Of course these are chess men. No prize for the guess. But, aren't these slightly different from regular chess men? An Elephant and a Hawk among our regular Knight, bishop and rook? They are not here by mistake, but part of Serirawan Chess, a chess variant dreamt by great Jose Raul Capablanca and brought to life by Yasser Seirawan. Former world champion Capablanca believed chess had no future and it was already 'played out' (even nearly 100 years back) He wanted to introduce two more pieces, One with the powers of a Rook and Knight, and the other with the powers of Bishop and Knight to make the game more complex, and called them 'Marshall' and 'Chancellor' respectively. He also insisted that the game should be played on a 10X10 board instead of an 8x8 one. Yasser Seirawan, with the help of his friend Bruce Harper Christened these new pieces 'Elephant' and 'Hawk' and designed them precisely that way. They called it Seirawan Chess or S-Chess. In S-Chess, the game is still played on 8X8 board, as they thought a 10x10 board would keep regular chess players away from it.
On his coming back to Elite Chess Scene after years of oblivion (he won a top GM tournament in Barcelona in style) , a four time US champ and former world junior Champion, now 51 year old. Yasser says,( in a recently published interview on Chessbase website) he was totally surprised by the progress in chess theory, where a Player wold make even a 32nd move Novelty, where rest of the moves are already part of theory and well known to all top players. And S-Chess is one noble attempt to keep the fun alive on board and to bring back true lovers of chess back to the game.
Read more on S-Chess, and have fun !!
http://www.seirawanchess.com/
