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How to play Grand Chess: rules and setup

Grand Chess is played by 2 players on a board with 10 × 10 squares. White moves first. Play on a 10×10 board with two additional compound pieces.

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Play Grand Chess

Quick answer

Grand Chess is a large chess variant played on a 10×10 board. Each side has ten pawns and ten pieces. They include the cardinal (bishop plus knight) and the marshal (rook plus knight). White moves first and there is no castling. Pawns may promote on the eighth or ninth rank, must promote on the last, and only to a piece already lost. Checkmate wins. This guide covers Grand Chess. Check the movement, capture and game-ending rules below before applying rules from another variant.

Players
2
Board
10 × 10 squares
First move
White moves first.

Ruleset and sources: Grand Chess

Setup

Game illustration
Game illustration. Follow the setup instructions to prepare a new game.

Base rules: chess. Each side has ten pawns on its third rank and ten pieces. Rooks stand in the corners (a1 and j1 for White); the second rank holds, from b to i, knight, bishop, queen, king, marshal, cardinal, bishop, knight. Pawns may advance two squares on their first move and can be captured en passant. White moves first.

Board
10 × 10 squares
Players
2
First move
White moves first.
Rules used here
Grand Chess

Moves and captures

  • Legal moves

    The cardinal (also called archbishop) moves as a bishop or a knight; the marshal (also called chancellor) moves as a rook or a knight. Other pieces move as in chess and the king must stay safe.

  • Using the board

    Select a piece to see its legal destinations, then select a highlighted square. When several promotions are available, choose from the promotion panel.

Special rules

  • No castling.

  • Promotion is optional on your eighth and ninth ranks and compulsory on the last rank.

  • A pawn may promote only to a piece type you have lost (at most one queen, cardinal and marshal; two rooks, bishops and knights).

  • If no lost piece is available, the pawn cannot step onto the last rank, but it still gives check from the ninth rank.

Winning and draws

  • Win by checkmate.

  • Stalemate is a draw.

  • A player may claim a draw after threefold repetition or 50 moves by each side without a capture or pawn move.

  • If neither side has enough material to checkmate, the game is drawn automatically.

Example

Sources and rule verification

Ruleset covered
Grand Chess
  1. The Chess Variant Pages — Grand Chess (Christian Freeling)
  2. Fairy-Stockfish variants (implementation reference)
  3. Fairy-Stockfish — variant definitions (43b66c8, implementation reference)

This guide describes play on ChessPlayX. Platform-specific conventions are stated in the relevant sections; tournament administration may differ.

A separate rule-review date is not recorded for this guide. The update date is not a verification date.