Shatar

Shatar is the Mongolian form of chess, also called Mongolian shatranj, and it is played in Mongolia alongside a larger and less popular relative called hiashatar. The two games share the 64-square board and the basic idea of chess, but the pieces have Mongolian names and characters: the king is the noyan or lord, the queen is the baras or tiger, the knight is the mori, the bishop the teme and the rook the terge, while the pawn is the kuu. Several rules depart from the standard game. The noyan does not castle, pawns do not take an initial double step except in the single opening move that begins every game, with White playing d4 and Black answering d5, and in the older rules the knight could not deliver checkmate. Older shatar also used a counting rule called tuuxei, in which a player who left the opponent with two pieces had to give consecutive checks, the number of checks setting the score. Hiashatar is a medieval variant on a ten by ten board with an extra bodyguard piece.