Senterej

Alternate Names

Others spellings include Sunteridge or Shunteridge. The name is an obvious derivation from Shatranj.

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

Senterej is played on a non-checkered 8x8 square grid. A traditional board was uniformly red with blue lines outlining the square cells.

History

Objective

Play

The most typical characteristic is a mobilization phase called Werera. Players move as they wish as fast or slowly as they like without waiting for their opponent to move. The king can move two squares to the right and the nearer castle can be moved or shifted to the immediately adjacent square. Werera ends until after the first capture. Then, the players move alternately as in the modern western game.

III. Senterej (Ethiopian Chess) Board Setup: • Non-checkered 8x8 Board with 64 squares available for the movement of pieces. • There are 16 pieces for each player; named: Name Pieces Meaning Negus 1 King Fers 1 Counselor (Ferz) Saba 2 Elephant Ferese 2 Horse (Knight) Der 2 Castle (Rook) Medeq 8 Pawn King: During setup, the King is always placed in the central square that is on the player’s right (i.e. Kings are not facing each others). Other Pieces: Same as in International Chess Piece Moves: Same as Shatranj Pawn Promotion: A pawn reaching the last row could be replaced by any of the player's pieces, which had by then been captured. Special Rules: Werera (Ethiopian Ta'biyat)10: The Ethiopian chess game starts with the Werera (Mobilization Phase), during which the players move as fast as they wish without waiting for their opponent to move (i.e. both players may move simultaneously). During this mobilization phase (Ta'biyat), the king can move two squares to the right and the nearer castle can be moved or shifted to the immediately adjacent square (i.e. castling, but only to the right of the king). Players can play as many moves as they wanted, at high speed, until the first capture; after which, the Werera phase ends and the players will start to move alternately (one player making one move at a time) for the rest of the game. • The goal of the game is to Checkmate the enemy King. • There is no initial two-step Pawn move. • There is no Castling option after the Werera Phase. • Stalemate counts as a draw. • In www.pathguy.com applet of Ethiopian chess, which cites Pritchard’s Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, they stated that the game is considered a draw if a bare king is able to make seven moves without being checkmated by the opponent. 10 The above Werera rules were stated by Richard Parnkhust, in an article for the 1971 May-June issue of Ethiopian Review Magazine. Below, I reconstructed an alternative Werera rules based on the Arabic Ta'biyat: • The opening player makes 10 moves at once to arrange his pieces • Then, the second player makes his first 10 moves in reply. • Special rules that apply during this phase: 1. No piece is allowed to cross the board's centerline 2. No capture is allowed 3. Castling to the right is allowed & considered to be one move 4. Castling to the left of the player is not allowed

Strategy

Variations

Sources

  1. Senterej, the Ethiopian Chess. http://history.chess.free.fr/senterej.htm