, the center of the explosion is at the target square behind the pawn being captured. Captures that result in the explosion of the own king are illegal, and therefore a king can never capture any other piece, and it is possible to move the kings next to each other.

=Atomic Check= In most variations of atomic chess, players must respond to being checked in a similar way they would in traditional chess - by moving the king out of check, blocking the check, or removing the checking piece - but an exception exists when the checked player can win the game by exploding the checking player's king. The variant of atomic chess played at Internet Chess Club is one that does not enforce check at all, where leaving the own king to be captured directly in the next move is legal.

=Engines=
 * Atomystica
 * Pulsar
 * PyChess

=Publications=
 * Sacha Droste, Johannes Fürnkranz (2008). Learning of Piece Values for Chess Variants. Technical Report TUD–KE–2008-07, Knowledge Engineering Group, TU Darmstadt, pdf
 * Sacha Droste, Johannes Fürnkranz (2008). Learning the Piece Values for three Chess Variants. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4

=Forum Posts=
 * Atomic Chess by Stefan Roehrich, Winboard Forum, March 30, 2001
 * winboard and variant engines by shaxmatist, Winboard Forum, August 18, 2012
 * UCI variants support by Balint Pfliegel, CCC, December 15, 2013

=External Links=
 * Atomic chess from Wikipedia
 * Atomic Chess by Nick Long
 * Atomic Rooster - Devil's Answer, Top of The Pops, July 1971, YouTube Video
 * Vincent Crane, Paul Hammond, John Du Cann

=References=

Up one Level