Where Some see a Wheel, Others See a Wheel of Fortune!

This post was first published on April 24, 2014.

 

Hridayeshwar Singh Bhati from Jaipur, India, holds a design patent on a 6-player Chess Game. Not impressed? Ok, let’s picture this. He was born in 2002, so he’s only about 12 years old now. Not satisfied yet? Then how about the fact that he has a condition called Duchene Muscular Dystrophy, which has him confined to a wheelchair!

Sinapse Blog finds it extremely rewarding to bring to its Readers, this item of spectacle of a India’s youngest Innovator with many odds mounted against him. We see and salute the innovation here, arguably in its purest form! Hridayeshwar invented this game variant when he was 9 years old and was granted a design patent a year later, in 2012.

Let us now investigate the patented product. A Chess enthusiast and/or a gamer, might find this a straightforward explanation of the game. Others could learn a new game, in the least.

The patented design is of a variant of a standard game of Chess. It can be played by up to 6 players at a time, where the players are divided into teams of 2 or 3. A round of chess is played on a circular board with 228 black and white playable spaces, along with 12 red unplayable spaces. This design incorporates all the standard chess pieces and moves, distinguishing individual teams/armies by their colour.

Just like in the conventional Chess Game, each player begins with an equal number and kind of pieces, and all the pieces other than Pawns are placed at the perimeter of the board. The Pawns are placed in front of the higher-ranking pieces. The Queens are always placed to the left of Kings.

Spaces that are red in colour may not be occupied or passed through. The multi-coloured spaces in the center of the board may not be occupied but may be passed through. Since the multi-coloured spaces are ‘Null’ spaces, all spaces around the ‘Null’ spaces are considered adjacent to other spaces directly on the opposite side of the ‘Null’ area.

All other moves of the King, Knights, Rooks and Pawns are like in the standard game. A Rook or a Queen may not end its move on the same space that it started from, since they may move circularly. When a Queen or a Bishop crosses the ‘Null’ area diagonally, it must continue from a space of the same colour as the one it started on. The piece is moved one space in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction after passing the ‘Null’ space, based on what direction it started its diagonal movement in.

Similar to the conventional Chess Game, when a player is checkmated or decides to resign, the remainder of his pieces are removed from the Game Board. Where teams of 2 or 3 compete, the last team standing, is the winner.

What began as a humble attempt to include all of his friends at once in the same round of play, has now been credited as one of the best innovations in its time and maybe for a long time to come. Thus saying, we leave our Readers to feel their innovative best at all times!

References: here and here.

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