This isn’t “Bobby Fisher’s” chess game anymore. This is Omega Chess! It’s 100 squares instead of 64, 10 pawns instead of eight, Champions and Wizards. In the Advanced Game, there are even pieces called The Fool and the Templar Knight.
The strategy of the game is still the same: checkmate your opponent by capturing the King.
The game is played on a 10×10 squares board with an extra square in each of the extreme corners where the Wizards are placed at the start of each game. On the outer edges where the extra squares are, you’ll find the Champion piece with a Pawn in front.
One reason for adding the new pieces was to equalize the number of jumping pieces with sliding pieces. Wizards are color-bound pieces, a parallel to the Bishop. However, the Wizard is also a leaper.
Champions are, like Knights, classed as leapers. A Champion can jump two squares in any direction or simply slide one square in any direction.
Daniel MacDonald in Toronto created Omega Chess, which has a small but growing fellowship at San Quentin. Fateem Jackson, Edwin “Zakee” Hutchinson, and James Mays sat down to talk about their experience with the game.
“While I was at California Men’s Colony, I discovered some guys playing it. It immediately drew my attention. I asked one of the guys to teach me how to play,” said Fateem Jackson, 37. Jackson is the first person to introduce Omega Chess at San Quentin. He taught Hutchinson, Mays and Ronald Fort. Jackson has been playing the game for more than two years.
“I’ve been playing chess since I was 11,” said Hutchinson, 53. “Omega Chess is an amazing concept to that (chess) game that I’ve loved all these years. I competed and won the U.S. Chess Federation in Monterey in 1994. I had an expert rating of 1,950. However, this Omega Chess is a completely new beast to tackle. I apply the techniques and stratagems that I learned in chess, which makes my Omega game much more diverse and unorthodox.”
“Omega Chess is about expanding the horizons of chess to another level,” said Mays, 56. He’s been playing Omega Chess for 11 months. “Omega Chess is about the diversity of moves that the Champion and the Wizard bring to the game. They leap over other pieces and add a dimension that one has to take into account.”
Jackson said comparing Omega Chess to regular Chess “is like comparing Spades to Pinochle. Once you play Pinochle, you don’t want to play Spades anymore. Spades is too simple. It’s the same way with Omega Chess.”
“Exactly,” said Hutchinson. “The dynamics of the game are more intricate. It involves critical thinking beyond just an average Chess game. In that, the analogy of Pinochle to Spades is appropriate.”
Players hope to arrange an Omega Chess Tournament at San Quentin in the future.
Omega Chess is an advanced form of the game that the early Persians learned from the ancient Egyptians. Back then, it was Jackals and Hounds.
Information about Omega Chess can be found at the website :http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omega_Chess&oldid=577631757”
