Maharajah Game Rules

1. Two Ways To Play

New Classic Game uses the normal chess starting position and standard chess rules.
New Game opens Custom Setup and starts the Maharajah variant from a custom army.

2. Standard Chess Rules Still Apply

Unless a rule below says otherwise, the game follows normal chess:

turns alternate normally
check, checkmate, stalemate, repetition, and time controls behave as in chess
pieces capture and move according to their type

3. Compound Pieces In The Variant

The variant adds three compound pieces:

Maharajah — moves as queen + knight
Archbishop — moves as bishop + knight
Chancellor — moves as rook + knight

These pieces can appear in custom armies and in variant promotions.

4. Variant Pawn Double-Step

In classic chess a pawn may advance two squares only from its home rank (rank 2 for White, rank 7 for Black), and only on its first move.

Because a custom army can place pawns on any rank, the variant relaxes where the two-square first move may start, not how often it happens:

A variant side's pawn may make the two-square first move from whatever rank it starts on, not just rank 2 / 7.
The pawn must not have moved yet, and both squares ahead must be empty.
Each pawn still gets this double-step only once, on its own first move.
A classic side keeps the ordinary rank-2 / rank-7 restriction.

5. Custom Army Rules

In Custom Setup:

each side has a fixed 39-point non-king budget
the king is mandatory and stays fixed — White king on e1, Black king on e8
the rest of the army can be rebuilt freely within the budget

6. Placement Rules

Custom armies must be placed from the home side outward:

White fills ranks from the first rank upward
Black fills ranks from the eighth rank downward
a side cannot place pieces on a farther rank while an earlier rank still has empty squares

This keeps setups dense and prevents unrealistic forward-only deployments.

7. Start Validation

A custom position cannot start unless:

both sides use exactly 39 points
the placement rules are satisfied
the side to move is not already in check
the side to move has at least one legal move

If the position is actually the orthodox standard setup, the app restores the standard rules profile automatically.

8. Classic vs Variant Is Decided Per Side

Castling and promotion are governed by each player's own starting setup, not by a single rule for the whole game. A side that kept the classic (orthodox) starting position — the standard back rank with the king on its home square and both rooks in the corners, all unmoved — plays by classic rules. A side that deployed any other (non-orthodox) army plays by variant rules.

Player 1 start	Player 2 start	Result
variant	variant	Both sides play variant rules.
classic	variant	Player 1 plays classic, Player 2 plays variant (symmetric).
classic	classic	The whole game is classic — the app restores the standard rules profile.

Player 1 start

Player 2 start

Result

variant

Both sides play variant rules.

classic

variant

Player 1 plays classic, Player 2 plays variant (symmetric).

classic

The whole game is classic — the app restores the standard rules profile.

10. Promotion Rules

Promotion choices follow the promoting side's rules (see section 8):

A classic side promotes to Queen, Rook, Bishop, or Knight.

A variant side may also promote into Maharajah, Archbishop, and Chancellor.

So in a mixed game the classic side is offered only the orthodox four while the variant side is offered the compound pieces too.

11. Online Play

Besides same-device games and Local Network, Maharajah can be played online over the internet against another player.

The app connects to a Maharajah server that hosts lobbies and relays the match.

One player creates a room and shares its join code; the other joins with that code.

The server is authoritative: every move is validated on the server and the resulting position is the single source of truth. Both boards stay in sync, and a dropped connection recovers to the server's position on reconnect.

All variant rules apply online exactly as they do offline: per-side classic/variant status, compound promotion, and the variant pawn double-step from any starting rank.

The server version currently in use is shown on the About screen, next to the app and engine versions.

Clocks, Pauses, and Disconnects

In timed online matches the server clock is the only referee — connection state never decides a result, only time does.

Timed matches run on a server-authoritative Fischer clock (base + increment). Flag falls are detected by the server; whoever runs out of time loses (it is a draw instead if the opponent has no mating material).

Each player has one pause per game, up to 60 seconds. It freezes both clocks and shows a countdown on both screens; the pauser can resume early, and after 60 seconds the match resumes automatically.

The same single pause doubles as a disconnect shield: if a player drops while their clock is running and their pause is unspent, the server pauses the match for them automatically. The pause lifts the moment they return (or after 60 seconds). One accidental drop per game is covered.

Once the pause is spent, an absent player's clock simply keeps running — the opponent just waits, no decisions needed. If the clock reaches zero, the game ends on time.

If time runs out before the flagged player has made their own first move, the game is aborted with no result — nobody “wins on time” against someone who never played.

Game Rules