RULES
This rulebook outlines the core rules: how the Meta is introduced before play, how its orientation and configuration determine what it can copy, how it evolves through captures, and how it handles special cases—promotions, special pawn moves, and castling—so you can apply the variant cleanly from the first move.
MANIFESTO
This manifesto explores chess’s key paradoxes—mass appeal yet increasing repetition, human play under machine dominance, and a game built on evolution now resisting change. It frames Metamate® as an overlay that reopens creativity and possibility.
METHOD
The Meta-Method improves chess not by playing more, but by changing how you read positions: the Meta-Piece introduces controlled interference that breaks automatisms, exposes biases, and forces conscious reasoning. It doesn’t teach moves—it trains how to see and decide, as a detour back to classical chess with a renewed perspective.
Coming soon
Metamate™ is a chess variant born from a simple idea: to replace a piece on the chessboard with a new piece that, ironically, does nothing by itself but knows how to copy those around it.
The variant overlays the original rules and, without replacing them, extends them; shifting the classic and "absolute" game of chess into a world of relative mechanisms.
Playable even with a single piece, understandable in four minutes thanks to rules integrated into it, Metamate™ brings wonder back to the heart of the millennia-old game.
By nullifying any theory, it allows two players of very different levels to surprise each other, have fun together, and challenge each other on – almost – equal terms.
Created in Geneva in 2025 by a Swiss designer, the project was praised in April 2025 by 15 of the 30 best players in the world, including four world champions.
Two versions
Metamate® is available in two different size to make both casual and club players happy while fitting to their board size.
