h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Normal Chess:

Chess is a great game and can take hours, or hardly any time at all. There are many variations on chess, including a time limit. What a time lmit means is that each player has a maximum to do win the game in. If a player takes too long on all their moves and their time runs out, they lose the game. Although time limits are usually set to 20 minutes for each player, the game can become fast paced and mistakes can be made near the end of the match.

Some internet variations of the game have had time limit as low as 1 minute, where the name of the game is doing your moves as quick as possible and surviving so that the other player times out first.

Kung Fu Chess:

One of the most strangest variations of chess is a version of chess called Kung Fu Chess. This can be found at www.shizmoo.com .

Kung Fu Chess works differently to normal chess, as all pieces can move at once. In this, both players are moving pieces at once, wih the first person to take the King being the winner. After a piece is moved it has a waiting time where the piece cannot be moved. Both the speed of the pieces moving and the waiting time are set by the players.

Kung Fu Chess also ahs the option of a 4 player mode, where the objective is the same, and there are pieces on all 4 sides of the board. For the 4 player mode, 2 rows are added on each side of the board for the pieces to start on.

2 other variations of chess have appeared using Kung Fu Chess.

The first is called 'War', and can be played by 2 or 4 players. In both, the players set up the game between themselves so that they each have 4 Queens, 1 King, 1 Bishop, 1 Knight and 1 Castle. Each pplayer then sets up their pieces in any arrangement they like on their side of the board. Once all players are ready, the game starts and is played like normal Kung Fu Chess.

The second Kung Fu Chess variation is called 'Frog'. This is a 4 player only variation. In this, the players are only allowed to move their knights. The game is played in the same way however.

The game of ches can be varied so easily, whether it be using proper pieces, or online versions. Either way, the game of chess is no longer a simple basic game, but a game that can have a lot of varieties and styles to keep you interested.



spook

Hello

Right, as best as I can remember it (I'll check and come back to correct myself if I get it wrong) is the mythical story of the start of chess:

One day a man decided to show the matharaja (I have no idea how to spell it) the worth of ever person in his kingdom, so he created chess. And having been shown the worth of every person in the kingdom, no matter rank, the matha-thingy was so grateful and asked the man what he wanted as a reward. The man considered it, I would like one grain of rice for the first square on the board, two for the second, 4 for the third, and so on for all the squares on the board. The matha-thingy says is this all, it seems so little and grants it, little realising if he did the math, he had just promised an amount of rice greater than the output of china.

I'll go back and check this, as I think it's an interesting story.

Researcher PSG

Another variation on chess is suicide chess. The aim is to lose all your pieces first. The king can be taken and there is no check.

I believe that chess originated in Persia but that the queen originated in India. Apparantly some top dudes wife was annoyed with him and so to placate her he invented the queen and made it the most powerful piece on the board.

there's a pack of cards you can get called nightmare chess. rules are: draw a card, then move a piece.

the cards have things on them like:
for the next move any of your pawns can move like bishops.
Spy! one piece of the opposite colour can act like your colour
Earthquake! Move the chessboard 90 degrees clockwise. keep playing in the same direction.

about chess:

chess is thought to have originated in what is now northern India or Afganistan sometime before 6OO AD: the oldest written references to chess date from then.

Interest in chess followed early trade routes out of India. One variation of chess (called Shogi) is now popular in Japan; another variation is played in China. Many local variations in chess rules persist even today in isolated rural areas, for example in India.

The variation familiar to Europeans and Americans traveled through Persia to the main commercial centers of Italy and Spain by about 1000 AD. From there sea-faring Vikings carried the game into Scandinavia and Iceland. By 1100-1200 AD, the game became known in central Europe, and was well-established across all of Europe by 1400 AD, with the game rules which we use today.

so there.

For those interested in Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (which is structured on a chess-game theme) I recall that it has been determined that all the 'moves' made in the book could constitute a genuine legal game of chess - as long as you allow the variants in chess rules extant in Victorian times, that it is known Charles Dodgeson (Lewis Carroll's real name) had in his possession; rules that could allow the players to take moves out of strict alternating sequence for instance.

Pimms (Lewis Carroll fan)

It doesn't surprise me that Lewis Carroll was a keen chessman because I'd heard he was a top class mathematician.

Sorry about the pedantism it is Knightmare Chess (geddit ) and it is one of many excellent products from Steve Jackson Games Again I apologise for the pedantism Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

i love chess its the best game in the world
but you made it very boring.

Chess is never boring...
and hey,you guys forgot to mention the Wizard chess played by our dear ol' harry

What about that weird 3-D chess that they used to play in the original Star Trek. Was that pretend or real?

On the show, at least, no-one came up with any specific rules for three-dimensional chess, so fans were forced to create their own. A rather shiny set was released on mail-order by a company (I think) called Franklin Mint (please somebody try and verify this, cos I'm not certain).

I have a copy of this version of 3D chess. The "board" is actually seven small boards, three 4x4s and 4 2x2s, making up 64 squares. These larger boards are positioned over each other so that eight squares of the lowest board are overlapped by the middle board, and the eight squares not overlapping the lower board are overlapped by the upper board. Therefore you have two ranks of lower board non-overlapped, two ranks of lower and middle, two ranks middle-upper, and two ranks upper, making 8 ranks from one end to the other. The smaller boards are connected to the rest of the frame by little pipes and they're initially positioned over the corners of the 8x4 larger 3D board.

It's not really a 3D game as such, more a variation on 2D chess. The game is played as though you're looking down on the board from above (one good reason why the board pieces are transparent). From this perspective, it's possible for more than one piece to be in the same square at the same time. If a piece is on the middle board, there will be another square directly above or below the square the piece is on. The pieces move exactly as they do in normal chess, and can move as normal across the topological board around other pieces by moving over or under them as appropriate, and choosing at the end which board to be on. This has the amusing effect of having a pawn on the bottom board being capable of capturing pieces on the top board if you don't pay attention.

From what little I've been able to play it (a £150 gold-silver plated chess set isn't something you carry around everywhere) the role of the bishop is substantially reduced (as it normally can't go more than 3 squares in a straight line) while the rooks are more powerful, but take far more time to enter the game due to their set-up positions.

I hope this provides some description of the system.... if more is wanted, let me know.

the rule system for suicide chess used at my old club was this: all pieces move as normal, there is no check. If you can take an opponent's piece, you have to, but if there's more than one candidate, you can choose which one to take. The winner is the player with no pieces remaining.

"Exchange" was another popular variant, because it allowed 2-4 players to play in one game. I'll describe it as for a four-player game, cos it's easier that way.
The four players divide into two teams, sitting on opposite sides of the table with two chess sets between them. Each player will play against the person directly opposite them, using the chess set inbetween them. The boards are set up as per a normal game of chess, but so that each team plays both a white army and a black army.
The game is played perfectly normally until pieces are captured, and herein lies the variation. Any pieces captured are passed along to your teammate - meaning that if a white player captures (e.g.) a black rook from his opponent, his black-playing teammate gains a black rook in reserve.
If a player has pieces in reserve, then they may choose to place one of these pieces on the board instead of moving a piece already on the board. The restrictions are that a piece must be placed on an empty square, such that it does not immediately cause check (or checkmate). If the piece is a pawn, it can't be placed on the first, seventh or eighth ranks.
The game ends when both individual games end. When one of the individual games end, all the pieces currently associated with that game (either on the board or held in reserve for that board) are kept there, and play no further part in reinforcing their teammates' game.
The two- and three-player versions simply meaning taking a player off one of both teams, so one or two players will have two boards to control (mmmm, megalomania )

"Chess-39" is a variation I came up with which hasn't been fully playtested. It requires a board and a lot of chess pieces, but not necessarily actual chess sets.
The origin is simple enough; there's a scoring system for chess, based on the pieces remaining on the board, for deciding who wins if the game can't be ended properly: pawns are 1, knights and bishops 3, rooks 5 and the queen 9. A standard chess army therefore makes 39 points plus a King.
Here you select an entirely new army which adds up to the same value. The only limit is you can't have more than thirty-two pieces. Thirty pawns, a queen and a king is perfectly legal, as is four queens, a knight and a King. Set-up: the King starts on his normal square. Other non-pawns are set up as the player wishes on the first rank. if there are too many pieces (e.g. a thirteen-knight army) they may set up on the second rank. Pawns must then set-up as much as possible on the second rank, then fill any spaces on the first rank, then the third rank, and then the fourth. Two thirty-pawn + queen armies will fill the board at set-up.
It's a fun variation, it does require a lot of available pieces, and if you face a chess-39 army with a regular army you soon learn the value and balance of the pieces in the regular army.

on the origins of chess.... I heard it was a 9th century game played between arab kings, who would use chess to fight their wars. Whichever king won the game won the war. Very sensible. The word "checkmate" comes from the words "shah mat" which means "the king is dead" - and therefore, the end of the game.

i knew there was something i forgot to mention, and 3D Star Trek chess was it. It's unfortunate that these types of Chess sets are expenssive and specially made, as it would certainly make chess seem a lot more exciting, with a lot more skill and thought required to play it.

The fact that 3D chess has been developed, and will hopefully be developed more in the future as a game everyone can buy cheapily and play, could mean that Star Trek ha actually changed the future to meet the future. By creating a 3D chess in the series it has in fact begun to be used nowadays and in the future will probably be used more, and by the time of Star Trek it probably will be the type of chess everyone plays.

spook

Lots of info to be found on this topic.

Chess originally had very different moves and types of pieces. The rook, knight, bishop, and pawn represented the 4 divisions of the Indian army. Originally, those 4 pieces were the elephant, the cavalry, the foot-soldier and another division (can't come up with it now.)

The queen was extraordinarily weak. She gradually gained more power throughout the Middle Ages until she emerged as the most powerful piece. (I think other pieces lost power as well, but not sure).

A variation:

I have heard this called Old Chess, but not from anyone with authority. Has anyone else heard of this?

Old Chess is played in the same fashion as standard chess, except the queen moves as a rook and a knight, rather than a rook and a bishop. Makes for a very different style of play.

[Damaged fragment of a story allegedly transcribed by Sir Richard Burton from his travels near Makkah, 1897. ('The Assassin King', Michael D Chamberlain, Oxford Associated Press, 1988).]

[ ] Ali Mohammed Ishtar Hassan, chief aide to his Holiness, Hassan I Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, [ ] deed he achieved for the great Assassin King, beloved by Allah. He will surely live in the Garden of Plenty, on the right hand of Allah.
His Holiness, the Old Man, came to him and asked him to create a present to give to a beautiful princess, [ ]dhi Ramalaghah, [ ] west of the Hindu Khush. This present, he was told, must be beautiful, unique [ ]ull of the strategies of the generals, the love between a king and a queen, the secretive killings of the Hashamites, and the bea[ ] Allah. [
] set to work, taking advice from philosophers, kings, silversmiths, generals, jewellers architects, all the great thinkers of the region. He worked, filled with the strength of a thousand men and the mind of a hundred [ ].
[ ]fter twenty-three years of designing, writing, destroying pages of rules, patterns, pictures, images and symbols, he was finished.[ ] He had completed the most perfect present in all the world.
He had created a game for kings[






]resented to the Old Man of the Mountain in a deep teak box, with gold brace, hinges and buckles. The lock on the box was the most fiendish ever designed; Even the most dedicated thief would spend a hundred years before the secret to open it would be revealed.
Inside was a flat piece of marble, two cubits per side, sectioned off into black and white squares. On top of this were figures that appeared to be carved out of gold and silver. There were soldiers, priests, kings and queens, all delicately wrought out of the finest quality gold and silver, festooned with gems picked from all the corners of the kingdom. The rules were bound in horse leather from Arabia, picked out with gold leaf [


]smiled at him and answered 'it is everywhere and nowhere. It is in the courts if kings, the dirt of battlefields, the minds of generals. Yet I have captured it and given it away like it was worthless. One day, people will understand its value.'
With that, the Old Man of the Mountain waved him away and went to sleep.