Enkhbayar's Olympiad Chess: Multi-Board Team Matches

In traditional team chess, four players sit at four separate boards and play isolated 1v1 matches. At the end, the scores are added together. You wear the same team jersey, but you never actually interact on the board.

Olympiad Chess turns classical chess into a real team sport. Boards are connected down the middle, allowing teammates to reinforce each other, flank enemy positions, and coordinate moves together.

HOW IT WORKS

The Shared Center (Ranks 4 & 5)

Ranks 4 and 5 form a shared corridor connecting every board in the match.

• Cross-Board Support: Move a piece into rank 4 or 5, and it enters the shared middle. From there, you can cross over to attack an opponent on an adjacent board or defend a teammate under pressure.

• Synchronized Clocks: Turn order isn't round-robin. Team White plans and makes their moves simultaneously, then the clock flips to Team Black.

• Standard Rules: No cards, no RNG, no health bars, and no altered piece movements. Everything operates on classical chess calculation.

FORMATS & ORIENTATION

• 8-Board Match (Esports Focus): The primary competitive format built for parity. All eight players command their own dedicated board along the frontline, giving every participant identical starting opportunities and clear spatial lanes into the shared center.

• Rivalry Format (Olympiad Lineup Focus): Modeled closer to traditional Chess Olympiad setups. Opposing White and Black players face each other directly across four shared boards. This layout brings board-order selection and team lineup tactics to the forefront, while still allowing neighboring games to interact through ranks 4 and 5.

FEATURES

• The Admin Seat: Host lobbies, balance teams, organize custom brackets, and spectate or commentate live. If someone drops out or you want to play, you can drag yourself directly into an open board slot.

• Holdout Armies: When a player gets checkmated, their surviving pieces remain on the board. They can continue to threaten squares and set up tactical combinations to help their remaining teammates stay in the match.

• Custom Matchups: Play uneven team sizes (1v2, 2v3, 1v4), command multiple boards solo, or dial in custom turn rules in the sandbox Skirmish game mode.

• Chess960 & Clocks: Built-in support for Fischer Random setups and tournament-grade increment clocks.

• Bots & Match Review: Play offline against AI, write custom bot scripts, or review and annotate team matches in the replay archive.

If you like classical chess but have always wanted to play with your friends instead of just next to them, wishlist the game and help me to make this variant viral!