Chess but just with knights

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Goncalo_Freitas

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think about this, but have you guys tried playing chess with just the knights?

It would basically consist of both you and your opponent moving a knight at a time and both trying to checkmate their opponent's king by smothering it.

My reasoning is that, as this simplifies the game by a lot, there must be a way to find whether there is a forced win for either player. Does anyone know if this is true?

(I reckon you could remove every piece but the knights and the kings when you're playing... Somehow, I just feel like playing the version with all the pieces is less "confusing", as either king is already trapped by its own army.)

TrickysToybox

I have customized a game before with just knights. It’s quite fun, but in my opinion, it’s more challenging, and that’s just the simple fact when you’re playing against a computer, it doesn’t seem to matter where you move your pieces, the computer always seems to come ahead, nailing me every time in forks. Just Knights game puts almost every chess player out of their comfort zone, because they’re not playing with bishops, rooks, or their queen…it’s a game they’re not used to playing. Crazy Chess is another variant where you can have more than two knights on the board. It’s a fun game, if you haven’t tried it, I recommend giving it a whirl.

eric0022
Goncalo_Freitas wrote:

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think about this, but have you guys tried playing chess with just the knights?

It would basically consist of both you and your opponent moving a knight at a time and both trying to checkmate their opponent's king by smothering it.

My reasoning is that, as this simplifies the game by a lot, there must be a way to find whether there is a forced win for either player. Does anyone know if this is true?

(I reckon you could remove every piece but the knights and the kings when you're playing... Somehow, I just feel like playing the version with all the pieces is less "confusing", as either king is already trapped by its own army.)

Knights are not very effective at checkmating an opposing king as they are often not entirely smothered.

Based on your title, I was initially thinking of this position with 15 knights.

wait-what-am-i-doing
I think u can mate with knights but it’s not forced