Monster chess

Monster chess is a chess variant in which material is deliberately unbalanced between the two players. The white side begins with only a king and four pawns, facing a black side that has its full standard army of pieces. To offset this material disadvantage, White is allowed to make two moves in a row on every turn, either moving one piece twice or moving two different pieces once each, while Black continues to play a single move per turn as in standard chess. One notable consequence of the double-move rule is that White's king may move into check and then immediately move back out of check within the same turn, provided both of White's moves are legal in sequence. The variant is flexible in its starting material: besides the classic four-pawn setup, versions exist that give White two or eight pawns instead, which change the difficulty of White's task, and the colors can also be reversed so that Black plays the reduced side. The imbalance makes the game a popular way for a stronger player to give a weaker opponent an artificial handicap while keeping the position tactically sharp.