Chancellor chess is a chess variant invented by Benjamin R. Foster in 1887. It features all the regular chess pieces plus one chancellor and extra pawn per side, on a 9×9 board.
John Gollon, in Chess Variations: Ancient, Regional, and Modern, expressed his belief that a variant like Foster's "will be the next step to the evolution of chess", because the addition of a single piece, the chancellor, a combination of rook and knight, "preserves a symmetry of power" on the chessboard with the queen, a combination of rook and bishop.[2]