Jepps64

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Jepps64 by Simon Jepps

Jepps64 is a proposed update to Classical Chess which evolves the game through remedial augmentation rather than elaborate variantism.

There are two principle new rules proposed.

One of a player's two Knights may leap twice without capturing on its first move, providing it does not land beyond the 3rd rank.
- I believe Opening evolution has become constrained by the Knight's footprint. In reality, the Knight only has one good first square to reach most of the time and this is K/QB3 ~ or, c3/c6/f3/f6. That is even LESS than a Pawn! Allowing a double leap will grant for example, a g1 Knight access to g3 via e2, access to f2 via h3 or even access to d2 via f3. Only ONE Knight may do this.
When a Pawn promotes, if it promotes on either of the two Knight files (b/g) then the Queen it promotes to will move as Rook+Knight instead of R+B.
- A regular Queen is only granted when promoting to any other file. The R+N combo piece is the same as a Seirawan Elephant and equal in value to a standard Queen. This rule allows the entrance of a much desired variant piece, yet through classical play. Jepps64 proposes to abolish Double Queens, only allowing promotion to a piece previously captured. This would remedy confusion between a standard R+B vs R+N Queen.

The undying mystical charm of Classical Chess, its ancient historical culture both academically and spiritually, is what makes the game very difficult to change ~ hence regardless of its exhaustive studies, we still play it the same way today.

Yet the call however for Chess to evolve is nevertheless very real, at least so amongst the creatively passionate, and this is because of what I call 'The Dark Matter Realm'.

This is a region of Chess analytics where the strong tournament player attempts to traverse into the Master levels. The problem is however, such a player often finds himself at a dead-end of knowing all the Openings but UNABLE to advance beyond his inevitably limited wealth of knowledge.

Thus if you are stuck in between the realms of very strong but NOT a Grandmaster, then what you often find is a LACK of study material and a LACK of creative opportunity and a seemingly DARK realm of infinitely stale Opening scenarios.

Why? Because whilst you are very good at studying quite deeply the common Opening strategies, you are not very good at delving into the atomic levels of plentiful moves ahead. Thus you become bored and frustrated by the restricted creativity available to you in the The Dark Matter Realm.

Aye indeed, new flank ideas are always emerging, such as the Mujannah Opening ~ PDF ↷, one I very much adore myself, but it is this very limitation of alternative first moves which casts a depression over the average club & tournament player's game whence attempting to advance one's creativity.

After four decades now of playing Chess and seeing the same old Kt-K/QB3 pin over and over again, my mind has simply decided, "NO - we need a better game."

Jepps64 is an attempt to bypass The Dark Matter Realm, hereby allowing richer creativity amongst club & tournament players who cannot, at least not yet, study the atomically deep algorithms of their Masters. Jepps64 proposes only two new rules, yet which, if you think about it, actually preserve the Classical beauty of the game, all whilst simultaneously creating a new and more infinite wizardry.

Thank you for reading.

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