"Plurality should not be posited without necessity."—William of Ockham, 14th century
 
With twenty-six chess pieces on thirty-four hexes, Hexes Chess 4-Pawn is a simple well-balanced chess game. It is a compressed chess game, so the pawns do not get two-hex opening moves. The chess board has four files (columns) and nine ranks (rows). Hexes Chess 4-Pawn has a couple of idiosyncrasies. The first is its narrow "lozenge" shape; the second is that it has one extra amber (medium color) hex, giving the bishops that travel on that color a slight advantage over the other bishops.
Hexes Chess 4-Pawn
| number of hexes | pieces per player | game density | degrees of freedom | opening moves | full size or compressed | 
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 34 | 13 | 76% | 430 | 15 | compressed | 
