Wildebeest Chess Wildebeest Chess Wildebeest Chess is a chess variant created by R. Wayne Schmittberger in 1987. The Wildebeest board is 11×10 squares. Besides the standard chess pieces, each side has two camels and one wildebeest. The inventor's intent is "to balance the number of 'riders'—pieces that move along open lines—with the number of 'leapers'—pieces that jump". (So for each side, two knights, two camels, and a wildebeest balance two rooks, two bishops, and a queen.) The game was played regularly in the (now defunct) correspondence game club NOST. Pieces and pawns move and capture the same as they do in standard
Three-player chess avoid this "petty diplomacy" problem by determining the victor as the player who first delivers checkmate, with the third player losing in addition to the checkmated player. Other solutions have been tried as well. Some variants use a board with hexagonal cells. Usually three bishops per side are included, to cover all cells of the hex playing field. Pieces move usually as in one of the versions of hexagonal chess. Some variants use a hexagonal-shaped board with quadrilateral cells (see example in the photo). Some variants have used other board shapes with quadrilateral cells. Triangular cells not on the perimeter