Circular Chess

Whoa... I'd like to try that kind of Chess!! It sounds really cool!! d=(>_<)=b

 My mistake. 

ETA:  Here's a link to the wikipedia page on the four player variant, which they spell chaturaji.  It seems that some scholars had said that it was a precursor to chaturanga, but most modern scholars think chaturanga is older. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturaji

 http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3541

I'm pretty sure the link above will show the game that the original post is talking about.  I have it.  It's interesting.  I find it a better, in the sense of more playable, variant of circular chess than Byzantine Chess, but of course, Byzantine Chess holds more historical interest.  "Noble Celts" is a purely modern invention.

It occurs to me that "Noble Celts" is mathematically equivalent to Cylindrical Chess.  In Cylindrical Chess, the left and right edges of the board are joined, and can be played and captured across.  i.e. a pawn on a5 could capture a piece on h6.  A bishop on C1 could travel to B8 if no pieces were in the way.

The circular board from Noble Celts projects that cyclinder onto a flat page by putting the "top" of the cylinder (the black pieces) into a ring at the center, and the "bottom", the white pieces, onto a ring on the outside.  Visually, it looks cool.

I wonder if it would be more or less confusing than playing Cylindrical Chess on a normal board. It seems like more confusing. You don't have to think about pieces going off one side and coming out the other, but your bishops now travel in spirals and I don't even want to think about the knight movement.

I have played this game many times and entered the World Championship held in Lincoln, England several years ago (coming joint sixth or join third from last, however you spin it).

The rules are the same as regular chess, except you can't castle and there is no en passant.

The great thing about Cylindrical Chess is that one can play it using a conventional  board and pieces as Meadmaker rightly points out. Any chess player can learn to play it in seconds and can be tremendous fun,... funny even. If you haven't played it yet, give it a go.  

This is amazing from 10th century to star trek chess is certainly shown that its going to the around (or square) for some time to come

Very punny!

What's the value of the pieces in Circular Chess?

 This is real, it can be played and it has rules; people even build their own board. I don't know the rules and how move are made though, sorry.

was there a precurser to chess, some variation where the goal was for the king to escape to the edge? would that have been played on a circular board?

I don't know the answer, but wikipedia.org has a pretty good article on the origns and history of the game.

None that I know on a circular board.  The northern European game Hneftafl (also known as fidchell, gwezboel, tablut, or tawlbrd depending on the exact location) featured a square board and a king who started in the center and had to escape to the edges.  It isn't considered an ancestor of Chess, but was widely played in Iceland, Norway, England, Ireland and in that neighborhood, and based on references in various sagas held the same esteemed position in those lands that Chess holds today.  i.e. it was the "intellectual" game.  The ability to play Tafl well is held to be one of the signs of a great, well rounded, man, and an Irish saga features a game of Fidchell as a central demonstration of the intellectual prowess of the hero of the tale. 

Unfotunately, the rules for the Tafl family of games are not known.  An 18th century set of rules for Tablut was collected by Linnaeus (the guy who gave us Latin names for plants and animals) while travelling in Lapland.  Most attempts at reconstruction start with those rules, but the game ends up very unbalanced.  In the original rules (from Linnaeus) the king's team wins easily, and it has proven difficult to balance the game.  We know that it must have been well balanced, or it could not have been held in high esteem as it was.

As Chess moved in from the south, it seems to have replaced the Tafl family as the game that all the smart people played.

The Circular Chess World Championship is held every year at Lincoln Castle:

http://www.bcvs.ukf.net/circ.htm

See also my Zillions implementation:

http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/circularchess.htm

Mats

Noble Celts Circular Chess is not the same as the circular chess some have referred to.  Here's a video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiX8j5jMe68    They also have another chess varient called Tic Tac Chec.

As the designer of more than 5 variations of Contemporary Chess,
(illustrated at <master-chess.com>) that includes three circular versions,
I am looking for current players feedback thoughts on all of them.