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... Chaturanga may refer to: The four divisions of ancient Indian armies: infantry, elephants, cavalry and chariots. The ancient precursor of Chess; truly original rules are lost but several later variants are known, including Shatranj. Chaturaji, a version of the game for 4 players; a bit confusing but entrenched in some languages such as Spanish and Russian. A well-known ashtanga pose of yoga, complete name chaturanga dandasana, which means 'four limbed staff pose'. I hope this can help you all to improve your lives!

Someone asked in the notes how to improve in 2p-Chaturanga/Shatranj, so I can answer by giving some links. My topic in the forum, maybe a bit basic, not sure everything I wrote is correct, but okay let's say it could be a good start. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-variants/i-love-chaturanga Hilton's channel on YouTube: tactics and strategies with analysis based on ancient texts and present day games among the best players of Chessdotcom. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7HNcJ6ultREuj24BUsG0RNx7LXdH3ns Stakhanov's channel on YouTube, mostly about interesting mansubat (ancient Chess problems). It is not in English but you can understand a lot by just watching the images. https://youtube.com/channel/UCMUSn6Sg1Ls4Ckl1fI4hu7A Arma-50's blogs with commented games among top players and engine analysis made by using Fairy Stockfish (not sure how accurate it is, but quite good probably). https://www.chess.com/blog/Arma-50/25803671 Then the more you study positions and analyse games the more you improve, like in every version of Chess. The major text you can find is "A History of Chess", it's rich but the move notation is hard! A middle way between playing and studying in my opinion is the correspondence (daily) play. Daily Shatranj can be played on a website called Scheming Mind if you are interested. https://www.schemingmind.com/ However the skills required in the blitz play are different, we would need a lot of tactics exercises for that. << I think we should start from now creating a huge collection of exercises. >>

Not only Mujannah (winged) and Mashaikhi (sheikh's) but 16 of them

Hello! Just out of curiosity, I wanted to ask - what got you into playing chaturanga and chaturaji? I discovered chaturanga via this site and from there I loved trying out different strategies and learning more about its history and its relation to chess. I learned how to play chaturaji earlier this month, and I find it to be pretty fun. So what got you all into playing these games?

1. I do really like to play Chaturaji on Chess-dot-com, the name just means "4 Kings". I like this game better than the 4-Player Chess on that gigantic cross board. 2. This is not the original, truly ancient, Chaturaji. That used dice and had Elephants moving like Rooks (in place of Bishops) and Boats on the 4 corners moving like Shatranj Alfils.

Hello! I was trying to play chaturanga on the variants page, but I can't access it. Did chess.com remove it? I really hope not. ;_;

I'm recently experiencing the game of Tablut and I have to say it is funny to play and deep! Even if all pieces move the same way the game is complex and requires a mental thinking similar to that of Chess. If you know nothing about Tablut I will just tell you it's a Scandinavian game of the Tafl family, or in other words it's a variant of Hnefatafl, sometimes called Viking Chess. There is only one King on the board and the goal of the game is different for the 2 players: one has to rescue the King, the other has to capture the King. Simple rules a bit different from one variant to the other ensure the balance in the game. Tablut is played on a 9x9 board, and so it's smaller than other variants, but not the smallest one! Compared to other tafl games, I'd say it is more 'crucial': it's easy for the Muscovites to eat the King -- normal capture with only 2 men -- however it's also easy for the Swedish to save the King -- every edge squares is winning, no need to reach a corner. So the balance is delicate and one mistake can easily cost the game to either side. You can find the full rules on Wikipedia. The article mention 2 different rule interpretations about the King re-entering the throne (the central square) and the other pieces moving through that special square. I can say I played Tablut at the World Tafl Federetion website and both kinds of moves are normally allowed. If you own a Shogi set then you already have all you need to play Tablut: a 9x9 board with 1 General and 8 unpromoted pieces, challenging 16 Tokins. Just remember that in Tablut you cannot re-drop on the board the captured pieces!! ^_^

Hi, As the Shatranj top lists only contain players that have played the last two weeks, and I have been told that Shatranj was implemented on Chess.com already back in 2018, I thought it would bee interesting to collect information about the highest ranked players. In the following Excel link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15-7Zdo-AHm36zCq-LAeQ8WVSed9UGJse/edit?gid=1292100573#gid=1292100573 I am happy to present 3 Shatranj rating lists. The first Best list shows all Shatranj players I have found that have made 1900+ rating at some point, either in blitz or rapid (dark-green). The second list shows the 100 current highest rated players by 2. January 2025. The closed accounts are excluded, and only blitz ratings are included here. The last list is a country list where the mean of five highest ranked players is calculated. As this list is the last I have worked with it has huge potential of improvement. In order to get started many of the lowest ranked countries are supported by artificial agents with low ratings. Digging into old games and players on Chess.com is almost as hard as looking into the beginning of Universe. The archive supports only your last 40 games, and only your last 40 games against each player in two-player seek. The oldest games I have found are from late 2020. So if you know of players missing in my lists – let me know! I hope of publishing this list in future every year in January. I have also done some correlation analysis (Pearson) between Shatranj ratings and (western) chess ratings, and between Shatranj ratings and amount of Shatranj games played. This can of course be done in several ways (live ratings, best ratings, blitz games only, total amount of Shatranj games) but for both measures the correlation is around 0,45-0,50. One important thing to remember here however is the fact that in Shatranj everyone starts on 1500 rating, and as there are few players compared to western chess, getting your correct shatranj rating might in did in some cases take hundreds of games.    Regards Rungne  

" April 1 ". White to move. Easy Mate in 2. "April  Fool ".White to move. Mate in 3.

The first move is Double checking. If the King take f5, White Alfil checkmates If the King take the Knight, White Firzan checkmates If the King goes on h7, the White sacrifice Rook on g7, and checkmates Nf6 on the third move To be continued. Sorry for my English.

White to play and wins. Three kinds of checkmates.

A list of Chess variants of Chess.com, that I find nice and interesting. Shatranj: https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturanga  Chaturaji (4p): https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturaji  Rubicon: https://www.chess.com/variants/rubicon Cross Derby: https://www.chess.com/variants/cross-derby Paradigm 30: https://www.chess.com/variants/paradigm-chess30 Mini Forest: https://www.chess.com/variants/mini-forest Mini House https://www.chess.com/variants/minihouse  Warui Shogi: https://www.chess.com/variants/warui-shogi  Gothic Chess: https://www.chess.com/variants/gothic-chess

White to move and wins.

В таджикской культуре имя Диларам интерпретируется как "доброе сердце".

Hi, Here is an article I wrote back in 2019 examining the origins of Chess based on a combined study of Cladistic (game-tree) analysis and Wave theory (synonymous to horizontal gene transmission). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whOWaj3B9w13PzJV4-laMNl3W6eC60Qi/edit The article is a bit technical but hopefully interesting. The isolated conclusions from the analysis are quite clear – the Persian Chatrang (synonymous to the Arabic Shatranj) is the oldest game. When you add the fact that also the oldest written chess sources and chess pieces are Persian (a fact already acknowledged by Murray in 1913), there should be no doubt that the Persian chess origin theory is still very much alive. Rungne