A big hello to everyone in the chess community and excuse my absence, after the end of the Hivechess season I think we all take a few weeks off, that doesn't mean I haven't played some games, in fact I've been playing quite a lot of antichess.
I explained it in a post before this one but antichess is a chess variant that I have loved because of how bizarre the games can be, the rules are simple, whoever runs out of pieces or moves wins, and this concept leads to all sorts of games.
If you are wondering about the extra rules, every time a piece can capture another piece, it must do so and there is no possibility to make another move, this leads to chain situations where by a single move we can lose the game.
But what happens if we have the possibility of capturing several pieces?
That's where it gets interesting and chaotic.
In this position it is the turn of the black pieces and they have different captures available that they can make, in these cases we can play one of these moves as long as it is the capture of a piece, this makes Antichess interesting as a race to see who leaves who in a compromising position where they have a row or a series of captures to make.
And that theme is constant when we talk about games against some good opponents, take this game as an example.
There comes a time when I have the possibility to make a series of moves so that the opponent has no chance but to lose, this happens often especially when some experienced players play against some low rated players, it is something that happened to me very often when I started and even still happens today in some games.
A mistake simply ends the game in a forced way, so always be aware of certain risky moves.
Also believe it or not there are a couple of well known openings in this variation, and they are a bunch of forced moves from start to finish where if we don't make the right move again the game ends forcibly, I have played several of these positions like the one above and they are studied quite a lot from a certain rating level onwards.
I have played several of these positions like the one above and they are well studied from a certain rating level onwards. It gives a lot of room for strategy the extra time we have with our pieces, as well as moves that seem counter intuitive and that if they were seen in a basic chess tournament everyone would surely faint, the moves involving the king and pawns are perhaps the most presented in the games, being very useful to generate chains where the opponent has to capture all over the board.
the games are quite short too, they are like a candy that we can eat quickly and go on with our life, the games can reach a certain degree of complexity but what is really difficult is to assimilate that we have to lose all our pieces in order to win.