Now it will take four to tango at chess board

MUMBAI, July 7: Doubles in chess? That's a distinct probablity as two 19-year-olds from Jaipur have shown.Vinod Kumar Sharma and Devendra N...

MUMBAI, July 7: Doubles in chess? That’s a distinct probablity as two 19-year-olds from Jaipur have shown.

Vinod Kumar Sharma and Devendra Nath Sharma, mechanical engineering students of Malviya Regional College, Jaipur, invented this game where two teams of two players each can play chess.

The spectre of dull draws are a kill-joy in normal chess even when two Grandmasters are playing. But in this form of chess, which Vinod Sharma calls `Transverse Chess’, there are only victories…or defeats depending on which side of the board you are.

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Transverse Chess has 128 trapeziums on a board that is shaped like `Chaupad’, the ancient game played by the Pandavas and Kauravas in the epic Mahabharata. Sets of chessmen are are in black, white, red and green colours. All the moves are according to normal chess with the variation being that one cannot enter teammate’s trapezium directly.

One attacks or faces threats from the flanking opponents and the probablity of each move doubles because of the opposing pair.

Vinod and Devendra had made their invention in the December of 1995. “I had come across an invention of chess for three players. But the problem was that if two players decide to cheat and defeat the third player, they can do it,” said Vinod Sharma.

Vinod Sharma says his invention is based on mathematical principles of probability, permutations and combinations, trignometry and the geometry of symmetry.

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So far, however, they have not showed their invention to any of the leading players or the chess association.