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Symmetric Chess-Like Games

Informally, a symmetric chess-like game is a two-player game of perfect information, in which the two players move pieces along specified directions, across rectangular boards. Different pieces have different powers of movement, capture, and promotion, and interact with other pieces based on ownership and piece type. Goals involve eliminating certain types of pieces ( eradicate goals), driving a player out of moves ( stalemate goals), or getting certain pieces to occupy specific squares ( arrival goals). Most importantly, the games are symmetric between the two players, in that all the rules can be presented from the perspective of one player only, and the differences in goals and movements are solely determined by the direction from which the different players view the board.

As an illustration of how chess-like games are defined in this class, Figure 3 presents a grammatical representation of the complete rules for American Checkers as a symmetric chess-like game.