Week 6

 Today I played another variant of chess. The variant was called Atomic. In Atomic, when you capture a piece, along with the piece you capture, the piece you used to capture and the pieces adjacent to the captured piece (except for pawns) "explode" and are removed from the game. Kings can't capture any pieces. A player can ignore a check if they can remove the opponent's king from the game. A king can go on a square next to the opponent's king. The player who removes the opponent's king from the game wins.

Noticeable was the effect the game rules had on the symbolic meaning of the king piece. The king piece was now not just the weakest piece on the board, but the piece that couldn't do anything at all. However, despite not being able to do anything at all, the king was safe from being attacked by the opponent's king.

 The rule saying that the capturing piece and all adjacent pieces to a captured piece explode (except for pawns) makes each move more risky because it entails losing the piece one is using to capture. It is also confers some advantage, because one can capture many pieces at once. The rule also changes the importance of pieces. Pawns are somewhat more important because they are safe from being exploded as a result of being adjacent to a captured piece. Pieces high in importance like the queen and the rook aren't as important because they explode once they do a capture.

There is also an option on www.chess.com to customize your own chess game. The website gives you various rules you can match and different boards you can choose to use. This week I plan to experiment with that. Last week I was wondering if that was possible, but didn't notice that there was an option to do that until today.