The Rules of Joker's Chess

A variant born on 20 August 2026

The Battlefield

Joker's chess is an asymmetric variant with two kings on black's side, and two queens on white's side

• White's Pieces: White begins the game with two Queens, zero kings, and rest of the standard pieces remain the same. The Reserve Bench has 5 Pawns, 2 knights, and a Bishop.
• Black's Defense: Black begins the game with two Kings, zero Queens, and rest of the standard pieces remain the same. The Reserve Bench has 8 Pawns, 3 knights, and 2 Bishops.

The Joker Reserve & Respawns

When captured, pawns, knights, and bishops respawned on home squares from the reserve (or go to Joker's Bench in certain conditions.)

• Standard Reserve: After being Captured, the piece is respawned on its home square. For knights, the respawn happens in this order: b1 -> g1 for white, b8 -> g8 for black; for bishops, the ordering is given by: c1 -> f1 for white, c8 -> f8 for black. Captured Pawns respawn on the same file they are captured (2nd rank for white, 7th rank for black.)
• Joker Reserve: When a piece's respawn square is occupied, it doesn't return to the board immediately — it enters the Joker Reserve instead. From there, a player can spend a turn dropping a Joker piece onto any valid empty square to launch a surprise attack. Knights and Bishops each have two home squares to try before falling back to the Reserve; Pawns have only one, making their comeback far less reliable. For Pawns, valid drop squares are limited to the 3rd through 6th ranks; other pieces can drop anywhere on the board.

Winning Conditions:

To win the game, white must capture both the kings within 200 half-moves(which is 100 moves. The max move limit, currently set for 100 moves.) For black, they have four conditions: running white out of legal moves (stalemate), capturing all of white's pieces to the point it can't capture black kings anymore (insufficient material), surviving till max move limit, and the 14-halfmove (7-move) rule explained below.

Drawing Conditions:

Draw Conditions do not exist.

Promotions & Limitations

Below is the promotion rule for each side:

• White promotes pawns normally.
• Black cannot promote to a Queen.
• Black may only promote a pawn to a rook, a knight, a bishop, or a King if they have exactly one King remaining on the board.