Raumschach (German for "Space Chess") is a game of three-dimensional chess by Ferdinand Maack (1861–1930). It is the first 3D variant of chess with complete rules that are extant.
Play as:
AI strength:Easy
BeginnerEasyNormalHard
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Beginner — plays randomly from legal moves; good for learning the pieces and rules. Easy — looks 2 moves ahead; plays reasonable moves instantly. Normal — looks 3 moves ahead; a genuine challenge, thinks for a second or two. Hard — looks 4 moves ahead; uses the full evaluation function; may take several seconds per move.
Maackesgeist (the “Spirit of Maack”) is the name of this Raumschach engine. It uses minimax with alpha-beta pruning and evaluates positions according to the piece value hierarchy of Vol. VI — The Piece Monographs of The Complete Raumschach Theoretical Series (Claude, 2026): Queen = 12.0 P, Rook = 5.0 P, Unicorn = 4.0 P, Bishop = Knight = 3.5 P. Positional bonuses are applied based on centrality.
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Movement is explained best in relation to a cube. A cube has 6 faces, 12 edges, and 8 corners.
Rook (R; ♖ ♜) — moves through faces of a cube. Bishop (B; ♗ ♝) — moves through edges of a cube. Unicorn (U; ♘ ♞) — moves through corners of a cube. Queen (Q; ♛ ♕) — moves as a Rook, Bishop, or Unicorn. King (K; ♚ ♔) — moves as a Queen but only 1 step. Knight (N; ♘ ♞) — moves 2 steps through a face, then 1 step through an orthogonal face, leaping from its origin to its destination. Pawn (P; ♙ ♟) — moves 1 step to advance through a face toward its promotion rank, which is level E rank 5 (White) or level A rank 1 (Black). Thus a white pawn at Cc3 has 2 possible moves: forward (Cc4) or upward (Dc3). Or, each pawn moves 1 step to capture through an edge toward its promotion rank. Thus a white pawn at Cc3 has 5 possible captures: Cb4, Cd4, Db3, Dc4, Dd3.
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Raumschach
White to move
White captured:
Black captured:
Move List:How to read the move list ▾
Move notation:PieceLevelFileRank – LevelFileRank (Maack, 1909) Piece letters: R = Rook B = Bishop U = Unicorn Q = Queen K = King N = Knight P = Pawn Levels: A (bottom, White home) through E (top, Black home) Example:NAb1–Bc3 — Knight on level A, file b, rank 1 moves to level B, file c, rank 3 Capture: Replace – with × e.g. RAa1×Ba1 Promotion: Append =Q e.g. PEa4–Ea5=Q Check † — King is in check; game continues. e.g. QBc1–Cc4† Boardmate †† — King in check, mated on its current level, but may flee to an adjacent level; game continues. Spacemate ††† — Full checkmate; no legal escape in any direction. Game over. Stalemate ≡ — No legal moves, not in check. Game drawn. (Our addition; Maack did not symbolize stalemate.) Move numbers count White’s move first, then Black’s; e.g. 1. NAb1–Bc3 NEb5–Dd3