Relative Chess
A variant of chess where the board moves, rather than the pieces.
Web
Available now
Play at relativechess.org
A variant of chess where the board moves, rather than the pieces.
The selected piece holds its position. The rest of the board slides in the opposite direction.
An 8×8 inner board floats inside a configurable outer board, 10 to 32 squares wide.
Pieces pushed past the outer boundary are captured. Board control becomes its own kind of attack.
Switch between Aristotelian mode (the board recentres) and Leibnizian mode (the board drifts freely).
Castling, en passant, underpromotion, and proper time controls all still apply.
Easy, Medium, Hard — powered by minimax with alpha-beta pruning over the variant's mechanics.
Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, and Classical, each with optional increment.
Pick the palette that fits your mood. Themes toggle live without losing your game.
No tracking, no analytics. Saved games live as JSON files you own.