Janus Chess Korchnoi, Péter Lékó and Artur Yusupov. Korchnoi said: "I like playing Janus Chess because one can show more creativity than in normal chess." Chess engines that play Janus Chess: Janus Chess Janus Chess is a chess variant invented in 1978 by Werner Schöndorf from Bildstock, Germany. It is played on a 10×8 board and features a fairy chess piece, the "janus", with the combined moves of a bishop and a knight. The janus piece is named after the Roman god Janus because this god was usually depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. The usual set of chess pieces
Fairy chess piece Fairy chess piece A 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. Fairy pieces vary in the way they move. Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, the same piece can have different names, and different pieces the same name in various contexts. Almost all are usually 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.