Chinese Chess (Bar-Zim)

:"For other uses of “Chinese chess”, see Chinese chess (disambiguation)."Chinese Chess is a two-player board played with the pieces of Western chess other than the pawns, with dice used to establish initial placement of pieces.

Each player has one "king", one "queen", two "bishops", two "knights" and two "rooks".

The board is an 11-by-6 grid of squares. The eleven files are numbered “2” through “12”, so that they correspond to the possible combined values of two dice. The six ranks are numbered “1” to “6”, so that they correspond to the possible values of one die.:

Using this system of co-ordinates, at the start of the game, players take turns throwing dice to determine the position of "opponent" pieces, until all pieces are placed. If the square selected by the dice is unoccupied, then a player may put any previously unplaced opponent piece in that position.

After all pieces are placed, play proceeds, with the same relative movement of pieces as in chess, until checkmate. Checkmate, however, does not assure victory. Pieces are assigned the following values::

A player's score is the sum of the point values of the pieces that he or she has captured or, in the case of the king, checkmated. The player with the highest score is the victor.

History

Chinese chess was produced by the Bar-Zim Toy Mfg. Co., Inc., with its description copyrighted in 1956.