Maharajah and the Sepoys

Maharajah and the Sepoys is an asymmetric chess variant in which one side fields a full standard chess army and the other side has a single powerful piece. Black has the usual chess pieces, called the sepoys, set up in the normal position. White has only the maharajah, a lone royal piece that starts on e1 and may move either as a queen or as a knight on each of White's turns. Black wins by checkmating the maharajah and White wins by checkmating Black's king; there is no promotion. The game is also known as Shatranj Diwana Shah, the Mad King's Game, Maharajah chess and Sarvatobhadra, meaning auspicious on all sides. It is a solved game: on the standard eight by eight board Black has a forced win, although the maharajah can beat a careless opponent by forking unprotected pieces and then driving the king to an edge, since as a royal piece it cannot exchange with protected pieces. Descriptions are traced to the twelfth century Manasollasa, which gives a dice-driven chaturanga variant, and the modern form was revived in the 1871 Indian encyclopedia Kridakaushalya and first described in the Western world in 1892 by Edward Falkener.