Why Racing Kings should be played more!

Let's be honest - Racing Kings is probably (definitely) the least played variant on Lichess. This may be because Racing Kings , at first sight , is almost like a completely new game. However , there are a few aspects which I personally believe makes Racing Kings more fun than normal chess , reasons that I will show you today.

My Personal Experience:

I first discovered Racing Kings 2 years ago , while I had just found out about variants and was trying to find a variant which intrigued me. However , maybe it is because I have not just reached that level of professionalism yet , but the majority of the variants (apart from Chess960 and Horde) seems to have extremely repetitive openings which eventually bored me out. However , Racing Kings was different.

These are the following reasons for why I personally think RK should be played more:

Reasons why you should play RK

1. It's fast . I don't think I've ever played a RK game that has lasted more than 10 minutes. Why? Because it's easy to understand if you study it enough . It's also good for those who have limited time to play chess because they can just hop onto the hourly 1+0 RK tournament
2. It's different. In all the other game modes , the aim of the game is to checkmate or (in atomic) blow up your tournament. However , RK is different . The aim is to get your king to the other side of the board before your opponent. Something that I like about RK is that you can apply some of the same strategies in normal chess to RK but using the strategies in RK seems more fun
3. The comebacks . In high level chess , losing a pawn can easily lose you the game. 1 wrong move and you've lost. RK on the other hand is much different. It isn't that uncommon for someone to win , 25 points of material down. This is what makes RK so fun. It can be much harder to predict the outcome of which can lead to some crazy finishes.
4. It has some features of real chess. In chess , you try your best to protect your king as best as possible while trying to launch a successful attack on the enemies king. Unless you are doing ultrabullet , this is what you are trying to achieve , especially considering the fact that the most played mode is Rapid. However , as RK is playing in much lower time periods , people use multiple strategies - Trying to get your king to the end , trying to flag your opponent in a 30 second duel , trying to trap your opponents king at spawn , the opportunities are endless
5. Easy to learn/ Free Leaderboards. In my opinion , RK is extremely easy to study . For example , my average rating in variants/real chess is around 1500-1700 but in RK I am in the 2100s as I find this the easiest variant to play. If you want to get high on the Leaderboards but you are not willing to spend your entire day playing normal chess , well my friend let me introduce you to Racing Kings. To learn RK , honestly just learn 5 openings , how to counter them and the first 4-6 moves of them.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading and if you haven't played RK yet /don't play that much, I hope this blog has persuaded you to do so more!