Description

An apparently traditional game from Poland, where it is known as kr?gle szachowe. No accepted English name has been found for it, but the words "kr?gle szachowe" can be translated as "chess bowling" or "chess bowling pins".

Lech Pijanowski, a Polish games expert, described it as a “folk game” known in Germany and Scandinavia.

The game is played between two players (termed White and Black), who sit opposite each other across a 9×9 checkerboard, which has a line drawn around the central block of 3×3 squares. The source illustrates this board as having dark squares in each corner. Each player has nine undifferentiated pieces or stones. Initially, each player places one of his pieces in the corner square to his right, and the other eight complete a square with the first piece as its corner. White starts, and play is then alternate.

Pieces move a single space, to any of the (maximum of) four diagonally adjacent squares. Capturing is by custodianship, which is to say that an unbroken diagonal line of (one or more) enemy pieces, terminating with a friendly piece at one end of the line, will be captured if a second friendly piece is moved onto the space at the opposite end of the line. [The source is silent on whether such a move can capture lines of enemy pieces in more than one direction]. Unusually, though, captured pieces do not vacate the board, but are placed elsewhere on the board on a vacant space chosen by the captor, with the restriction that the new space must be the same colour as that from which it was removed. Thus, pieces will always remain on the same coloured square as that upon which they start the game.

The aim of the game is to complete a previously agreed arrangement of ones own pieces in the marked central sector of the board. Six examples of winning arrangements are:

–o– || ooo || ––o || ooo || ––o || o–o
ooo || o–o || ––o || ooo || –o– || –––
–o– || ooo || ooo || ooo || o–– || o–o
(where o represents a friendly piece, and – an empty square).
Arrangements involving more pieces are harder to achieve and will make for a longer game.

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