Cheversi, as the name suggests, is an interesting territory game, created by Andy Lewicki. The rules are easy to understand, and the games always have exactly 8 moves, it is fast to play and finish.
Why Cheversi? Well, the game is a mix of Chess and Reversi, which is another name for Othello.
Cheversi is played on a standard 64 square chessboard. Each player has 8 pieces – 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops and 2 knights – and the game starts with an empty board:
The object of this game is to have more points than the opponent when all pieces are placed on the board. The rules of gaining points will be described in the next section.
The game begins with the white player making the first move, after which each player takes turns placing one piece on an empty square of the board. The pieces remain stationary, but have the ability to “attack” other squares using traditional Chess rules – for instance, a king can attack all adjacent squares in any direction, while a rook can attack squares that are horizontal or vertical to it. As there are no checks, players are allowed to place their king on a square that is under attack by their opponent’s pieces, even if it is adjacent to the opponent’s king.
Unlike in Chess, it is the black player who has a significant advantage in Cheversi. To eliminate it, certain additional rules apply:
- White starts with a king anywhere on the board.
- After the white player’s opening move, black is allowed to respond with any piece except for the king. The black piece must be placed in a way that it touches a white piece either diagonally, horizontally or vertically. The game then proceeds in this fashion, with pieces being placed so that they are always in contact with a piece of the opposite color and can never be placed in isolation. The black king must be played as the last piece in the game.
- Bishops have to take alternative colors, like in Chess.
- Players can call for the opponent’s Queen anytime during the game, which simply works like this: If a player A puts the Queen on the board, the opponent B has to play their Queen immediately after this move by A. For Black, unless the Queen wasn’t called earlier, the 7th move is mandatory to play a Queen. Remember, the 8th Black move has to be a King, so a Queen cannot be played beyond the 7th move.
- The black King finishes the game and must touch the last placed White piece put on the board. It also means that the last White move cannot be done the way that Black King cannot touch it in the last move.
The following picture shows a game after several moves, and squares attacked by the white player are highlighted:
The blue circles mark squares that are being attacked by both the queen and the king. This is important because a player gets 1 point for every empty square which is attacked by their own pieces, but if a square is attacked by more pieces at once, the player gets a point for every attacking piece separately.
So, in this case, 17 squares are marked, but the blue ones are counted twice. Ergo, White has 20 points after this move.
Due to the counting rule, it helps a lot to play Cheversi online, where all the calculations and valid move recognitions are handled by the server. You are welcome to try it out at BrainKing.com.
Let me finish this article with an example of a completed game:
The final score was 25:51, so Black won the game.