In Fog of War chess, also known as Dark chess, players must rely heavily on their intuition and chess knowledge to predict their opponent's moves, as most of the opponent’s pieces are obscured by fog.

This variant of chess introduces two key differences from standard chess:

In Fog of War chess, each player sees only their own pieces and the squares their pieces can move to. Squares that you cannot move to are covered in "fog," hiding any of your opponent's pieces located there.

For instance, in the example below, the grey and dark green squares represent areas where White cannot move. Consequently, White cannot see if any of these squares contain Black's pieces:

In this position, White can see Black’s knight because White’s dark-squared bishop is able to capture it. Black, on the other hand, will not know that his knight is under attack unless he has a piece that can attack White’s bishop.

Unlike standard chess, the objective in Fog of War chess is to capture the king rather than checkmate it -- The unattainable dream of many chess players!

Players are not notified when their king is in check and are not required to move out of check. If a player does not realize their king is in check and does not make a move to escape, the opponent can capture the king to win the game.

For example, if it is Black’s turn and White’s king is unknowingly in check because White cannot see Black’s queen, Black can capture the king and win the game since White did not move to protect it: