The Story
Where it came from, and why it turned out this way.
OriginThailand; the Southeast Asian branch of the chaturanga family
A branch that kept the old shape
Makruk shares an ancestor with international chess but never went through the "mad queen" reform of the 15th century. Its met still moves one square diagonally, exactly like the firzan of Persian shatranj, and its khon moves forward and on all four diagonals, identical to the silver general in shogi. What you are looking at is roughly what chess looked like before the reform — except that this version spent another thousand years evolving independently in Southeast Asia.
The whole game is compressed into an endgame
Two changes define the character of the game: pawns start on the third rank and promotion happens on the sixth. The first puts the armies in contact by move three or four; the second means a pawn needs only three forward steps to transform. Add a queen and a bishop-equivalent that each move one square, and nothing on the board sweeps except the rook. Makruk is heading for an endgame from move one, and every middlegame trade accelerates the trip.
Why a counting rule exists at all
With material this weak, once the last pawn disappears the stronger side frequently cannot force mate, and the game would simply never end. Makruk's solution is refreshingly direct: when the board is pawnless, a count begins with an explicit move ceiling based on what the weaker side's opponent still has — 8 moves with two rooks, 16 with one, 22 with two khons, 32 with two knights, 44 with one khon, 64 otherwise. Exceed it and the game is drawn. It is not an anti-stalling clause so much as a way of turning "do you actually have a mate?" into a number.
One of the few places chess did not displace
Almost everywhere in the world, local chess traditions were pushed to the margins by the international game. Thailand is a striking exception: makruk remains the most popular board game in the country, with far more players than chess. It has even shaped the engine ecosystem in return — the multi-variant engine Fairy-Stockfish treats makruk as a first-class variant, and that is the engine powering the AI on this page.
- Promotion in makruk has exactly one outcome, a met, which is among the weakest of the major pieces — so promotion here is slow accumulation rather than the explosive power of a new queen.
- The khon moves identically to the silver general in shogi, generally read as a parallel trace left by the chaturanga family evolving separately in East and Southeast Asia.
- Cambodian ouk chatrang is very close to makruk and the two are often discussed together; the differences lie mainly in the opening and in some endgame adjudications.
Complete Rules
Start with what a turn allows and how the game is won.
- Board
- 8 × 8 squares
- First move
- White
- Character
- One-square queen, pawns start on rank 3
- Winning conditionyou win by checkmating the enemy king (Khun) — it is in check and cannot capture, block, or escape. White moves first, players alternate, and every turn must move a piece. If the side to move has no legal move but is not in check, it is stalemate and the game is a draw.
- The starting setup differs from chess: both sides place their pawns on their own third rank (White on a3–h3, Black on a6–h6), and the back rank runs rook, knight, khon from the edge inward, with the king and queen in the middle. White's king stands on d1 with its queen on e1, while Black's king stands on e8 with its queen on d8 — so the two kings do not start on the same file.
- The king (Khun) moves exactly like a chess king, one square in any of eight directions. There is no castling in Makruk, and this implementation offers no castling of any kind.
- The rook (Ruea) is identical to a chess rook, sliding any distance along ranks and files, and it is the only long-range piece on the board. The knight (Ma) is identical to a chess knight, moving in an L and jumping over other pieces.
- The queen (Met) moves exactly one square diagonally per turn. It has nothing in common with a chess queen's reach and is in practice a little weaker than a bishop.
- The khon moves one square diagonally in any direction, plus one square straight forward — five directions in all. It cannot move straight backward and cannot move sideways. Its movement is identical to the silver general in shogi.
- The pawn (Bia) moves one square straight forward and has no initial double step, so en passant does not exist in Makruk. It captures one square diagonally forward, exactly as in chess.
- Promotion comes early, on the sixth rank: a White pawn promotes the moment it reaches rank 6 and a Black pawn on rank 3, which is precisely the opponent's pawn starting rank. The only possible promotion is to a Met — there is no dialog and no choice of rook or knight — and it is written =ม็ in notation.
- When in check you must respond, and any move leaving your own king under attack is illegal. If no legal response exists, you are checkmated.
Your First Game
Use this order of thought to get through a complete game quickly.
- First notice how cramped the opening is. White's b1 knight has exactly one destination, d2, because its own pawns occupy a3 and c3; the g1 knight likewise has only e2; and the rooks have nowhere to go except a2 and h2. Developing anything requires pushing a pawn first, and which pawn you push essentially determines the structure of the whole game.
- A common start is to push the d-pawn or e-pawn one square, freeing diagonals for the khon and the met, then route the knights through d2 and e2 toward the center, and advance the khons from c1 and f1 into the d2/e2 area to form an advanced outpost.
- Pawns start on the third rank, so they need only three forward steps to reach a promotion square — far shorter than in chess. By move five or six you should already be calculating which pawn could safely make those three steps and which enemy piece is positioned to stop it.
- Do not import the chess value table. The rook is the only genuinely strong piece here; the met and the khon are each worth barely one or two pawns, so trading a rook for a met is usually a bad deal. The knight is the most mobile piece after the rook, so avoid casually exchanging it for a one-square met or khon.
- Think about the endgame before every trade: once the last pawn disappears, counting starts automatically and the stronger side must mate within a fixed number of moves or the game is drawn. Keeping one pawn on the board is often worth more than winning an extra khon.
Practical Strategy
Move from knowing the rules to playing with a plan.
- Keep your pawn chain intact and advance in groups. An isolated pawn is exceptionally hard to promote here, because no long-range piece can clear its path — only knights and khons can escort it, one square at a time.
- Rooks want open files and want to invade the enemy back rank. Two coordinated rooks are essentially the only reliable way to force a win; a single rook can rarely build a mating net on its own.
- The khon's straight-forward step makes it ideal for standing directly in front of a pawn as an outpost. Two khons defending each other in a file are extremely difficult to dislodge.
- The king is a fighting piece in the endgame. Once the heavy pieces are traded, walk it toward the center to help blockade enemy pawns and cover escape squares.
- If you are winning, you must generate progress actively. Counting does not begin while even one pawn remains on the board, but once the board is pawnless, shuffling around without a plan simply burns through the counting limit toward a draw.
Winning and Special Rules
Details that are easy to miss but can change the result.
- Checkmate wins. Having no legal move while not in check is stalemate and a draw, a third occurrence of the same position is a draw, and a position with only the two bare kings is an immediate draw.
- Counting starts only when no pawn remains anywhere on the board, and it does not start if the stronger side is also down to a bare king. This page begins counting automatically — unlike formal tournament play, the weaker side does not have to claim it.
- When the counted side still has pieces besides its king, board counting applies: the limit is 64 moves, counted from zero.
- When the counted side has nothing but its bare king, piece counting applies and the limit depends on what the opponent has left: 8 moves with two rooks, 16 with one rook, 22 with two khons, 32 with two knights, 44 with one khon, and 64 otherwise. This count does not start from zero — it starts from the total number of pieces on the board.
- If the limit is exceeded without checkmate, the game is drawn. The status panel beside the board shows the current "counted / limit" move numbers, so you can always check how many moves remain.
- Once counting has begun, a capture does not reset it to zero, but the limit itself can change with the material: if the stronger side loses a piece mid-count, the ceiling may become more generous, and if the counted side is reduced to a bare king mid-count, the count restarts from the new total piece count.
- Promotion is automatic and always produces a Met, with no dialog. The promoted piece immediately moves as a Met, one square diagonally.
Common Mistakes
The traps new players fall into most often.
- Using the Met like a chess queen — sending it to a distant square and only then realizing that one diagonal step per turn means it can neither come back nor reach anything.
- Waiting to castle for king safety. Makruk has no castling; the king's shelter has to be built one square at a time out of pawns and khons.
- Assuming pawns promote on the back rank, and missing the earlier and far more achievable promotion on the sixth rank.
- Chasing the enemy king around with a rook in the endgame without watching the count. Once the counter runs out the game is drawn, and an extra rook means nothing.