Millennium 3D Chess is a variant

Chess variant

A chess variant is a game related to, derived from or inspired by chess. The difference from chess might include one or more of the following:...

 created by William L. D'Agostino in 2001 employing three vertically stacked 8×8 boards. The inventor describes his objective as "extending the traditional chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 game into a multilevel environment without distorting the basic game".

The 8×8×3 geometry is a popular one with 3D chess

Three-dimensional chess

Three-dimensional chess is any of various chess variants played on three-dimensional boards. Three-dimensional variants have existed since the late 19th century, one of the oldest being Raumschach , invented in 1907 by Dr. Ferdinand Maack and considered the classic 3D game...

 inventors as several proprietary variants exist. D'Agostino has made available a free, downloadable set of rules as well as a small but growing online library of recorded games.

Move notation

The three board levels are denoted 1 (White's

White and Black in chess

In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...

 board), 2 (middle board), and 3 (Black's board). Moves of a game are recorded in the same way as chess, using algebraic notation

Algebraic notation

Algebraic notation can mean:* In mathematics and computers, infix notation, the practice of representing a binary operator and operands with the operator between the two operands...

, with the only difference that each square is prefaced by its level number.

For example, in chess, White's king

King (chess)

In chess, the king is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that its escape is not possible . If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove the threat of capture on the next move. If this cannot be...

 starts on e1 and Black's king starts on e8. In Millenium 3D Chess, White's king starts on 1e1 and Black's king starts on 3e8. (And so on.)

Sample game

George Davis–William D'Agostino, corr.

Correspondence chess

Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...

2006:

1. N2g3 B2b7 2. B3e3 N3c6 3. N2b3 B2g7 4. N2a5 Q1b6 5. N3c5 Qx1b2 6. Nx3b7 Q3b4 7. N3c5 Q3e1+ 8. Q2e1 Q3c3+ 9. K2f1 Qx1a1 10. Q2c1 B2a6+ 11. 2e2 Qx1a2 12. N2c7 R2h7 13. N1e7+ K2e8 14. N1c6 R1c8 15. Nx3c7 Rx1c2 16. Q2c7 Q2b1+ 17. K1g1 N3e5 18. Q1d7+ K2f8 19. B2f4 Q2d1 20. Bx3e5 Q3e1+ 21. K2g1 Qx3e5 22. Q2e7+ K1g7 23. Qx3d7 B2d4+ 24. 2e3 R2c1+ 25. K1g1 Q3g3+ 26. 2g2 R2f1+ 27. Nx2f1 B3e3+ 28. 2f2 Qx2f2# 0–1

External links

• Millennium 3D Chess official site by William L. D'Agostino
• ChessVariants.org the Millennium 3D Chess PBM Game Courier