A leaper captures by occupying the square on which an enemy piece sits. Piece names may vary this table uses each piece's most common name.Ī leaper is a piece that moves directly to a square a fixed distance away.

Simple pieces Leapers Names and moves of the leapers There are also compound pieces that combine the movement powers of two or more different pieces. Many of the simplest fairy chess pieces do not appear in the orthodox game, but they usually fall into one of three classes. This article uses common names for the pieces described whenever possible, but these names sometimes differ between circles associated with chess problems and circles associated with chess variants. Most are typically represented in diagrams by rotated versions of the icons for normal pieces, though there are a few exceptions that sometimes get their own icons: the equihopper, the knighted pieces ( princess, empress, and amazon), and a few of the basic leapers (e.g. The names of fairy pieces are not standardised, and most do not have standard symbols associated with them. Pieces that move differently from today's standard rules are called 'variant' or 'fairy' chess pieces.

As those who created modern chess did in the 15th century, modern chess enthusiasts still often create their own variations of the rules and the way the pieces move. Due to the piece's change in movement, the ferz and the alfil are now considered non-standard chess pieces. The queen is still called ferz in Russian and Ukrainian and the bishop is still called alfil (from al fil, with the article) in Spanish. In the old Muslim manuscripts those two pieces were referred as a ferz (meaning advisor) and fil (meaning elephant). The change of rules occurred in Spain in the end of the 15th century when the queen and the bishop were given the moves they have today. For example, the queen was once able to move only a single square diagonally, while the bishop could jump two squares diagonally. The game was then transmitted to the Arabs, then to the Europeans, and for several centuries, it was played with those ancient rules. They had different rules from the modern game.

The earliest known forms of chess date from the 7th century in Persia (chatrang) and India ( chaturanga). This may once have been a 'standard' form of chess in a particular area. Background Fragment of a chessboard and chess pieces from 17th-century Russia. Pieces invented for use in chess variants rather than problems sometimes instead have special icons designed for them, but with some exceptions (the princess, empress, and occasionally amazon), many of these are not used beyond the individual games for which they were invented. Most are symbolised as inverted or rotated icons of the standard pieces in diagrams, and the meanings of these 'wildcards' must be defined in each context separately. Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, the same piece can have different names, and different pieces can have the same name in various contexts as it can be noted in the list of fairy chess pieces. Compared to conventional pieces, fairy pieces vary mostly in the way they move, but they may also follow special rules for capturing, promotions, etc. Playing piece with non-standard chess rulesĪ fairy chess piece, variant chess piece, unorthodox chess piece, or heterodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems.

The names of the chess pieces