‘CHESS — THE NEXT GENERATION’ of play­ers as well as long time play­ers, will find them­selves mov­ing into the future with this tra­di­tion­al game. This excit­ing game relies on all the reg­u­lar instruc­tions for chess. How­ev­er because of the dimen­sion­al fac­tor, there is a need for addi­tion­al instruc­tions as to how the pieces move dimen­sion­al­ly. This set of instruc­tions explains only the dimen­sion­al move­ment of the pieces. This also applies to and is explained here too, the new game “3D Chess960″.

TWO PLAYERS: when the game is played with two play­ers, there are two game boards of 15 x15 inch­es (38 x 38 cm) each, one on top of the oth­er, and approx­i­mate­ly 5¹/₂ inch­es (14 ‑15 cm) apart. The top game board is labeled “A”, and the bot­tom board is “B”. The WHITE chess pieces are set up on lev­el “A” or “B” (which ever he or she wants) in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner as in reg­u­lar chess. Then the BLACK pieces are set up in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner as in reg­u­lar chess but on the oth­er board lev­el. There­fore if WHITE is on board lev­el “B” then BLACK will be on lev­el “A”. When you switch colours for the 2nd or more games, the per­son now play­ing WHITE has the choice of board lev­els. There is an advan­tage to play­ing the bot­tom board lev­el. In the above pic­ture Black is on the bot­tom. That play­er is forced to look through the top board lev­el and will see more options at a quick glance and that is an advan­tage! — It should be not­ed that your light source should be com­ing from the left or right side of the game to pre­vent look­ing through reflections.

Print the rules for 3D Chess — The Next Gen­er­a­tion and please view the pic­tures below to help explain the game. Also to be con­sid­ered are the rules for “en passent” or “3D en passent”. Click on the pic­tures below for a larg­er view of the details.

MOVEMENT: All move­ment of chess pieces on any one board lev­el remains the same as in reg­u­lar chess. The move­ment from one board lev­el to anoth­er is as fol­lows (see also dia­grams on this website).

KING	Can move to or cap­ture all squares one square away from it (either diag­o­nal­ly or straight up and down), one lev­el below or above the square on which it is cur­rent­ly sitting.
QUEEN	Same as king. (If on Ad2, it con­trols 9 squares direct­ly below it on B)
ROOK	Can move to or cap­ture one square direct­ly below or above the square on which it is sitting. (eg. Aa1 controls/captures Ba1)
BISHOP	Move­ment sim­i­lar to that of the king except it can­not move direct­ly above or below the square on which it is sit­ting (oppo­site to a rook). This dimen­sion­al move­ment allows the bish­op to move on an ‘angle’, to/or cap­ture a white or black square. (Open­ing: Ac1 — Bb1, Bb2, Bc2, bd1, Bd2)
KNIGHT	Moves like an “L” dimen­sion­al­ly. There­fore, it moves one square down or up from the square on which it is sit­ting fol­lowed by move­ment two squares for­ward, (side­ways or backwards). (eg. Ab1 controls/captures Bb3, Bd1)
PAWN	Pawns on their orig­i­nal squares on lev­el “A” have the option of advanc­ing one or two squares on lev­el “B”. It thus mir­rors a pawn’s open­ing move in reg­u­lar chess. (Aa2 — Ba3, Ba4, open­ing the rook file) Can move to the squares direct­ly below or above the square on which it is sitting. Down or up does NOTcon­sti­tute a back­ward movement. Can advance down diag­o­nal­ly straight­for­ward on the file or advance up diag­o­nal­ly straight­for­ward. (Ba4 — Aa5) Can cap­ture diag­o­nal­ly for­ward, left or right of the square that it is on, one lev­el below or above it. (Ba4 x Bb5, or Ab5) Upon reach­ing the oppo­site side of the board on any lev­el, can be pro­mot­ed to Queen, etc., and is dis­tin­guished as such for eg., by putting a red check­er piece under­neath it. Dimen­sion­al en pas­sant capture eg. When a WHITE pawn (Ab2) has final­ly advanced three squares on level “A” (Ab5), and the BLACK pawn on lev­el “A” (either Aa7 or Ac7) tries to pass by mov­ing two squares for­ward (Ba5 or Bc5), then the WHITE pawn must cap­ture or not at all on the next move (Ab5 x Ba5 & occu­pies Ba6 ‑or- Ab5 x Bc5 & occu­pies Bc6). Also: if (Ab2) has final­ly advanced three squares (Bb5) & (Aa7) tries to pass on lev­el “A” (Aa5), then (Bb5 x Aa5 & occu­pies Aa6 etc.).

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How long does it take to play a game of ‘Chess — The Next Gen­er­a­tion’? It takes the same amount of time as it would to play a reg­u­lar game of chess on 1 flat board. In-fact, it takes about the same num­ber of moves as well. Here’s a 3D chess Table.
So, Why play ‘3D Chess’ or 3D Games?  

Due to the dimen­sion­al fac­tor of this game, the bish­op is more pow­er­ful.
The chart below and the games played out here, shows that the bish­op is
more flex­i­ble, cov­ers more area, and there­fore worth six points.
The rook is most effec­tive for back­ing up and pro­tect­ing (and on a level).

PIECE:	POINTS:
KING:		If on Ae2,     controls/captures	17 squares, & on Ae4  →  the same
QUEEN:	9	If on Ae2, ’ ’	32 squares, & on   ’  ’   36 squares
BISHOP:	6	If on Ae2, ’ ’	17 squares, & on   ’  ’   21 squares
ROOK:	4	If on Ae2, ’ ’	15 squares, & on   ’  ’   __ the same
KNIGHT:	3	If on Ae3,     ’  ’	12 squares, & on   ’  ’   __ the same
PAWN:	1	If on Ae2, ’ ’	04 squares, & on   ’  ’   __ the same

How to Build or Make a 3D Chess Game Board

Ok, so per­haps you want to play but real­ize you need to build your own game before play­ing. Here’s the com­plete “build your own game page”. The larg­er pic­tures are at Flickr. So here are some of the pic­tures (Put the erasers down 1st, bot­tom board on erasers):

There! You are now ready to start play­ing a game. There is a faster way to set a 3D Chess game on the oth­er page. Just scroll down to near the bottom.

How to make a clear top chess board

• Find a piece of clear glass or clear plas­tic that is the same size or larg­er than your reg­u­lar chess board.
• Place or lay the glass on top of your reg­u­lar chess board.
• Now use a mark­er to trace out where the squares are -or- Use Mask­ing Tape and cut squares from the tape to match the Black squares of your reg­u­lar chess board.
• Of course you could just get a 2nd chess board and use wine glass­es to sup­port it, then you would have your 3D chess game ready in 3 min­utes or less!

Put all the above togeth­er and Watch a game from start to Check­mate in 14 moves.

Now for a 3D view of the game.
You’ll need those ‘3D red/cyan glass­es’.

Something to Think-about … 

When play­ing reg­u­lar chess (or 2D flat 1 board chess), you only have a cer­tain amount of good open­ing moves to make. Some moves are bad moves or los­ing moves. How­ev­er you must move the pawns to get things in motion (except the knights). There­fore, you are lim­it­ed to what you can play as a good bunch (1st five moves) of open­ing moves!

How­ev­er, when play­ing 3D Chess (or “Chess — The Next Gen­er­a­tion”), you have 16 pos­si­ble open­ing moves! There is also an incred­i­ble num­ber of open­ing com­bi­na­tions (1st five moves) that would nev­er have exist­ed in reg­u­lar 2D chess. Plus it’s more excit­ing from the very 1st move.

Your oppo­nent will not know what you are try­ing to do. Remem­ber, it takes the same num­ber of moves and time to play as in reg­u­lar 2D chess, just more exciting.

If you have any com­ments, you could make them at my Flickr account or at YouTube.