Chess on a really big board

Chess on a really big board is a large-format chess variant invented by American chess theorist Ralph Betza around 1996. It is played on an oversized 16 by 16 square board that can be assembled from four standard 8 by 8 chessboards pushed together, giving each side room for sixteen back-rank pieces and sixteen pawns rather than the usual eight of each. Alongside the familiar king, queen, rook, bishop, and knight, Betza's design introduces six fairy chess pieces with their own movement rules, including wizards, champions, fools, archbishops, chancellors, and superknights, each adding new tactical possibilities across the much larger playing field. The variant is sometimes called four-board chess because of how the oversized board is constructed, and it belongs to the broader family of large-board chess variants that chess hobbyists have developed to extend the strategic depth of the original game.