High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Minichess is a family of chess variants played with regular chess pieces and standard rules, but on a smaller board. The motivation for these variants is to make the game simpler and shorter than the standard chess. Martin Gardner recommended 5x5 chess variant to fill short breaks during the work. The first chess-like game implemented on a computer was a 6x6 chess variant Los Alamos chess. The low memory capacity of the early days computer required reduced board size and smaller number of pieces to make the game implementable on a computer.