The rules of ChestoniaKärgmale

Chestonia is played on a hexagon of 169 hexagonal cells, seven rings out from the centre. Every cell is named by two numbers, q and r, which you can switch on in the settings if you want to see them.

Two or three people play. With three, the players sit at alternating edges: blue at the upper right, black at the lower right, white at the left. With two, they sit at opposite edges. Play goes clockwise.

Who leads is drawn at random once every seat is filled, and the table is told who won it. Play then goes clockwise from there, so the seating and the direction never change -- only where the circuit begins. On the printed board blue starts, but here blue is simply whoever made the game, and the first move is not the host’s to keep.

The board is always turned so that your own edge is nearest you, whichever seat you have. The pieces stay upright as it turns.

There are four boards. The alternating colours board and the plain board are for the ordinary game. The colour circles board and the dart target board add the dart round, though darts can be switched on or off on any board.

There are three games played on them: chess, checkers and Go. They share the board, the seats, the clock and the dart round, and nothing else — Go in particular has no army at all and begins with an empty board.

Chestonia’s pieces move further and have more choices than their counterparts in ordinary chess. That is not decoration. It follows from the board.

A chessboard has 64 squares. This board has 169 cells — well over twice as many — and it is seven rings deep from edge to centre rather than four ranks. Put the classical moves on it and everything is suddenly too slow for the space it has to cross. A pawn stepping one square at a time would need most of a game to reach the far side. Two armies would spend twenty moves closing the distance before the first piece was ever in danger.

The straight and diagonal directions are the other half of it. A square has four straight neighbours and four diagonal ones. A hexagon has six of each — twelve lines out of every cell instead of eight. A piece that ignored half of them would be a weaker piece on a bigger board, which is the wrong way round.

So the ranges were opened up to match. The pawn runs four cells on its first move and three afterwards, and captures sideways as well as forwards. The knight leaps two-and-turn or three-and-turn, giving it twenty four destinations rather than eight. The rook, bishop and queen use all six of their directions. The king still steps one cell, because a king that outran its own escort would never be worth cornering.

The effect is that pieces meet each other in the opening rather than the middlegame, and a game finishes in an evening. The same reasoning runs through checkers, where a man moves one or two cells and a crowned man flies the whole line: on a board this size, a king that could only land on the cell beyond its victim would spend the endgame walking.

Each player has nine pawns and a back row of eight pieces: rook, knight, bishop, king, queen, knight, bishop, rook, counting from your right. The king stands to the right of the queen. On the alternating colours board the left knight and bishop swap places.

The rook, the bishop and the queen slide as far as they can, the rook along the six straight directions, the bishop along the six diagonals, and the queen along both.

The knight has two leaps rather than one. It runs two cells and turns sixty degrees, or runs three and turns sixty degrees. That gives it twenty four possible destinations, twelve of them three cells away and twelve of them four. It never moves straight and never moves along a diagonal.

The pawn moves four cells on its first move and three after that, along either of the two directions leading away from your own edge. It may also step one cell sideways, but never backwards. It captures one cell away in any direction it is allowed to move, sideways included, which makes pawns far more dangerous up close than they are in ordinary chess.

A pawn reaching any opponent back row becomes a queen. There is no limit on how many queens you may have.

On the plain board, the queen and the bishops may not capture on a back row on the first move of the game.

A player who is checkmated is out. The table is told, and the game carries on between the others -- which only happens with three players, since with two the checkmate ends it.

Their pieces stay exactly where they stand, and from that moment they are frozen. A frozen piece is scenery. It blocks a line the same way it always did, and that is the whole of what it does: it cannot move, it cannot be captured, it never attacks, it never gives check, and a dart that lands on one hits nothing. Nobody may act against it -- not a person, not a bot, not a model.

So a player who is out is out. The two still playing settle it between themselves, around the frozen army rather than through it.

A player who cannot move but is not in check is stalemated. They are skipped rather than knocked out, because the position may free them again later.

The last player still in the game wins. If nobody at all can move, the game is a draw.

Checkers uses the same boards and the same seats. A man is an ordinary piece and a king is a crowned one.

In the normal game you start with fifteen men each, in two rows in front of you, with the rim row left empty and one cell trimmed from each end so your formation sits squarely in front of you. In the long game you start with twenty seven each, in three full rows running corner to corner.

A man moves one or two cells, forwards or sideways. That is four of the six directions: everything except straight backwards. A two cell move may turn a corner, so it can go forward and then sideways.

A two cell move needs a way through. If a cell can be reached by more than one route, it is only blocked when every route is blocked. Any piece blocks a route, yours or an opponent s.

A man captures by hopping an enemy and landing on the empty cell directly beyond it. There are twelve ways to do it: six straight, hopping a neighbour and landing two cells out, and six diagonal, hopping the piece a diagonal away and landing two diagonals out, four cells in all.

A king flies. It runs any distance along any of those same twelve lines, forwards, sideways or back, until something is in the way. That is what being crowned is worth.

A king takes at range as well. It runs down a line to the first piece in its path, and if that piece is an enemy with at least one empty cell behind it, the king takes it and comes to rest on any empty cell further along the line — not only the one just beyond. It still takes one piece at a time: a second piece on the same line stops it, and an enemy with its back to the rim cannot be taken that way at all, because there is nowhere to land.

Capturing is compulsory. If you can take, you must, and if the piece that has just taken can take again it must carry on. Being crowned ends your turn even if another jump is available.

A man reaching an opponent back row is crowned. A player with no pieces left, or with no legal move, is out. The last player left wins.

When somebody goes out with three playing, the table is told which colour it was, and anything they still have on the board freezes where it stands: it blocks and it cannot be jumped, taken or hit by a dart. There is no checkmate in draughts, so that announcement is the only thing marking the moment.

Go uses the same boards and the same seats, and starts with nothing on the board at all. On your turn you place one stone of your colour on any empty cell, or you pass. A stone never moves again. It stays where it is until it is captured, and then it comes off for good.

Adjacent means the six cells sharing an edge, the same six directions everything else on this board uses. A chain is a group of your own stones connected through those edges. Its liberties are the empty cells next to any stone of the chain. A chain with no liberties left is captured and comes off the board at once.

Your stone goes down first and enemy chains are lifted next, in that order. So filling your own last liberty is legal when it captures something: by the time your own chain is looked at, the stones you took are already gone and it is breathing through the cells they left. If nothing is captured and your own chain would then have no liberty, the play is refused — you may not play a stone that only smothers itself.

You may not play a stone that would put the whole board back into a position it has already been in. That covers taking a single stone back and forth, and every longer cycle with it, and it is what makes a three-handed game finish at all.

The board is a hexagon of 169 cells, which is the same count as a 13 by 13 Go board. Every cell has six neighbours rather than four, so stones are harder to surround, groups live more easily and the fighting is looser than it is on a square board.

Passing is always legal and costs you nothing. When every player still in the game has passed in succession the board is counted — two passes in a row with two players, three with three.

Scoring is by area. Your score is the number of cells your stones stand on, plus every empty cell that only your stones surround. An empty region touched by two colours belongs to neither and counts for nobody. There is no separate rule for shared positions; they fall out neutral on their own.

Everybody except the player who moved first gets three and a half points of komi, as compensation for not leading. Who leads is drawn at random here, so it is paid for rather than earned. The half point means a two-handed game can never be drawn.

Highest score wins. Two players who were compensated equally can still come out level, and a shared result is called a draw.

With two players the first count ends the game. With three it is a cut rather than an ending: the smallest area is out, the board says so, and the two who are left play on from exactly the position they stopped at — every stone where it stood, and the run of passes starting again from zero. When those two pass in succession the board is counted a second time and the larger area wins.

It works this way for two reasons. A three-handed game that ended in one count ended with a table of places and nobody to call the winner, which is not how the other two games on these boards finish. And one count is the worse settlement: it lets whoever is ahead sit on the lead while the two behind take lumps out of each other. A cut makes the leader play the survivor out.

The stones of whoever is cut stay on the board and freeze, exactly as an eliminated army does in the other games. They can never be captured and they count for nobody. They still stop a region from spreading, but they lay no claim to it: an empty region walled in by them alone belongs to nobody, and a region walled in by your stones and theirs is yours. A dead colour is read the way the rim of the board is read.

Two players level at the bottom of the first count both go out, and whoever was above them has won there and then. All three level is a shared result and is called a draw, because there is no bottom to cut off.

There is no marking of dead stones and no counting phase to agree on. A group you think is dead has to actually be captured, so play it out. Under area scoring that costs you nothing: a stone played inside your own territory sits on a cell you were already counting.

Nothing on the board can knock you out of a game of Go. There is no check, no checkmate and no stalemate — a player with nothing worth playing passes, which is a move like any other. Only the count can put you out, and resigning; a resigned player’s stones freeze in exactly the same way.

On the dart boards, a throw that lands in any of the three inner zones earns you a free stone, which you play on any cell you could legally have played on. It does not use up your turn. A throw that misses the board costs you a stone.

Either game can be played in reverse, which turns the whole thing upside down. The aim is to get rid of everything you have.

Taking is compulsory. If any of your pieces can capture, you must capture with one of them.

The first player left with no pieces at all, or with no legal move, wins the game outright, there and then.

In reverse chess the king is an ordinary piece. There is no check and no checkmate, and the king can simply be taken like anything else.

Reverse means something different in Go, because there is nothing there to give away — you cannot stop placing stones and there is no forced capture to submit to. So the count is simply read upside down: everything about the game is unchanged, and the smallest area wins.

The dart round arrives somewhere between three and ten rounds into the game, and then comes round again after another three to ten. When it arrives, every player still in the game owes one throw.

On your throw you aim at any cell on the board by clicking it. You choose the target; the board decides where the dart actually lands. The throw scatters around your aim, so a dart is a matter of judgement rather than a free gift.

The scatter is generated on the server, not in your browser. That is deliberate: it means nobody can tamper with their own client to guarantee a bullseye.

Where the dart lands is scored by which ring of the board it hits, counting out from the centre.

Aiming at the exact centre is the greedy choice. The bullseye is one cell, and the scatter is wide enough that you will usually miss it, but the second and third circles surround it, so a near miss still tends to land on something worth having. That is what makes the centre worth aiming at even though you rarely hit it.

Aiming near the rim is the risky choice. Miss outwards and the dart leaves the board entirely, which costs you a pawn instead of winning you anything.

A dart that lands on a piece knocks it off the board, whoever it belongs to, including your own. Kings are immune and stay where they are.

If your throw earns you a piece, you place it yourself on any free cell in your own home rows. If there is nowhere sensible to put it, you may skip the placement.

On the dart target board the five printed circles are exactly the five scoring zones, which is what that board is for.

In checkers there are only two kinds of piece, so the rewards collapse: a bullseye earns a crowned man and the next two circles earn a man.

In Go there is only one kind of stone, so all three paying zones earn the same thing: one free stone, played on any cell you could legally have played on. It does not use up your turn, and a throw that misses the board costs you a stone off it.

The clock, if it is switched on, is per move rather than per game. Every turn starts with the full allowance.

Running out of time does not lose you the game. You forfeit that turn, along with any dart throw or placement you owed, and play moves on to the next player.

The clock is kept on the server and the turn passes on its own, so it does not matter whether anyone is watching the screen.

A king that is under attack and has no legal move is checkmated, and that player is out. That is not a draw. A player who is not in check but has no legal move is skipped instead, and if nobody at the table can move the game is drawn.

Perpetual check. If a king begins ten of its own turns in a row under attack and keeps escaping, the game is drawn. Nobody is going to catch that king, and the player giving chase cannot do anything else while they keep it up. One turn begun out of check clears the count.

Perpetual check only ends the game when two players are left. With three still in, one player hounding another is not a stalemate: the third is free to play on and win, and ending it there would take a won game away from them.

No progress. If sixty moves pass with nothing taken, no pawn or man moved, nobody crowned and no dart thrown, the game is drawn. Anything irreversible resets the count, so a real game is never cut short — this only catches positions where neither side can get anywhere.

There is no check in checkers and none in giveaway, so perpetual check cannot arise in either. The no progress rule covers them both.

The host can change the board, the darts and the clock while the game is running, and can delete the game for good. Everyone else is told when something changes.

The coordinates and the commentator are yours alone. Switching them on or off changes nothing on anyone else s screen.

Clues are decided for the whole table when the game is made, on for everyone or off for everyone, because a suggested move is an advantage and one player having it would be a different game.

So is the level. In beginner play, picking a piece up lights every square it may go to. In advanced play nothing is lit and you find the moves yourself: pick the piece up, click where you want it, and it is played if the rules allow it and refused if they do not. A wrong guess costs nothing at all, not the turn and not the clock. The host sets the level for everyone, and can change it mid-game.

You do not need an account to play against people or against the built-in bots. An account keeps your record, lets people invite you by name, and lets you block anyone you would rather not play.

Seating an AI model does need one. Those seats are answered by a paid gateway, so somebody has to be paying: a signed-in player either brings their own Abacus.AI key, which is used for that one game and never stored, or spends credits from a donation. Anyone at all can watch a game the models are playing.

Everything below is counted from the games played here so far rather than guessed at, so treat it as what to expect rather than as a rule.

A game runs longer than a chess player expects. The middling game is around seventy-five moves; not quite three quarters of them pass fifty moves, and a third pass a hundred. The longest so far ran to four hundred and thirty-seven. Allow an evening for a three-handed game, and use the clock if you want a short one.

Pawns do most of the work and take most of the losses. Getting on for half of all moves are pawn moves, and just under three quarters of everything captured is a pawn. That follows from the board: a pawn that runs four cells and takes sideways is a real attacking piece here, not the slow wall it is in ordinary chess.

Long games tend to end in king manoeuvring. Once the heavy pieces have gone, cornering a king on a hexagon of a hundred and sixty-nine cells is genuinely hard, and in the longest games a quarter or more of all moves were king moves. If you want the win, keep a rook or the queen back for it rather than trading everything off.

The darts pay out more often than they look like they will. About three throws in four have earned a piece to place — but only one in forty was an actual bullseye, so nearly everything that paid out did so from the second or third circle. Aim at the centre for the ring around it, not for the centre itself.

One throw in five has knocked a piece off the board, and close to a third of those were the thrower’s own. Before aiming into a crowded middle, look at whose pieces are standing in it. Roughly one throw in twelve has missed the board altogether and cost its thrower a pawn.

Nothing has yet ended in a draw. The no-progress rule exists and will fire eventually, but in practice games here are won and lost.