Elephant and Hawk - Musketeer Chess Variant Kit - 4 Set

S-Chess (Sharper Chess) was invented by GM Yasser Seirawan and Bruce Harper to improve on an idea referred to as “Capablanca Chess”. As background, in the early 1920s, former World Champion Jose R. Capablanca, had claimed that Chess was played out. He suggested that adding two new pieces, the Chancellor (R+N) and the Archbishop (B+N), would revitalize and popularize the game. Unfortunately, his idea also involved increasing the size of the chessboard to 10 x 8 to accommodate the two new chessmen. That chessboard change significantly changed the feel of the game and also fatally damaged its popularity. Past attempts to improve Capablanca Chess, such as Gothic Chess, were tried but without success.   Seirawan’s and Harper’s invention, Sharper Chess, neatly solved both those issues. By adding the concept of the “Drop”, where the two new Chess Variants (the Hawk and Elephant) are held “in-hand”, and retaining the use of the 8 x 8 chessboard, Seirawan and Harper dramatically changed “Capablanca Chess”.     Camaratta Chess (or C-Chess or Cam-Chess) is a modification to Sharper Chess which allowed unrestricted back-rank drops (among other less consequential changes) and made the “Drop” a separate move, rather than a combination move as in Sharper Chess. Both are variations on the Capablanca theme of adding two new pieces, but permit play to occur on the more conventional 8 x 8 chessboard.