[SamBam]

Hmm, but party of the strategy of this one is that different cells have different odds, and you know those odds. It's not just a random 50% chance, that wouldn't be so interesting.

I could see probabilistic cheese working as each grid square having an odds that the move will "work." Those odds stay the same the whole game. If you try to move from that square, the odds dictate whether you do your move or just lose it and skip your turn.

This would mean that certain squares become very valuable. A queen on a 95% square is much more powerful than a queen on a 40% square. But those squares may not may not be in useful positions. And the battles may be over who gets to put good pieces on those squares.

[JoshTriplett]

An additional possible variation: The probability of a square could determine not just whether you can successfully move from it, but also whether you can successfully capture a piece on it. So, for instance, a queen on a 40% square is much less powerful offensively, but much more powerful defensively, because 60% of the time you can't capture it. You could "hide" powerful pieces on low-probability squares, and you'll have a hard time getting them back out but your opponent will have a hard time capturing them and might not try. (You could either have capture failure leave the piece that attempted capture on its original square, or have the piece that attempted capture get captured.)

Sticking your king on a 20% square would be a great way to probabilistically buy yourself time to bring other pieces to its defense, at the cost that the king can't easily try to escape.

That has a nice symmetry to it, where rather than making 95% always "good" and 40% always "bad", they're both valuable for different reasons.

[nick7376182]

Like chess on a Scrabble board