Glinsky's hexagonal chess

Hexagonal chess is chess played on a hexagonal board made up of hexagonal squares. In 1864, John Jacques & Son, a London family company with a long tradition of manufacturing sports equipment, among other things, designed in the game hexagonia. The board for this game consisted of 125 cells and was inspired by the wave of craze for the intelligence of bees and the wonderful properties of honeycombs. Since then, there have been several proposals to play the game on a hexagonal board, but none have been more popular. In 1936, the Polish chess player Wladyslaw Glinsky presented a prototype of the game, which he later worked on and improved over the years. The final version of the game was released in 1972. Passion, initiative and enterprise Glinsky led to a huge increase in the popularity of his chess. According to some reports, at the end of the XNUMXth century, the number of hexagonal chess players designed by Glinsky exceeded half a million.

1. Glinsky's Hexagonal Chess - Initial Setup

2. Approximate set of hexagonal chess pieces.

3. Vladislav Glinsky, source: V. Litmanovich, Yu. Gizhitsky, “Chess from A to Z”

Glinsky's hexagonal chess (1, 2), also called Polish chess, is by far the most popular type of hexagonal chess. Initially enjoying growing interest in Poland and the UK, they have now become popular in many other European countries, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, Switzerland, France, Italy and Hungary, as well as in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, the Middle East and Asia. . This type of chess was developed and patented in 1953 and popularized by Vladislav Glinsky (1920-1990) (3).

Vladislav Glinsky

Hexagon Chess Maker he almost missed the German firing squad because of the game he made up. When Poland was occupied by the Germans in 1939, they found playing boards and records of individual games in his house. They decided that he was probably a spy, and that he was recording the information he obtained with some special cipher. In the end, he managed to free him from these suspicions and accusations.

Vladislav Glinsky came to Britain in 1946 as a young Polish soldier from Italy, where he served in the Allied forces. For his service in the army, he received British citizenship and settled in London, where he developed the theory of his version of hexagonal chess.

In 1973 year Vladislav Glinsky i William Edmunds founded Hexagonal Chess Publications. This year Glinsky published the book "Rules of Hexagonal Chess with Examples of First Openings", which by 1977 had gone through seven editions in English and French (7).

4. Vladislav Glinsky, "Rules of Hexagonal Chess with Examples of First Openings", 1973

5. Vladislav Glinsky, The First Theories of Hexagonal Chess, 1974

In 1974, two editions of Glinsky's second book, The First Theories of Hexagonal Chess (5), were published, and in 1976 his third book was published, this time in Polish, Polish Hexagonal Chess: Rules of the Game with Examples.

In 1976, the first British Championship was organized in London, during which the Polish Hexagonal Chess Federation and the British Hexagonal Chess Federation (BHCF-) were created.

Rules of the game

The game has general rules. classical chess rules, however, that individual figures can move in six different directions. The game is played on a hexagonal chessboard consisting of 91 hexagonal squares in three colors: light, dark and medium (usually shades of brown), with 30 light, 30 dark and 31 intermediate squares. There are 12 vertical rows of fields on the chessboard, named by letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l (the letter j is not used). The cells in this row are numbered from 1 to 11. The chessboard has three center lines, eleven cells in length, and one center cell as the center of the board. Two sets of pieces (chips and chips) are used for the game, white and black. 

Unlike classical chess, hexagonal chess we have three different-sex elephants and one more boner. The white player sits on the bright top of the board and the black player sits on the dark top of the board. The charts are drawn with the white side down and the black side up. The notation for hexagonal chess games is similar to that for traditional chess games. The rules for the movement of the king, queen, rook, bishop and knight are shown in diagrams 6-10.

11. Moves, captures and lays boost fields

Hexagonal chess is a very complex game with a huge number of possible combinations. (many times more than in traditional chess), requiring thinking and vigilance in six directions, and not just in four, as in classical chess. The goal of hexagonal chess, like classical chess, is to checkmate the opponent's king.

White starts the game, each player has one move in turn, and one of the popular openings is the so-called central opening, when the white pawn on the middle line moves one square forward, from the f5 square to the f6 square. There is no padlock in hexagonal chess. The pawn moves one square forward, but attacks diagonally to the adjacent square. It should be noted that, unlike traditional chess, the direction of capturing a pawn does not correspond to the movement of the bishop. During the first move, the pawn can move one or two squares. If a pawn captures in such a way that it occupies the starting position of another pawn, it can still move two squares. When the pawn's first move is combined with a capture in the direction of the f-row, the pawn retains the right to move two squares forward. Thus, if a pawn attacks in such a way that it occupies the starting position of another pawn, it can still move two squares.

For example, if the white pawn on e4 captures the black piece on f5, it can go to f7. There is a capture in flight, which consists in capturing a piece moving across the field two squares under the influence of a piece of the opposite color (11). You can only capture a pawn, and only a pawn that has just moved two squares. If a pawn reaches the last square, it is promoted to any piece.

Sufficient for a checkmate to the king is the presence of at least: a pawn, 3 minor pieces, a rook or a queen. In contrast to classical chess, the losing (tested) side receives a quarter point, while the winning (observing) side receives ¾ points. As in traditional chess, a draw is achieved by repeating positions three times, making 50 moves without capturing or moving a pawn, and, of course, when both opponents agree to a draw.

Hexagonal chess tournaments

On August 18, 1980, the International Hexagonal Chess Federation (IHCF) was formed. The purpose of the Federation is "to popularize a separate, albeit related game - a new discipline of mental sports that creates different and wider strategic and combinational opportunities for players." They took place then first European Hexagonal Chess Championship. The first four places were taken by: 1. Marek Machkowiak (Poland), 2. Laszlo Rudolf (Hungary), 3. Jan Borawski (Poland), 4. Shepperson Pierce (Great Britain).

The next European Championships were held in 1984, 1986 and 1989. In 1991, the first World Hexagonal Chess Championship was held in Beijing. In the final, Marek Mackoviak and Laszlo Rudolf drew and both won the world title. In 1998, another European Championship was organized, and in 1999 - the World Championship.

Marek Mackoviak - European and World Champion

12. Marek Mackoviak - multiple European champion in hexagonal chess, 2008. Photo: Tomasz Tokarski Jr.

most famous in history The grandmaster of hexagonal chess was the Pole Marek Machkoviak. (1958-2018) (12). Among the best in the world, apart from the Pole, were Sergey Korchitsky from Belarus and Laszlo Rudolf and Laszlo Somlai from Hungary.

Marek Machkowiak in 1990 he was awarded the title of grandmaster in hexagonal chess. He was also a chess and checkers player, coach and referee at international chess and checkers tournaments. In the competition for blind and visually impaired chess players, he won the title of vice-champion of Poland (Jastszebia Góra 2011). In classical chess, he achieved the greatest success in 1984 in Jaszowec, winning the gold medal of the Polish team championship (in the colors of the Legion Warsaw club).

machine recording of Marek Macczowiak's Hexodus III program played during the semi-finals of the European Championship in November 1999 in Zaniemyslów near Poznań.. The record does not indicate the type of the figure, but only its current position and the field to which it moves. Recording, for example. 1.h3h5 h7h6 means that on the first move the white pawn from h3 advances to h5, and in response the black pawn from h7 advances to h6.

Marek Mackowiak – Hexodus

1.d1f4 c7c5 2.g4g6 f7g6 3.f4g6 h7h6 4.g6f9 e10f9 5.h1i3 d7d5 6.d3d4 c8f8 7.i1f4 f10d6 8.f4l4 i7i6 9.f1d3 d6f7 10.e4e5 k7k5 11.l4g4 e7e6 12.c1e3 i8g8 13.i3f4 f8e7 14.f3d2 f11h7 15.e3g2 g10h8 16.e1f3 b7b5 17.f3h2 i6i5 18.h2l5 h7k6 19.g4h4 f9e9 20.d2h2 g7g5 21.f5g5 e7f8 22.g5g6 e9g9 23.f2h1 i5i4 24.h4i4 f8f10 25.h2k4 h8f9 26.f4e6 f9f8 27.e6g8 f7g8 28.g6h6 d5e5 29.d3e5 g8e5 30.g2g9 f10g9 31.i4g4 e5f7 32.g4g9 d9g9 33.l5k5 g9h6 34.k5h5 h6e7 35.h1d7 f8d7 36.h5f7 h9f8 37.k4l5 f8d9 1-0

For traditional chess, computer programs have been developed that can beat even the best players, but with hexagonal chess, everything is much more complicated. The reason is a huge number of combinations, many times more than in traditional chess.

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