Musketeer Chess Elephant and Hawk Kit (Sharper Kit) Bundled with HOS Luxury Plastic Chess Pieces

Elephant & Hawk Combination


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In Partnership with Musketeer Chess

The Sharper Chess Variant Kit, which features Hawk and Elephant Pieces, is an exciting, new way to play Chess! Use these pieces with your favorite set of chess pieces and play Sharper Chess! Each kit comes with a total of 4 plastic chess pieces - Black Elephant, Black Hawk, Natural Elephant, and Natural Hawk. Sharper Chess was developed by Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan and Bruce Harper, and the name SHARPER is a play on their two last names.

Rules for Musketeer Chess can be downloaded at www.musketeerchess.com. The new chess pieces are designed to be Staunton-compatible, hence can easily be used as replacements or substitutes to customize classic Staunton pattern chess sets or create your own chess variant.

Elephant :


Similar to the King, the Elephant can move one square in all directions. It also leaps orthogonally or diagonally by 2 squares. The Elephant can control up-to a maximum of 16 squares:




 From d4, It can leap to d6, d2, b2, b4, b6, f2, f4, f6. It slides to: d5, d3, c3, c4, c5, e3, e4, e5.

PGN Notation: E


Hawk :


The Hawk is a pure leaper. It jumps 2 or 3 squares orthogonally or diagonally in any direction.




The Hawk can control up-to a total of 16 squares: From d4, it can leap to b2, a1, b4, a4, b6, a7, d2, d1, d6, d7, f2, f4, f6, g1, g4, g7.

PGN Notation: H

History of the Chess Pieces

S-Chess (Sharper Chess) was invented by GM Yasser Seirawan and Bruce Harper to improve on an idea referred to as “Capablanca Chess”. As background, in the early 1920s, former World Champion Jose R. Capablanca, had claimed that Chess was played out. He suggested that adding two new pieces, the Chancellor (R+N) and the Archbishop (B+N), would revitalize and popularize the game. Unfortunately, his idea also involved increasing the size of the chessboard to 10 x 8 to accommodate the two new chessmen. That chessboard change significantly changed the feel of the game and also fatally damaged its popularity. Past attempts to improve Capablanca Chess, such as Gothic Chess, were tried but without success.


Seirawan’s and Harper’s invention, Sharper Chess, neatly solved both those issues. By adding the concept of the “Drop”, where the two new Chess Variants (the Hawk and Elephant) are held “in-hand”, and retaining the use of the 8 x 8 chessboard, Seirawan and Harper dramatically changed “Capablanca Chess”.  


Camaratta Chess (or C-Chess or Cam-Chess) is a modification to Sharper Chess which allowed unrestricted back-rank drops (among other less consequential changes) and made the “Drop” a separate move, rather than a combination move as in Sharper Chess. Both are variations on the Capablanca theme of adding two new pieces, but permit play to occur on the more conventional 8 x 8 chessboard.


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Regular Price: $39.95 $34.95

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Product Details

Additional Information

Manufacturer The House of Staunton
Weighting Triple Weighted
King Height Designed for Chess Pieces with King Height between 3.75'' - 4.0''
King Base Diameter 1.75'' inch / 4.44 cm
Recommended Chess Board Size 2.25" inch / 5.7 cm
Basepad Material Billiard Cloth
Total Number of Pieces 38 Chess Pieces (With 4 Additional Variant Pieces)