An express lesson on how to play antichess (well)

Do you want to start playing a different kind of chess? Do you suck at traditional chess and want to escape to a different life where losing pieces is the goal of the game?

I present to you antichess, a variant that I have shared several times in the community and now I want to make a slightly more extensive tutorial on what the experience of playing this variant is like, so let's start today I will be your antichess teacher

The first thing you have to know is that we start from the traditional initial position, the objective of the game is to run out of pieces or legal moves, it is that simple but there is an additional rule that changes everything

And that is that if we have one of our pieces in the capture range of one of our opponent's pieces we have to capture a piece, every time, it is mandatory and that is what makes this variant a headache for many people.

So, for example, if one of our bishops or our opponent's can capture a pawn, that will be the only move that can be made at that moment, there is no other, that is until the captures are finished or there is a countercapture by our opponent. Normally, antichess games tend to be short, so the time we'll be playing can vary between a minute and a little more, although the tournaments that lichess does can last a little longer

One of the easiest strategies to remember is to keep your pieces as passive as possible, keeping pieces like bishops locked up or exchanging them at the first opportunity we have, it also applies to rooks and queens, which take up the most space in the position

Also, another useful tip is to study at least a little more of the most popular openings, since there are many moves that are obligatory, there may be fixed lines that can be easy to memorize and also work very well so that you don't end up on the mat in the first moves

If you want to train a little with me, I recommend following me here and also on lichess, where I am most of the time, so feel free to invite me to some games