Winboard_F & mini variant

[Philippe Etard]

Hello,
On H.G. Muller web page http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/winboardF.html, I see a mini variant chess with 6x6 board. I wish to know if I can play this game and which chess software I need.
Thank you.

[H.G.Muller]

I only put that screenshot there to show what WinBoard is capable of. The 6x6 was not a pre-existing variant. So there is no engine for it, and it even does not have rules defined for it. (Although from how it looks, the obvious rules would be that all pieces moves as in FIDE Chess, including castling, xcept Pawns, who have no double move.)

A 6x6 variant that does have defined rules is Los-Alamos Chess (it has no Bishops). I also don't know any engine for that.

Unfortunately Fairy-Max can still only play with boards that have 8 ranks. It is still on my to-do list to fix this. Otherwise it would have been fairly easy to configure Fairy-Max for this variant (or for Los Alamos). Main obstacle is the way Fairy-Max computes the bonuses for Pawns one or two steps away from promotion. The way it derives this from the rank of the Pawn does not work at all on 6x6.