Hello. I've recently switched from playing on
chess.com over here to Lichess and really enjoying the wide variety of chess variants supported. My personal favorite over-the-board variant is Hostage Chess, which I think is a more thought-out and notable improvement over Crazy House. I'm curious how much other interest there is within the community in Hostage Chess and if that's something that might be eventually supported on Lichess.
cheers,
- joseph
What is the difference between Hostage Chess and Crazyhouse?
Hostage Chess follows all the standard rules of chess excepting how captured men are treated. Each player owns reserved spaces off the chessboard: a prison to the player's right, and an airfield to the player's left. Captured men are not removed from the game but are held in the capturer's prison. Instead of making a normal move, a player can perform a hostage exchange to "rescue" a man held prisoner by the opponent and drop the freed man back into play on the board on an open square. The man exchanged for the dropped man is transferred from the player's prison to the opponent's airfield. On any turn, instead of making a normal move, a player can drop a man from his airfield into active play on the board.
^Taken from Wikipedia
Essentially you are exchanging "dead" pieces with your opponent rather than just reviving a piece you captured
In simple terms: you can drop pieces previously captured by your opponent right?
Yes, you can free then drop pieces previously captured by your opponent.
It is quite different from crazyhouse, with unique tactics coming from the ability to barter for then drop prisoners. The main advantage over crazyhouse (in OTB play at least) is that only one regular chess set is needed.
@Nordlandia Both sides have to trade pieces that were previously captured before the piece can be dropped.
One critical difference in hostage chess vs crazy house is that pawns can only promote into an available piece of your own color. i.e. you can't have multiple queens. This keeps the game more balanced, so it becomes more about finding clever ways to get a checkmate instead of just winning through attrition.