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The Piececlopedia is intended as a scholarly reference concerning the history and naming conventions of pieces used in Chess variants. But it is not a set of standards concerning what you must call pieces in newly invented games.

Piececlopedia: Flamingo

Historical notes

The flamingo is a less well-known fairy chess piece. I know of no games that use it. Torsten Linss has a few problems using the flamingo.

Movement

The flamingo is a (1,6)-jumper, i.e., it moves (with or without taking) one square horizontally and six vertically, or six squares horizontally and one vertically. It `jumps', i.e., it can move regardless whether the intervening squares are occupied or not.

Movement diagram

In the diagram below, the flamingo can move to all the squares marked with a black circle.
Note that on an 8x8 chessboard, a flamingo on any of the sixteen central squares has no legal move (and therefore, a flamingo starting on any of the other squares can never reach the sixteen central squares).









Checkmating

The Flamingo cannot inflict checkmate on a rectangular board with only assistance of its own King, and is thus a minor piece. Even with a pair of Flamingos you cannot force checkmate on a bare King, but paired with another minor this is sometimes possible. Try it!

Written by Ben Good. Thanks to André Heuner for noting a mistake in the diagram.
WWW page created: January 15, 1999. Last modified: November 25, 2003.