Invented by the Hungarian chess teacher László Polgár around 2004. The board is a horizontally oriented regular hexagram of 37 numbered cells — the smallest board in HEARTH, and by far the quickest games.
Thirty-seven hexes form a six-pointed star: a central hexagon with a point at each corner. Cells are simply numbered 1–37, running column by column from the left tip to the right tip and bottom to top within each column — so the board notation is a single number rather than a file/rank pair.
Each player has five pawns, plus a king, queen, rook, bishop and knight. White's pawns start on cells 5, 12, 18, 23 and 29; Black's on 9, 15, 20, 26 and 33. The five pieces are placed on the cells directly behind the pawns — White on 4, 11, 17, 22 and 28, Black on 10, 16, 21, 27 and 34 — in any order the players like, which gives (5!)² = 14 400 possible setups. HEARTH uses the classic arrangement from Polgár's diagram: White rook 4, queen 11, bishop 17, knight 22, king 28; Black king 10, knight 16, queen 21, bishop 27, rook 34.
Slides any distance along the two vertical lines only.
Slides any distance along the four slanted directions.
Rook plus bishop: all six edge-adjacent directions.
One hex to any of the six edge-adjacent neighbours.
Two hexes in one orthogonal direction, then one at 60° — twelve destinations, jumping over anything in between.
Steps one hex forward — there is no double-step — and captures on the two forward-flanking neighbours.
Starchess has no vertex-diagonals: every piece travels through shared hex edges. The rook slides straight up and down its column — two directions. The bishop slides along the four slanted edge directions. The queen combines both, giving six lines, and the king steps one hex to any of its six neighbours. The knight makes the usual hex knight leap with up to twelve destinations — on this small board many of them fall off the star.
There is no castling in Starchess — with only ten pieces a side and thirty-seven cells, the king is in the fight from move one.