The Hexarch guidebook
The rules tell you what is legal. This tells you what is good. Rules of thumb for players who know chess a little or not at all.
What the pieces are worth
Rough trading values, counted in pawns. The surprise: a knight is worth more than a bishop here, because a bishop can only ever touch a third of the board. The king cannot be traded, but in an endgame it fights like a piece worth about four.
pawn1
bishop3
knight4
rook5
queen9
The opening
- ◆Fight for the centre. Push the middle pawns (e, f, g) so your pieces get room. The arrows show sound first moves.
- ◆Bring out knights early. A knight in the middle reaches twelve cells; on the rim it reaches a handful.
- ◆Don't move the same piece twice while others still sleep.
- ◆Keep the queen home for the first few moves. With twelve directions she is easy to chase, and every chase develops your opponent.
- ◆Open a line for at least one bishop before you start an attack.
Living with three bishops
- ◆Each bishop owns one colour. Together the three cover the board; alone, one covers a third.
- ◆Trading a bishop leaves one colour without a bishop for the rest of the game. Know which colour your opponent's king sits on before you trade.
- ◆Put your pawns on cells your remaining bishops cannot guard, so pawns and bishops cover for each other.
- ◆A piece standing on a colour the enemy has no bishop for is safe from every bishop on the board.
Knights are heavy
- ◆Do not give a knight for a bishop without a reason: you lose about a pawn's worth.
- ◆Knights love the centre and the crowded middlegame, where their jump ignores blocked lines.
- ◆A knight changes cell colour in a three-colour cycle, so it can attack what no single bishop can.
King safety without castling
- ◆There is no castling, so plan a walk. Two or three quiet king moves toward a corner behind your pawns is normal.
- ◆Do not open the files in front of your own king. Rooks and queens have six straight lines to come through.
- ◆Before every move, look along all twelve directions from your king. Checks arrive from angles that do not exist on a square board.
- ◆When your king is safe and the enemy king is still in the middle, open the position.
Pawns
- ◆Pawns never go backward. Every push leaves a hole behind it that a knight will love.
- ◆Pawns side by side guard each other's front cells. A pawn chain along a slanted line is a wall.
- ◆A pawn that captures onto another pawn's starting cell gets its double step back. Use it.
- ◆Edge files are short. A pawn on the a or l file promotes after far fewer steps than one on the f file.
- ◆A passed pawn, one with no enemy pawn able to stop it, must be pushed or blocked. Count the race before you start it.
Tactics on twelve lines
- ◆Fork: one piece attacks two. The knight on the board gives check and hits the rook at once, so the rook is lost.
- ◆Pin: a piece cannot move because a more valuable piece stands behind it on the same line. With six rook lines and six bishop lines, pins are everywhere.
- ◆Skewer: attack the valuable piece first; when it moves, take what stood behind it.
- ◆Discovered attack: move one piece off a line and the piece behind it attacks. Check every line you open and every line you close.
- ◆Before you move, ask what the opponent's last move attacks. Turn on threat arrows while you learn the angles.
Endgames: what wins
- ◆King and rook beat a lone king. Push the king to the edge with the rook cutting off lines, as in the diagram, and bring your own king close.
- ◆King and queen beat a lone king easily. Mind the stalemate.
- ◆King and two knights can force checkmate here. In regular chess they cannot.
- ◆A single knight or a single bishop cannot mate a lone king: the game is drawn at once.
- ◆Bring your king to the centre in the endgame. With twelve neighbours it is a strong piece once the queens are gone.
The ¾-point squeeze
- ◆Stalemate is not a draw: it gives ¾ to the side that delivers it. That is better than a draw and worse than a win.
- ◆Winning? Always leave the enemy king a move until you can give checkmate. In the diagram only the arrow is mate; other natural queen moves stalemate.
- ◆Losing? A stalemate still loses most of the point. Fight for a real draw by repetition or by trading down to bare kings.
- ◆Cannot force mate but far ahead? Cornering the king for a stalemate collects ¾ instead of ½.
How to practise
- ◆Start with the first tier of bots, helpers on. Read the badges: ?? means you gave something away.
- ◆Turn on threat arrows until you stop losing pieces to angles you did not see.
- ◆Then switch the helpers off. Several bots unlock only for wins without them.
- ◆After each game press Review and step back through it. Find the first move where the game turned.
- ◆Play the daily duel. One game a day against a different bot builds the habit.