Variant idea: Veto Chess

Prior to the start of the game, Black chooses one opening move that White is not permitted to play.

For all subsequent moves, after you move, you must specify one move to veto, and your opponent is not permitted to play that move.

If your move leaves your opponent with only one legal move, you must choose that one.  Since your opponent has now been left without a legal move, it is either checkmate or stalemate, depending on whether or not they are in check.  Thus, an unprotected queen in front of a king on the edge of the board would be checkmate if the queen is not threatened by another piece, since the obvious KxQ would be vetoed.  Smothered mates by unprotected knights would be a greater danger than in normal chess.

The strategy will revolve around trying to force your opponent into positions where there is only one good move, while avoiding such positions yourself.  Trading material will become much more complex than normal, as the obvious recapture will inevitably get vetoed.  There would be some crazy tactics where a queen wanders deep into your opponent's territory with impunity since you can veto the capturing move.

It would be interesting to play this variant with computer analysis.  You would normally want to veto the engine's first-choice move - but not always, since engines are not optimised for this variant, and the first choice move according to normal rules might lead to disaster if a subsequent position only has one good move.

You could also play against the computer by assuming that the computer would always veto its first choice move.  I would assume that a human player that figured out the strategy would tend to beat a computer designed for normal chess, since the computer wouldn't know to avoid positions with only one good move.

first

Nice

Can we get some examples ?

Great idea! Would there be a period between moves in which the player who just made their move determines what to veto?

One problem would be how long it would take. It would work well in a correspondence format, though.

Sounds really interesting tbh

yeah

A sample game:

Presumably you would submit your move and your veto at the same time.

This would work best in a correspondence format.

Honestly, this is a great idea for many lower rated players, but I would not play it easily.

Fascinating.

Nice idea

Wow! I'd like to give this a try!

This is nice.

Brilliant idea!

I'd love to play this variant!

Can the King step onto a square adjacent to an enemy Queen, and make it legal by vetoing QxK?

Good question!  I would be inclined to say no, as that would eliminate a large percentage of checkmates.

Move 5 I think is bugged