Traitor chess variant

Some of my friends and I made a variant where, before the game, a piece on both sides of roughly similar value (but not the queen or king) was designated the traitor. However, neither side knows which pieces are traitorous. Play starts as normal, but after a player has just a quarter of their time left, he learns which of his opponent's pieces he controls. He does not learn which of his pieces is the traitor for his opponent. Play continues, and on his turn a player can, whenever convenient, reveal the traitor and use it as his own piece, or he can negate the previous player's move (if the traitorous piece made the move) and make a different one instead.
It was pretty awesome. There all kinds of strategies, such as trading everything or trading nothing, leaving your king less protected, or sacrificing three quarters of your time to learn which piece is the traitor you control. It's a little nerve-wracking leaving your queen somewhere your own knight could get to it, and if your opponent doesn't announce a traitor quickly, you'll not know if it was traded off earlier or if she's just holding it in reserve. Tons of strategies and tons of fun!! I highly recommend it!

This sounds like a fun variant :D I'm a bit scared of the fact that it's turning a perfect information game into lots of chaos but nevertheless I'd like to play that.

I like the idea.

I like these rules, except for the 3/4 time. The best strategy at a high level would just be to wait for that trigger, rather than make a risky move (assuming the game could be finished sanely in the remaining time).

An alternate idea: the traitor is revealed to you when you reach the 6th rank with a piece.

The 3/4 time was pretty arbitrary, convenient to our 5 minute games. There just needs to be some way to delay the revealing of the traitorous piece. I actually really like that 6th rank idea, I'll have to see what my friends think. I also like waiting until move 20 (or some other arbitrary number of moves) as a reasonable substitute.

I think it would be more fun to roll a die after every move, and on an unsuccessful roll your piece betrays you.

We used to play a similar variant. Its called "hidden queen". Both players decide before the game which of his pieces is also a hidden queen and keeps it a secret until the big flashy reveal. Its a lot of fun.

I like this idea Very well thought out.