How can I make my own chess variant?

Have you ever wanted to try your own crazy idea for a chess variant? You can, on the Chess.com variants page! 

First, hover over 'Play' in the left menu and click 'Variants' 

This will take you to our Variants page, where you can play all kinds of different types of chess! See more here!

But you can even make your own kind of variant, by clicking 'custom' on the Variants home page: 

Note: You may need to scroll down to see this option. 

From the Custom page, you'll be able to design your own variant! 

Use the options to set up your rules:

Board set up (blue square in the above image): These are the options for how the board will be set up. Click on each option to see what the setup looks like on the board. 

Promotion rank: Choose which rank on the board will cause pawns to promote. 

Pawns promote to: Choose what kinds of pieces pawns can promote to. 

N-check lives: Choose whether to enable 'check lives', and how many. If this is on, the king will have a certain number of 'check lives' and if this number of checks is reached, the checked player will lose. This is like 3-check chess, but you can set the number of checks to whatever you want. 

Rules options (yellow square): Hover your mouse over each rule to see what it does. 

You can add one, two, or many rules!  There are many more rules than pictured in the image above. You may have to scroll down to see them all. 

You can also choose a random set of rules by clicking the dice icon near the bottom of the options: 

Once you have selected all your rules, click 'Close rules' at the top or 'Done' at the bottom, then you'll be able to click 'Play' and look for a match! 

If you want to see other custom games that other players have made, you can go to 'Lobby' in the top menu bar, and you'll see a list of open challenges with custom rules that you can play:

Have fun experimenting with all the different rules!

If the information in this article is out of date, incorrect, or unclear, or if you have questions about it, please let us know!