Sovereign Chess Sovereign Chess Sovereign Chess is a commercial chess variant designed by Mark Bates and produced by Infinite Pi Games. The game is played on a 16 x 16 board and begins with 112 pieces—a normal complement of white and black pieces (16 each), and 80 other colored pieces (8 each of 10 different colors). The colored pieces are considered “neutral” at the beginning of the game, and can not initially be moved nor captured. The center of the board contains an arrangement of 24 colored squares (2 each in every color, including white and black), which determine control of the
White and Black in chess in the first game. Staunton observed in 1871 that "many players still cultivate the foolish habit of playing exclusively with one colour." On October 19, 1857, Mr. Perrin, the Secretary of the New York Chess Club, informed those assembled at the First American Chess Congress that he had received a letter from Johann Löwenthal, a leading English master, "suggesting the advisableness of always giving the first move in public games, to the player of the white pieces." Löwenthal also wrote that London's chess clubs had adopted a new rule that White always moves first. The club evidently did not follow