'American Chess' basically plays by the rules of standard chess. Each player has a king, 7 primary fighting pieces, and 8 pawns. Unlike chess the 7 primary pieces capability of movement is controlled by the color of the square they occupy any any given moment. The starting positions of the playing pieces are identical to regular chess and the color of the square they are initially on serves as a guide to the relationship between the color of a square and the fighting pieces capability: black = rook; white = knight; blue = bishop; and, red = queen. A player may have no more than one queen at a time except when capturing a pawn or a queen that stands on a red square and in the next move must move one of the queens off a red square. With the exception of the beginning set-up, as just described, the colors of the remaining squares on the board are randomly distributed, there is no symmetry between sides.