MIRAGE CHESS

The idea of creating a new chess variant came when I caught myself feeling unsatisfied with how chess is played at the top professional level. Every game consists of 20+ moves of opening theory (best moves that have been played in the past and is known to be optimal), while most of the time it ends in a draw. With the help of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Chess has become a game of memorization at the professional level. In the past before the computer era, chess was a game of competing ideas. People could "propose" a new idea for a position through pure reasoning, and positional understanding of the game. Now, all professional players rely on chess engines to crunch the number over night to check if the idea works or not.

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Frustrated to see the limit of such a beautiful game, I wanted to create a variant that is more complex, while also retaining the "elegance" of chess: simple, minimal new rules, and intuitive. I wanted to feel like a pioneer.

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Inspired the Chinese Chess Variant Xiangqi, I decided to add the logical continuations of the Rook and Bishops into this Variant. Combining both Western and Eastern Style into one.

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