Three-handed chess

Three-player chess (also known as Three-handed, Three-man, or Three-way chess) is a family of chess variants specially designed for three players. Many variations of three-player chess have been devised. They usually use a non-standard board, for example, a hexagonal or three-sided board that connects the center cells (board "squares") in a special way. The three armies are differentiated usually by color.

Three-player chess variants (as well as other three-player games) are the hardest to design fairly, since the imbalance created when two players gang up against one is usually too great for the defending player to withstand. Some versions attempt to 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.

Another solution to the problem insurmountable imbalance in collusion in games with more than two players, but at the same time maintaining the possibility of cooperation - is the introduction of a special "neutrality rule", invented in 2006 Ilshat Tagiev:

The player whose turn it is to walk, can attack this enemy only if the enemy attacked his previous move it or if the opponent was not attacked by the third player on its previous course.

The term "attack" here refers to the capture of a figure or pawn opponent.

"The rule of neutrality" rules out, thus, the possibility of concerted serial attacks two players third. Since the role of walking is moving in a circle, each attacking move of each player limits the ability of attacking other players.

"The rule of neutrality" in games with more than 2 players significantly aligns balance brute force, while retaining the ability to multi-player cooperation mainly through the balance of the pieces on the game board.

We can formulate the "neutrality rule" thus:

"The one who in the previous round of moves for you was attacked by others, and he did not attack you, you can not attack."

Some variants use a special hexagonal board with quadrilateral cells (see example in the photo):

Some variants have used other board forms with quadrilateral cells:

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:

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Wikipedia