Transcendental Chess of one side can be any of 4²×6!÷2² = 2880. There is no castling. On the first turn a player, instead of making a move, can transpose any of two pieces on the back row. In Chess960 the back rows are mirror images, but in Transcendental Chess the setup of black and white is different 2879 out of every 2880 times (there being a 1–in–2880 chance that both sides will draw the same setup). This can create inequalities in the position. One way to equalize these inequalities is to play a couplet: the players play two games, one each as
Martian chess players decide who moves first. Play turns alternate, and pass to the left after each move. The red lines in the diagrams indicate notional "canals" which divide the board into "territories", or quadrant. At any given time a player controls only those pieces that are in his or her territory. The pieces move as follows: As in chess, a square may contain no more than one piece, and a piece is captured when an enemy piece lands on the square it occupies. The capturing player removes the piece and puts it aside for later scoring. In the two-player game, a