Extinction chess

Extinction chess is a chess variant invented in 1985 by R. Wayne Schmittberger, an editor of Games magazine, who first published it under the pseudonym Paddy Smith. The game replaces chess's usual checkmate goal with a new winning condition: a player wins by eliminating every one of the opponent's pieces of any single type, whether that is all of the opponent's pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens or the king itself, rather than by trapping the king in checkmate. Because kings can be captured like any other piece, several standard chess conventions no longer apply in the same way; the rules for extinction chess permit castling through check and, in some rule sets, allow a pawn that reaches the last rank to be promoted to a king rather than only to a queen, rook, bishop or knight. This single change in victory condition alters opening and endgame strategy substantially, since players must defend every piece type from wholesale elimination rather than protecting one king above all else, and it has made extinction chess a well known example among chess variant enthusiasts of how one rule change can transform strategy.