Chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops
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Los Alamos chess setup
Los Alamos chess (or anti-clerical chess[1]) is a chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory by Paul Stein and Mark Wells for the MANIAC I computer[2] in 1956. The reduction of the board size and the number of pieces from standard chess was due to the very limited capacity of computers at the time.
Game rules
Paul Stein and Nicholas Metropolis play Los Alamos chess against the MANIAC. The computer still needed about 20 minutes between moves.
The starting position is illustrated. All rules are as in chess except:
There is no pawn double-step move, nor is there the en passant capture;
The computer played three games. The first it played against itself. The second one was against a strong human player, who played without a queen. The human player won. In the third game, MANIAC I played against a laboratory assistant who had been taught the rules of chess in the preceding week specifically for the game. The computer won, marking the first time that a computer had beaten a human player in a chess-like game.[2][3]
^ abcPritchard, D. B. (1994). "Los Alamos Chess". The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. Games & Puzzles Publications. pp. 175–76. ISBN0-9524142-0-1.
^Pritchard, D. B. (2007). "Los Alamos Chess". In Beasley, John (ed.). The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. John Beasley. p. 112. ISBN978-0-9555168-0-1.
