By Kieron Gillen on June 4th, 2009 at 7:47 pm.
Chess was invented in 1959 by Mr Chess. It’s quite the game.
That running joke first appeared in the pages of the oft-miraculous early-noughties Future PC magazine 101 PC Games (Miraculous because it should have been terrible, but somehow, by dint of the sheer editorial vision of Lee Hall, was actually terribly awesome). One of their pieces of page architecture was a tiny bubble where you had to include a relevant fact to do with the game. Jim and Walker competed to see who could get the most ludicrous “fact” into it. I have no idea whose mind it ejected from – probably Jim’s, I suspect – but “Mr Chess invented Chess in 1959″ was my favourite. It’s a gag which speaks to the station of chess. It wouldn’t be nearly as funny as “Mr Ludo” or “Mr Backgammon”. It’s funny because it’s Chess.
In other words, unlike any other game in the box, Chess is an icon. Unlike any other game in the box, it works brilliantly as a videogame – in fact, I’d argue it was one of the first. And unlike any other game in the game, it speaks to videogames – and many of the subtler things which makes Chess compelling to sub-Kasparov intellects are present in many videogames. And, as such, it’s the game I’m going to return time and time over in these essays as a point of comparison. In a completely unfair way, note why Chess is Chess and Ludo is not Chess.
Fucking Ludo.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves – though worth stressing, by the end of his exercise I want a DEATH TO LUDO movement formed, driven by the proper levels of homicidal fury. Chess was the first game we reached for, set up and dived into. Over our initial moves, we bemoaned our lack of any real strategic knowledge. Somewhat disingenuously, I was doing this while fluffing a four-move mate, which I then explained how I’d fluffed – saying it was about the only early attack I knew – before then twisting it into another mate on similar lines. Which was somewhat cruel, to say the least, and I suspect earned negative karma which helped lead to the string of exciting, crushing defeats that awaited me in the future, on other bloody boards. In the spirit of summer, I took back the final move and played from there, which blossomed into a game which was interesting for the both of us. While I was the slightly more experienced player, by going for such an aggressive opening, I was playing from severe positional weakness, making things really more interesting. And those early gambits gone, I was left with playing chess the way I – and, I suspect, most non-serious chess players play. As in, as a tactical rather than a strategic game.
I don’t have the brain to see the moves in the future. So I played knowing the strength of pieces. This series of exchanges leads to me being a bishop up. I play this, it threatens the Queen. If she fucks up, I’ve got a major edge. In other words, attritional chess. You play until your opponent can’t stop you winning the game rather than playing for the win itself. I think, looking across most strategy games, that’s the difference between amateurs and the skilled. The memorizing of build orders is really just akin to my silly early checkmates – it’s not really skill, at least in a way which is of interest. As you learn, unable to see the conclusion, you play the steps. I mean, that’s how we all play RTS, yeah? I mean, us. Not you. You’re good. Us. The ones who do okay with our friends but lose when we go wild on the net.
(Still, even with our skills, I was amused to see the personality shining through. My Lady played a wonderfully annoyingly deceptive game. Where my attacks were pretty brutal stomping things, her finest moments elegantly set up strikes with a piece blocking the way, then moved the intervening piece to subtly reveal the threat. Which I probably missed. I vaguely know there’s a name for it (Opposite of a pin or something?), but it impressed me. Point being: It’s a game where expression was possible, even at lower levels. How people played said something. It was human in a way that – say – playing tic-tac-toe isn’t.)
I won though. By brutal steamroller attrition. It felt good. The lady felt good losing. It wasn’t just the red wine we found in the flat and drank with little fear. It’s a good game, y’know?
But here’s a reason you don’t often hear when hailing the beauty of chess: It has good graphics.
I was always somewhat enchanted by chess. Part of it is the monolithic cultural part of it – the cold-war proxy of the Fischer/Russians 70s and all that – but it’s a game which works as decoration as much a game. My parents, late in our childhood, brought a fancy board. As far as I’m aware, it’s never been played with. Who cares? It’s beautiful. But, relevantly to videogames, its beauty is one which adds drama and meaning to it. It bears no relation to any battle that has ever been fought, its interactions as abstract as possible – but they become visceral and emotionally meaningful just by the shape of the pieces and the names they carry. They are more than their ludic content – they represent something else, they inspire, they ask us to create narratives from.
Walker, when playing DS Game Slitherlink, talked about how he started to personalise the numbers of the game:
“More peculiar is the anthropomorphism I’ve developed when I view the numbers. Numbropomorphism as someone suggested (I rudely forget who, so fail to award credit). 3s are greedy, boisterous, and definitely male. They bully the other numbers, barging their way through queues and spilling pints. 2s are the very opposite, prim and polite, sensible, and certainly female. They are business-like, efficient and tidy, but remarkably clever. They tolerate the 3s, but find the 1s tiresome. And indeed the 1s are tiresome. Needy cowards, they feebly sit in the way, refusing to help.”
Walker describes it as madness. I say that madness is part of almost every modern videogame we play, and we don’t notice because the steps are eased by the graphics. Even with chess, in seconds we’re aware of a knight and bishop’s personality. The point of any kind of non-abstract representation in a game is to do that, and to elevate the rules. Jim used to say “Graphics over Gameplay” to upturn the oft-stated truism and argue that graphics are gameplay – and in a real way, without a visual part of the game, the game is unplayable (Bar solely sound-based games, of course). Chess shows that graphics elevate a game, even on the most basic level of play. Pawns, Knights and Queens are more fun than pieces 1, 2 and 4.
Good work, Mr Chess.
04/06/2009 at 19:49 Stupoider says:
Chess is a glorious game! :) One of my favourite board games.
Do people agree that it’s a fairly logical game?
04/06/2009 at 19:51 Tom says:
Chess Titans on Vista is probably my most played game.
Love the fact it auto saves/loads so I can dip in and out.
04/06/2009 at 19:51 Kieron Gillen says:
Not how I play it.
(But yeah)
KG
04/06/2009 at 19:58 Vinraith says:
I adore chess, it’s been too long since I played it against a human being. I keep meaning to import Fritz for the DS (you’ve got it in the UK but for some reason it’s not been released in the US) so I can carry it around on the go.
As the standard bearer of the strategy genre, chess’ impact on PC games is fairly profound. In addition to old classics like battle chess, there’s a degree to which it’s responsible for the proliferation of (grand and turn based) strategy games in general (both PC and board). In short: yay chess!
Oh, and it’s also an excellent pie.
04/06/2009 at 19:59 SuperNashwan says:
I’m amazed you managed to finish the article without mentioning terrifying ASCII characters in rogue-likes. Are you really Kieron?
Also, is Jim’s (?) old Devil’s Advocate piece on graphics over gameplay still online somewhere? I remember it caused quite a fuss in olden times on the Gamer forums.
04/06/2009 at 20:00 Kieron Gillen says:
(I almost wrote about Battle Chess – the idea that the pieces fight and kill each other in amusing ways shows how different it is from – say – Backgammon. You wouldn’t have a Backgammon game where the pieces fuck each other up. Chess, for all its purity, tells an easily readable story)
SuperNashwan: Kind of the opposite of my point for once, actually.
KG
04/06/2009 at 20:04 Vinraith says:
I’d never thought of it but you’re right, among “pure” board games it’s rare to find something genuinely narrative like chess. Most universally popular non-video games are fairly abstract and wouldn’t translate particularly well the way chess has.
04/06/2009 at 20:05 Bhazor says:
Fucking ruined by Pawn spam.
04/06/2009 at 20:06 Senethro says:
I’m not sure the comparison between RTS and Chess can be made. When playing Chess I’ve got the analytical, hypothetical gears grinding away. When playing RTS its a purely physical skill – I’m dancing little units about in my opponents face to maximise their effectiveness. Hence, build orders. They’re a mnemonic of sorts to reduce the load on brain processing so I can do the fighty bit of the RTS more effectively. Any and all introspection for RTS comes after the game has finished and am watching the replay.
However, I’d argue that skill at both Chess and RTS is an understanding of not just the basics, but what the game is actually about multiplied by a lot of experience and practice. You can get a long way at an amateur level with good practice of someone elses theories – no need to flex your own brain muscle.
04/06/2009 at 20:07 simbo says:
“One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster”…
..oh, I see. Sorry.
04/06/2009 at 20:12 Zero says:
Where my attacks were pretty brutal stomping things, her finest moments elegantly set up strikes with a piece blocking the way, then moved the intervening piece to subtly reveal the threat. Which I probably missed. I vaguely know there’s a name for it (Opposite of a pin or something?)
If you move your own piece out of the way of another which then provides a threat, it’s called a “discovered attack”. Those can be brutal, particularly if the piece you move can gain its own attack on a different vector.
04/06/2009 at 20:12 Jeremy says:
Kieron, you explained perfectly how I play chess. It is a matter of attrition where I am always sacrificing a piece for a piece, I just hope that my piece is less of a sacrifice.
04/06/2009 at 20:15 Bhazor says:
The RTS/ Chess comparison is a little unfair. Mainly because chess is turn based.
But really if chess was a game it would be deemed too limited with identical sides, only one map (not including those mental three way/3d boards) and no random elements. Now it can be compared to say TF2 vanilla with its three unchanging maps and identical sides.
04/06/2009 at 20:16 Bhazor says:
The RTS/ Chess comparison is a little unfair. Mainly because chess is turn based.
But really if chess was a game it would be deemed too limited with identical sides, only one map (not including those mental three way/3d boards) and no random elements. Now it can be compared to say TF2 vanilla with its three unchanging maps and identical sides.
Also: Edit button? Where art though?
Edit: Oh there it is. Sorry. Please delete please.
04/06/2009 at 20:17 Wirbelwind says:
That was a fun read.
04/06/2009 at 20:20 The_B says:
How dare WH Smith release six more games after this one? I bet they’ll stop supporting Chess now, and they promised they’d keep it up to date like their previous products! Fuckers!
04/06/2009 at 20:21 Oddtwang says:
Revealed check FT
WM!04/06/2009 at 20:22 Tei says:
I always cheat on chess. I don’t want to lose..
04/06/2009 at 20:24 Lack_26 says:
I suck at chess, I set out to be aggressive and soon end up on the back foot. But I fight to the last man God-damn it, I die like a man.
04/06/2009 at 20:25 Gap Gen says:
The king stay the king.
04/06/2009 at 20:26 Gap Gen says:
“Fucking ruined by Pawn spam.”
Is there a version of asymmetric chess? E.g. three queens against 16 pawns?
04/06/2009 at 20:27 SBF says:
“I vaguely know there’s a name for it (Opposite of a pin or something?)”
Sounds like a fork but I dunno.
04/06/2009 at 20:28 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
7 games in 1? That’s even better value than The Orange Box!
Also, I’ve been waiting almost as long for Chess 2 as I did for Duke Nukem Forever. I hope that Mr Chess’s company doesn’t follow the fate of Mr Miller’s.
04/06/2009 at 20:30 Goatman says:
Chess is an awesome recursive single player game with an unlimited number of user generated puzzles.
Sorry my mind is a bit frazzled, and I’m not sure if the above statement is supposed to make sense.
04/06/2009 at 20:39 ...hmm... says:
i have always had bad luck playing chess on computers, against computers etc.
i have just realised why this is – computers play tactical, as do i because i suck. but computers are inherently better at it.
:(
04/06/2009 at 20:44 Malagate says:
I like the idea of chess, but in practice I don’t enjoy playing it! It’s like I can’t think of it as a tactical game when I play, I just see it as a small army and concentrate on a few pieces I consider good rather than using the whole together.
But indeed fuck ludo. Fuck ludo until it’s battered, burned and dead. It’s takes forever to play and is incredibly boring, the only vaguely interesting thing being the choice of which enemy counters you want to land on and send back to the beginning. I watched in horror for about 3 hours during the morning after a new year party as some of my friends slogged through a giant version of ludo, not the kind of thing you want to see in a new year at all.
04/06/2009 at 20:51 James G says:
I played real-time chess once. It was obviously quite a different game, and certainly interesting as a novelty. However I haven’t played chess for years. I still remember the rules, but have entirely forgotten how to apply them. I’m sure I’d be beaten easily by just about anyone.
04/06/2009 at 20:55 Rich_P says:
Chess is a perfect game. Two identical sides, symmetric game board, just your wits against your opponent’s. Thankfully no one has yet applied unlockable weapons and level grinding to chess :p Did you kill my bishop, or was that just his feign-death unlock in action? Ha, good luck defeating my level 10 knights with +1 movement horses of doom.
Now it can be compared to say TF2 vanilla …
Those were the days.
PS: the rook is one of the best game pieces ever, especially the lumbering stone golem version from BattleChess.
04/06/2009 at 20:57 Markoff Chaney says:
My Gods. I love RPS. Thank you for the read. Enjoyable, Entertaining AND Informative. One of my first and favorite puzzle/logic/step games and I still am abysmal. Nice share. :)
04/06/2009 at 21:01 Susan says:
Queens are OP.
Nerf Queens!
04/06/2009 at 21:05 JonFitt says:
I used to play by attempting to adopt my own made-up defensive setup with all the pawns covering each other in a sort of W with bishops out to the wings etc.
I’d either manage that and then start attacking, or the opponent would mess it up in some way, but either way the rest of the game was a reactionary attrition like you describe.
I guess I’m a Chess turtler.
04/06/2009 at 21:08 Malagate says:
Also@ Gap Gen, there is a game which could be considered a little bit like an asymmetric chess, or at least only one that springs to my mind right now. It’s called Thud!, and it was designed with a Terry Pratchett discworld story in mind. A side of dwarves against a side of trolls, all dwarves move like queens but can only take a troll when using a certain formation. Trolls move like kings but can take out any number of dwarves that are in the squares next to them. There’s more rules than that, and I think it’s 8 trolls against 16 dwarves, so very asymmetrical.
04/06/2009 at 21:09 sinister agent says:
Chess is the only game in the world at which it is impossible to cheat without detection. Although if you play with a girlfriend with “distraction allowed, and indeed, encouraged” rules, that is arguably less applicable.
I forget where I read it, but didn’t Prussian army officers have to play chess without any of the pieces on the board as part of their training at one point? They were given only the moves, and everything else they had to do in their head. Makes my mind scream, but I can’t think of a better way to bulk up the brain.
04/06/2009 at 21:16 Sam says:
Great Review! I like chess, but it’s not quite the most elegant of games, to my mind. Ideally, you want a game with as simple rules as possible but which leads to a great amount of complexity. Chess has a lot of rules, but not really that much complexity. Certainly not in comparision to something like, say, Go.
So in conclusion, will you be reviewing Go? (Rhetorically speaking, although it would be nice if you or one of the others did, separate from the 7 that’ll be done anyway.)
04/06/2009 at 21:19 jalf says:
Isn’t Ludo technically outside the jurisdiction of the AIM? I’m not sure we can legally form a DEATH TO LUDO movement without infringing on some other group of angry people’s territory.
It is a terrible game, though.
04/06/2009 at 21:23 toonu says:
Ahh this was a fun read, just the thing to read on a summer evening under the window…that is covered in rain.
04/06/2009 at 21:23 Stuk says:
Oh what’s this bullshit Chess superiority?! You can keep your carefully carved pieces because Ludo has fucking colour. We’ve moved on from black and white! Our circular-based-pyramids-with-spheres-on-top pieces are accessible. You may be the AAA title of the board gaming world, but we have the casual gamers, and that’s where the money is now!
Long Live Ludo! Long Live Ludo!
04/06/2009 at 21:26 Kieron Gillen says:
Sam: Go, alas, isn’t in the box. It may turn up in the discussion, as I talked about it at length with the Lady. Not that I’ve ever played it.
(The *desire* to play something is something else which I may touch on)
Go is more elegant and complex than Chess, sure. But from playing it, Chess’ inelegancy is part of its charm. Two sets of coloured stones don’t have the sexiness of the hard-ass queen, etc.
(And I suspect it’s worth noting that for 99.9999% of players the relative lack of depth of Chess compared to Go doesn’t matter. Depth isn’t the whole point is kind of what I’m talking about. Chess is a great game *even though we’re shit at it*. The highest level of play being the only level of play which counts is something I think that needs to be argued against. This may turn up towards the end of the series when I get to the deck of cards.)
The Wire: Glad someone made the reference. But – fuck me – that scene is terrible.
Stuk 2: What did you make of Ludo 2? I mean, was extra coloured pieces enough for you?
KG
04/06/2009 at 21:26 Dolphan says:
@Malagate: Thud wasn’t really designed for the story – it’s a slightly modified version of Hnefatafl (that may be spelt wrong). Haven’t played Thud, but Hnefatafl is great fun.
In general: CHESS STRATEGY IS NOT ABOUT THINKING AHEAD. Ahem. Sorry.
I was utter rubbish at chess as a child and teenager until I found out at uni that I’d been misled in thinking that getting better was about thinking further ahead. Tactics do involve looking a few moves ahead, but strategy is about seeing patterns and knowing what makes for a strong position – controlling the centre and setting up pieces so they all focus their threat on a weak area of your opponent’s line.
Also, thing about the four-move mate is that it relies on your opponent being a little bit blind, and you can end up getting your queen chased around the board while they get pieces set up. There’s a two-move mate, but that relies on your opponent making a pair of pretty bizarre opening moves.
04/06/2009 at 21:28 unwize says:
I wrote an essay several years ago on expertise in relation to chess for a Cognitive Psychology module.
The key to human expertise, IIRC, is knowledge and pattern recognition. If you’ve seen a particular arrangement of pieces before, you’re more likely to have experienced what does and doesn’t work from that point onwards.
Computers, being unsuited to this type of learning and pattern recognition, need to compensate by evaluating millions of outcomes and picking the one that scores best, something humans are obviously pretty poor at. I’m sure contemporary chess super computers are a little more sophisticated than this, however!
04/06/2009 at 21:31 notarobot says:
clearly i need to stop looking at the internet for a while. the first thing i thought when i saw the picture was, “why do those graphics look so fuzzy? wait, what game is he talking abo– oh.”
sigh.
04/06/2009 at 21:31 Dolphan says:
What do you mean, lack of depth compared to Go? :-p Go might be more elegant, lacking varied pieces, but Chess hardly lacks depth. They’re both insanely complex.
04/06/2009 at 21:33 Gap Gen says:
Ironically, the current version of chess has fewer players than previous versions (some of which had 4 players).
04/06/2009 at 21:34 Bhazor says:
Anyone else here played the more recent Chess Master games? The most fascinating part is that the AI rather than just getting harder on higher levels actually has proper personalities. So you have AI opponents who just attack relentlessly without long term goals, or petulant teenagers who doesn’t actually want to play and just makes moves at random. Its actually quite weird to spot these quirks and how they fit with their little biography. But god I wish that strategy games beside Warrior Kings and Advance Wars would use these AI personalities rather than just “easy, medium or hard”.
Reply to JonFitt
Hey that’s my tactic too! We’re chess pals!
Reply to Sinister Agent
He also invented Stealth Chess, which is like normal chess but with two extra columns and a new assassin character. Terry Pratchett really boggles the mind sometimes.
(Kieron’s really taking his brackets for a walk today)
04/06/2009 at 21:34 Gap Gen says:
Go is still a game that humans are better at than computers. The number of possible permutations of moves is too great to brute-force, so computers have to use tactics like humans do. And we know what the current level of strategy AI is like.
04/06/2009 at 21:37 JonFitt says:
I recently went out and bought a few board/card games that play well with 2 players, and was recommended Pente:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pente
It’s definitely worth a look, it’s a bit like Go in that it’s played on a Go board, but quicker.
@Bhazor
Woo for Chess turtlers! They’re good to play against as they don’t try and mess up your turtling while they’re doing their own :)
04/06/2009 at 21:43 Dolphan says:
@Gap Gen – The relative capability of computers at chess and go isn’t really a good comparison. Time and energy have been poured into making computers better at chess for decades – it’s been a signficant thread in the development of computers (because of the widespread recognition of the problem rather than it having any intrinsic importance). Nobody’s custom-built a supercomputer to play Go.
04/06/2009 at 21:45 Pod says:
101 PC Games? Is that a codename for PCG?
ALSO:
The oppositie of a pin is known as a skewer.
04/06/2009 at 22:05 Pags says:
I am getting an incredible urge to play Archon right now.
04/06/2009 at 22:07 DMJ says:
Ah, chess.
I can master the intricacies of real-time movement, micromanagement in battles, running an economy, researching technology, exploring, and moving and fighting an army composed of land, sea, and air units. I can hold my own when it comes to most RTS games after a bit of practice.
Yet chess, which has NONE of those complexities, is continually beyond my grasp.
04/06/2009 at 22:08 Xercies says:
Ludo is quite boring…but there is nothing more satisfying as the continue kind of getting out people by going over someones pieces and it almost becomes a tit for tat in the end. But it is quite annoying with the you can only take your guy out at 6. It means most of the game is stuck there doing pretty much nothing. But there is some low strategy to it. Especially with blocking, but we never used that so I wouldn’t know.
Anyway chess, I’m kind of opposite, I used to be quite good at Chess as a hild but now i’m completly rubbish. It seemed to me that my Dad always beat me in a 6 turn move which nearly everyone should learn and then throw away.
04/06/2009 at 22:13 Nimic says:
I’m not very good at chess. I just don’t have the ability to plan moves quite a bit into the future. I’ll attempt moves that hinge on my opponent doing something the next turn, and maybe the turn after that, but other than that… no. I just don’t have the patience. Or the skill. Basically, when I (very rarely) play Chess, and it’s usually with equally “skilled” people, it’s not ONE game. It’s a long series of attempts at one-up-manship from both sides.
04/06/2009 at 22:20 Baris says:
You know, I’ve always liked giving an inner narrative to the battle raging across the board as I play chess. I even used to do it with ridiculous things, like having a conversation with my download speed back in the dial-up days and pleading with it to rise, it was sometimes female and sometimes flamboyantly gay, always very picky, but thats a whole other bag of insanity plea.
I just thought it meant I was clinically insane.
04/06/2009 at 22:21 haggard says:
@Gap Gen Is there a version of asymmetric chess? E.g. three queens against 16 pawns?
There’s a “Fox and Hounds”, it involves an advancing full row of pawns vs. one Queen. It’s quite good. The Fox’s (Queen’s) objective is to get past the line of Hounds.
EDIT: Got it – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_and_hounds#Fox_and_Hounds
04/06/2009 at 22:36 Fede says:
Chessboards are indeed a fine piece of decoration, and even Gobans would be, if only they were more widespread.
Go and Chess are similar from that point of view. Maybe Chess’ narrative is more immediate to us westerners compared to Go’s, but I believe they are both capable of delivering something.
Oh, and, Kieron, that is also why I think both games (and checkers too) can be great games *even though we’re shit at it*. The narrative they contain helps immersion, in both there is the possibility of getting satisfaction even for who loses, and there is always a chance for who is behind (with surprising attacks in chess and invasions in go).
Being a Go player I’m very curious about what you and your Lady talked about while discussing Go. Any chance you will share something with us?
@Dolphan: no, but they used supercomputers (Huygens) to run go programs of new generation, which use statistical analysis to find out the next best move. And the history of go playing programs is a pretty long one, even if not as long as chess playing programs’.
If you want to know some more, try this (pages 18 to 21)
04/06/2009 at 22:38 Psychopomp says:
The day someone makes a strategy game that can top chess, is the day no one ever leaves their house again.
04/06/2009 at 22:44 Dolphan says:
@Fede: Thanks, looks like interesting stuff, I’ll have a read when I’ve finished my degree – i.e in 24 hours ;)
Checkers (draughts to me – an American/British thing?) has been solved, bit less depth involved there. Good fun though.
04/06/2009 at 23:02 Fede says:
Draughts/checkers (I have still to understand which one is the proper English name): I think only the regular (8×8) version has been solved, or? Anyways, it was under the assumption *even though we’re shit at it*, as Kieron wrote, so it’s not so important. :)
04/06/2009 at 23:05 Taill4f4r says:
@unwize
I remember a documentary on pretty much that. It explained that players basically reach a level where they’re not really thinking about the moves, as such, they know which move to do just by looking at the pattern that the position of the pieces make. They play so often that they’re applying the same process used for facial recognition but directed at the chessboard. Or something like that.
04/06/2009 at 23:10 Arathain says:
Giant real-time speed chess is fun.
04/06/2009 at 23:16 Ian says:
Chess is just another modern game that thinks having a limited colour palette makes it grim and moody.
04/06/2009 at 23:19 Kieron Gillen says:
Fede: It was mostly explaining Go to her, and why I was interested in and the “depth” thing which has been brought up. We’ll see if it’ll fit in though.
(I was going to fit in something about “solving” games in the Chess essay actually, as it’s something that fascinates me. Perhaps I’ll do it in Draughts/Checkers instead – there’s just too much content in Chess for a single essay)
KG
04/06/2009 at 23:20 Jason Moyer says:
What is ludo? You mean Parchisi?
04/06/2009 at 23:27 capital L says:
Backgammon is awesome.
04/06/2009 at 23:39 spellmaster says:
Spelling fail: “My parents, late in our childhood, brought a fancy board.”
Spelling unfail: “My parents, late in our childhood, bought a fancy board.”
04/06/2009 at 23:42 Funky Badger says:
Not sure Go has more depth than chess – strikes as the kind of topograpical problem given to being sovled by them thinking-machines. I know chess is finite, but the permutations and combinations are up there, surely?
Also – it’s not a symmetrical game – for proof, try playing mirror chess as black. Tempo is extremely important, it’s often worth sacrificing material for time (sacrifice a piece for a gain in tempo) – Napoleon would be proud. (That why discoverd attacks – especially discovered forks are so unpleasant…
04/06/2009 at 23:43 Chryso says:
Nice article, reminded me of some addons I’ve bought (so there’s that similarity too: chess has expansion packs). Very good for leveling the playing field, and there’s nothing better on a friday nite than a bunch of geeks, copious amounts of alcohol, and 4-Way Nitemare Chess.
04/06/2009 at 23:43 Funky Badger says:
Also, no randomness is chess – at all…
04/06/2009 at 23:44 DSX says:
Those graphics are superb, especially the detail to lighting. What shader model is that? Chess itself sounds awesome, will it run decently on XP without dx 10?
…
Seriously though, chess is actually the first game I ever played online. Memories of chess are synonymous with the sound of 2400 baud modems screeching, logging into FICS and enjoying endless hours chatting and playing with people around the world back in the early 80′s. Ahh those were the days.
04/06/2009 at 23:49 Dave says:
Nerf… oh, I’m too slow.
The bishop is a spy!
Rooks take no skill to play, they’re just W+M1.
04/06/2009 at 23:56 PJ says:
“I say that madness is part of almost every modern videogame we play, and we don’t notice because the steps are eased by the graphics.”
I like this sentence so much, I want to have sex with it.
Oh yeah, come on baby… show me your vowels…
04/06/2009 at 23:57 Loki says:
I hate those developers, it took them soooo long to bring it out for the pc, instead focusing on the “mainstream” gaming platforms. Fecking Mr Chess….
05/06/2009 at 00:17 Fede says:
Thanks, KG.
@Funky Badge
Both Chess and Go have no randomness in them, unless you define randomness hoping the opponent will make a mistake. ;)
They’re both non-symmetrical, because the go board has an uneven number of intersections.
Regarding the complexity: in Go there are around 10^170 legal game positions, while in Chess they should be around 10^50 (source for both: wikipedia).
05/06/2009 at 00:21 Kieron Gillen says:
(I also wonder whether the Go/Chess “depth” issue is useful in a few other ways in looking at games. As in, once you pass a certain depth threshold, assuming a human intellect, it doesn’t matter – and there’s issues other than pure numerical depth to a game’s worth anyway)
Not that I’m trying to argue one game is better than another. Just fun issues to think about. People use “depth” as some kind of gold standard – that if a game is deeper than another, it’s intrinsically better. I suspect that’s a bullshit assumption.
KG
05/06/2009 at 00:25 Radiant says:
I play chess @ redhotpawn.com
You can either play other people via correspondence [multiple slow games taking days] or a more immediate flash based blitz game [say a 10 minute bash].
It’s scrabulous for chess and it’s brilliant.
05/06/2009 at 00:26 Radiant says:
btw @ gillen
The golden rule is to NEVER play chess/scrabble/monopoly/draughts vs your misses!
That way lies great misery and long awkward silences full of rage.
05/06/2009 at 00:50 Gap Gen says:
The interesting thing about Go is how messy working out who won can be.
05/06/2009 at 01:05 Rooks Bailey says:
It’s because of articles like this that RPS has quickly become one of my favorite gaming sites on the web.
From one chess lover to another: great article!
05/06/2009 at 01:21 solipsistnation says:
Are you drinking WINE out of a WATER GLASS? Oh the embarrassment.
I’m looking forward to the rest of this series…
05/06/2009 at 01:28 Mad Doc MacRae says:
do people really go through RPS comment sections to slag off the new TF2 content? Jeez…
05/06/2009 at 01:36 Benkyo says:
KG said: “People use “depth” as some kind of gold standard – that if a game is deeper than another, it’s intrinsically better. I suspect that’s a bullshit assumption.”
I say: I think the ‘depth’ vs complexity vs ‘solved/unsolved’ issue is central to whether I gain any real enjoyment from games that, crucially, have no random element in them.
Go (along with Shogi) are the most complex from a computational aspect, aren’t even close to being solved and are the games I love the most.
Chess and Xiang Qi are less complex computationally (though still extremely complex) seem to be always on the verge of being solved but have Grandmasters holding the fort. I still love these games, perhaps because of the vast gap between ‘ideal’ play and my own abilities.
Othello/Reversi is simple, solved, and holds no appeal to me whatsoever. I’ve never learnt the solutions or even gotten very good at such games, but since they lack both randomness and complexity I have no desire to do so.
Exceptions occur when a game is a) random, b) actually a puzzle or c) poorly designed and inelegant.
I like Go a lot more than Shogi for it’s elegance, pattern-recognition and the way it overturns the design of two opposing armies arrayed against each other. It feels more like a war, instead of a single battle.
I only wish I could find some people who can play who are under 60…
05/06/2009 at 01:39 Helm says:
What I love most about chess is how I can not touch a board for years and when I return to it I play much better just because my brain has evolved since then. Strategic considerations learned in life apply in chess, and from chess to real life. A return to the Soviet ways where children played chess in school as a mandatory class would make this world a better place.
Actually not a better place at all, but the conflicts would be much more sophisticated!
05/06/2009 at 01:41 nikos says:
I’m crap at chess so take this with a pinch of salt – but as someone said earlier, if chess strategy is about not thinking ahead, but about seeing patterns and learning how to read the board… then this is exactly what Go is also about. Beyond the basic moves and tactics, it’s about seeing patterns and evaluating the situation, definitely not about seeing ahead 10 moves…
05/06/2009 at 01:59 Lord_Mordja says:
Queen is imba.
05/06/2009 at 02:14 Radiant says:
@helm I’m the complete opposite.
If I don’t play for a week or so my ‘game’ [for what it's worth] goes to shit.
I usually brush up every so often playing chess puzzles here:
http://chess.emrald.net/
sign up and do a bunch of puzzles they /really/ help your game.
05/06/2009 at 02:48 Meat Circus says:
Ludo is not Chess. But then Chess is not Go.
Chess is Go for the overtly regimented of intellect, the anally retentive, the miserly of spirit and dull Russians.
Go is beauty, power, sex and death. AT THE SAME TIME.
Ergo, Go.
05/06/2009 at 02:52 Meat Circus says:
And another thing. Chess is a solved problem. It is from a game-theoretic perspective, trivial. Given an infinitely large non-deterministic turing machine, the optimal move can always be determined.
It is therefore noughts and crosses with delusions of grandeur.
KNOW THIS.
05/06/2009 at 03:08 Radiant says:
ok fuck sake, after that, where do I play Go online?
05/06/2009 at 03:15 Bhazor says:
Reply to Meat Circus
Yeah well Go is just join the dots but duller.
Also you smell.
05/06/2009 at 03:23 Noc says:
I think the idea of “depth” as a standard for quality actually makes a fair bit of sense.
Essentially, the “depth” of a game is the size of its learning curve. You can learn the ins and outs of “shallow” games relatively quickly, while “deep” games continue to surprise and delight you as you dig deeper and deeper into their mechanics.
The reason we tend to prize depth so much, I think, comes with the way we tend to play videogames. While we might break a board game out of its dusty old box once every few months on a rainy weekend, we routinely sit in front of flickering monitors far into the night, clicking our fingers raw until our eyes bleed or the sun rises, whichever comes first. We put a lot of time into video games: single player games with less than 40 hours of gameplay come off as unforgivably short, and its not uncommon for a player to have hundreds of hours invested in the game of their choice. Contrast this to the couple of hours a year we spend around Monopoly.
Since we tend to spend so much time on our games, we’re often able to explore the full height of the learning curve. We don’t play video games until the take-out gets here, and shove them aside in favor of greasy comestibles until someone gets around to cleaning up all the little plastic figures. We play video games until we get bored; until we’ve played them out, and they’ve lost their charm.
The reason we shy away from “shallow” games is that, by definition, they tend to do this quickly. They may be riotous fun for the first few hours, but while that first few hours of a board game is often all you ever play, with a video game we keep plugging along. “Shallow” games quickly turn sour, and we discover that that shiny, entertaining facade is all there is. And then we chug along for a few more hours out of habit, or just in case something new and interesting happens, and by the time we put the game aside we’re disgusted with it and have a bitter taste in our mouths.
“Deep” games, however, present a longer curve. As we keep playing, we keep discovering more about the game and learning more about it. That keeps it fun, and delays our eventual disillusionment with its finite depth. And if the game’s deep enough, it can remain beyond our comprehension long enough that we get distracted by something else and leave with fond memories intact.
And I think that’s where the gamer’s obsession with gameplay depth comes from. We’ve all played games we’ve gotten absolutely sick of pretty quickly, even if we liked them at the start. And we’ve all got games we retain fond memories of after the fact. We’re thinking ahead: the depth of Chess doesn’t matter when you’re playing a couple hours a month and are absolutely terrible at it. But once those hours start climbing into the tens and hundreds, depth starts being more relevant.
. . .
There’s also probably some point in talking about the “fake depth” you can create with randomness and the rationing of mechanics and information.
Like, Solitaire is honestly a really simple game. And most people play it mechanically, and do each obvious move they encounter in sequence. But things like the hidden deck and the three-card draw make it look like there’s some deliciously complex system that you’re wrestling with and attempting to unravel, that you’d be able to do with ease if you could only see the whole thing at once. Also the “new power every level” thing you get from single player games, and the way MMOs have taken that formula and stretched it out over months.
But I’ve babbled enough already, I think.
05/06/2009 at 04:00 Hulk Hogan says:
FROM THE MAKER OF CHESS MR CHESS COMES
REAL LIFE BATTLE CHESS
WHEN YOU TAKE A PIECE YOU FIGHT TO THE DEATH
CAN YOU WALK AWAY WITH YOUR LIFE?! (AND YOUR QUEEN?! SHE IS WAITING! HELP! SAVE THE QUEEN)
BUT BE BEWARNED. NOONE HAS PLAYED A GAME OF REAL LIFE BATTLE CHESS… AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT!!!!
05/06/2009 at 05:46 John Walker says:
Just for the record, the Mr Chess inventing chess joke is one Jim and I have been sneaking into magazines for many years. I think Jim did it first, and he certainly did it best in his Chess 2 back page for PC Gamer. I make sure to get it into They’re Back whenever reviewing a chess game.
05/06/2009 at 06:07 Taill4f4r says:
I like the idea of Mr. Backgammon, Chess and Ludo wearing fancy smoking jackets and lounging in big, fancy chairs around the fireplace of some elderly gentlemen’s club. They play a game on their ornamental, occasional table. Until Mr. Chess tips his hat, and looks up,
“Hm. Check mate, I believe, Mr Ludo.”
“Curses. It seems I play into your hands once again.”
05/06/2009 at 06:19 Novotny says:
My chess was always about smoke and mirrors. Assuming I had a good opponent who didn’t freak me out with an opening that scared me, I’d attempt to gradually complicate things until we’re both really stewing, trying to keep a track of what can possibly happen. Especially in timed matches, and more so again if I can see we’ve matched each other logically, no obvious weaknesses – this is when I make a strange move. Opponents sometimes go to pieces trying to figure it out. Works best if you’ve been trying to figure out a weird one yourself and the possibilities are totally frying your brain; it looks innocent and in all likelyhood, its a useless move. But it could be brilliant! Perhaps in a few moves when my brain catches up, I’ll discover something that might work from it. Point is, you freak out your opponent with a crazy feint that he has to figure out damn quick and which has already stumped you.
The execution is of absolute importance. Obviously talking about playing ‘in the flesh’. The way you make that absurd/genius move will make or break it.
Smoke, mirrors, and aggression :D Well, that move can be made in a very passive-aggressive way too. As in ‘….oo, it’s freaking me out doing this, as far as I can tell this is a good move…., argggh, I can feel the game hanging on this pivotal move….’ That sort of face. I worked on it.
Another favourite is to give a piece away in a foolhardy attack, to better veil the more-considered ambush which falls in another part of the board a few moves later – false confidence is a terrific thing to bestow upon an opponent.
Suppose all that applies to many stategy games, but it’s the way I think about chess.
05/06/2009 at 06:23 Radiant says:
I like how by talking about a board game and not bringing up whether it’s ok or not to do so, Gillen has side stepped the whole iphone vs pc blog debacle.
Well played good sir.
05/06/2009 at 06:24 Novotny says:
Ah, but it’s chess.
05/06/2009 at 06:28 Novotny says:
Noc – you’ll start me waxing lyrical about Civ now.
05/06/2009 at 06:42 Radiant says:
In regards to the personalities of the game.
What I love is how, almost immediately you see how intricate and fancy the knights are vs the very rudimentary looking bishops.
But if you look at the positioning of those two pieces on the board you see their true importance.
Forking and attacking at weird angles; using movement in right angles to create a crude defensive circle is all very flamboyant and flash for a bloke on a horse.
But at the end of the game the bishops ability to pin and block with it’s control of vast areas of the board is deceptively very powerful.
Show of force vs the hidden power next to the throne.
Also the Queen being supremely powerful but at the same time a tactical weak spot is very telling.
As for the King’s apparent uselessness… why am I paying taxes for him to exist again?
I’ve seen that tv show Ian Mcshane is a bastard.
05/06/2009 at 06:47 SiUnit says:
best post ever!
05/06/2009 at 08:08 pepper says:
Chess!!
05/06/2009 at 08:15 Dolphan says:
Meat Circus – That’s just wrong. Chess is unsolved, and it’s not a trivial problem. ANY game with a finite number of legal positions could be solved by an infinite, non-deterministic (or a deterministic one, if I’m thinking this through right) Turing machine, IIRC.
05/06/2009 at 08:28 Kieron Gillen says:
Also: Russians are awesome!
KG
05/06/2009 at 08:35 Mo says:
That was so NGJ it was painful. That was meant to be a compliment. :) Great read as always Kieron.
05/06/2009 at 08:37 Rei Onryou says:
@Kieron: Did you try any mods with Chess or the other games? Shot glass chess! Win a piece, take a shot. What’s not to like?
05/06/2009 at 08:42 Morph says:
There is an asymmetric version of chess that came out recently called Shuuro, in which you construct chess ‘armies’ using a points based system. There’s also terrain on the board.
Yes it takes some ideas from wargames, maybe because it is designed by Alessio Calvatore who also works for Games Workshop.
I played it twice and spammed bishops for victory.
05/06/2009 at 08:46 Tony says:
Most AI chess engines don’t really “play chess”.
There are 2 (broad) ways you can make a chess AI. It can try to actually emulate the way humans think about chess (ie teach the AI how to play chess and the strategies that humans use). Or it can just number crunch every possibility and pick the best outcome.
Most chess engines (including the ones that can beat Grandmasters) are the number crunching kind. They aren’t really playing chess. Its like if you build a Robot that “plays football”. But it was just a cannon that shoots the ball at the goal at 1000 mph. It might be good at scoring goals, but its not really playing football.
Also: Magnetic chess + wine from glass tumblers. Very classy.
05/06/2009 at 09:37 jon_hill987 says:
Ludo is at least better than frustration. Who the hell thought that putting the dice under a plastic dome so you can’t even cheat was a good idea?
I’m rubbish at chess, I probably should learn to play properly at some point.
05/06/2009 at 09:51 Babs says:
So what score would you give Chess, out of 10 like?
Is it better than Killzone 2 !?!
05/06/2009 at 09:52 Kieron Gillen says:
Man, I forgot to give it a mark. I was totally going to give
them all a mark.
(Chess is a 10. It is much better than Killzone 2.)
KG
05/06/2009 at 09:59 cullnean says:
i have a LOTR mod for my chess……CLASSY!
05/06/2009 at 10:17 Meat Circus says:
No way is Chess a 10.
No co-op mode? No tutorial? It doesn’t even properly support widescreen.
8/10 MAXIMUM.
05/06/2009 at 10:21 Kieron Gillen says:
Death to your objective review school!
KG
05/06/2009 at 10:43 Matt Kemp says:
Does chess have a bullshit last boss who can turn invisible? If not, way better than KZ2.
NY game with a finite number of legal positions could be solved by an infinite, non-deterministic (or a deterministic one, if I’m thinking this through right) Turing machine, IIRC.
Correct. One branch for every single possible move. Plus, as a nondeterministic TM can be made into a deterministic one, correct on both fronts.
Chess computers do play with some intelligence though. I don;t know who said computers can;t do pattern recognition, but I certainly think not. If I remember correctly (no link, sorry) in the last match between Kasparov and one of the newer supercomputers, Kasparov left a trap for the computer which was able to recognise it and avoid it. I think chess is such a studied problem because it’s considered (at least in western culture, fom what I’ve seen) to be the ultimate sign of a clever person – if you can play chess well you’re obviously brilliantly smart.
Sneaky edit: Co-op chess? two people on each side not allowed to confer would be manic and hilarious as each tries to enact their own strategy. Partner good people with bad people for extra funtimes – grandmaster with a cat and so on.
05/06/2009 at 10:54 Fede says:
Anyone wanting to play Go online: I’d suggest KGS, my nick is the same as here, leave me a message if you want to play.
As to the depth thing, I believe it’s important only because games of which one knows the solution tend to diminish both player’s enjoyment a lot, for some reason :D
Edit: You sure there is no co-op chess? There is co-op go, so there has to be also co-op chess! Else we can invent it and call it RPS Chess, if the Hivemind has nothing against it.
05/06/2009 at 11:26 Noc says:
Chess needs a story mode, achievements, and unlockable bonus pieces.
05/06/2009 at 11:28 Andrew Dunn says:
I would quite like to see a single-player Chess campaign where you start off with just a single pawn and a king and you gradually get introduced to new units.
05/06/2009 at 11:49 Jim Rossignol says:
Someone should actually remake Chess according to modern game paradigms: co-op, achievements, pointless single player story section designed to sell the multiplayer section which will later be supplemented with a micropayment system and auction house.
05/06/2009 at 11:57 Novotny says:
You could bang some rusty nails along the edges of the board for the DRM effect. Did it really take over 100 posts
05/06/2009 at 12:13 MD says:
This could actually be a lot of fun! Each team’s better player would have to guage the ability of his/her partner (preferably by the moves they make, rather than prior knowledge), in order to determine how much they can afford to expect of them. Some pairs would be able to silently co-operate in playing out complex strategies, while in other cases the better player would basically have to play it like a regular game in which their every second move was randomised.
If it doesn’t already exist, I seriously reckon this would make for a great web-based game. Might even try to implement it myself, though I’d have a lot of learning to do.
05/06/2009 at 12:53 MD says:
I also like Jim’s idea, and am tempted to take up his challenge. It would be a semi-joke game, in which the broad concept is satirical and irony abounds at a lower level, but the game is fully realised and intended to be as fun as possible.
05/06/2009 at 12:53 Disquete says:
@Andrew Dunn: In fact I learned to play Chess with a chess course book for children (quite proper as I was 6) that used that method.
05/06/2009 at 12:58 Jim Rossignol says:
Chess DLC, unlockable units, player-made maps.
05/06/2009 at 13:01 MD says:
Folowed a little too closely by Ch2ss, throwing the Ch1ss community into disarray.
05/06/2009 at 13:21 Kieron Gillen says:
I find myself reminded of a little thing from McKelvie and my dim and distant SAVE POINT past.
KG
05/06/2009 at 13:44 Okami says:
There actually are chess games with a single player story mode. Like this one for the psp for example:
http://www.gamersinfo.net/articles/1543-online-chess-kingdoms
There was also one for the PC, where you would indeed start the campaign with just a few pieces and gain new pieces along the way, until you finally had a full set of chess pieces. I think this was meant as a tutorial mode.
Of course, none of these games featured achievements, coop mode, dlc or a level editor, so I guess there still is room left for innovation…
05/06/2009 at 14:09 Gap Gen says:
Chess vs Zombies. Horse Armour DLC for the Knights. A mod enabling rooks to move diagonally. Off-map artillery.
05/06/2009 at 14:18 Bobsy says:
Chess fanfic!
Adrian Dunn, fourth Pawn of the Line, inched nervously across the field. About him, everything was still. He glanced behind him, back to the line. There was his majesty, the King himself, looking from here terrifyingly exposed all of a sudden.
Adrian was the King’s Pawn. His duty was to stand ahead of his majesty, to be the first line of defence for the crown. So why was the King sending him away? Out here, alone in an empty field, at the mercy of the Black Army.
Opposite him, directly opposite, there was a rustle of movement in centre of the Black front line. Out stepped a figure, marching straight for Adrian. The enemy soldier was dressed in dark Pawn’s regalia, short-sword in one hand and a large iron shield in the other. As he drew close Adrian fancied he could see himself in the eyes of his enemy. A familiar figure indeed.
The enemy stopped just a foot from Adrian’s position. Their shields met with a soft clang that broke the quiet and echoed around the field. Adrian met the gaze of his counterpart, and offered a weak smile.
“Pawn to King-Four for you, too?” he said.
05/06/2009 at 14:28 Radiant says:
Little known fact: Mr Chess brought out Chess 2 in 1960 which caused tens of people to send angry telexes to each other.
He shelved his plan and the new Iron, Race car, Shoe and Top hat pieces were sold on to a Mr Mono J. Poly, a polish immigrant from Shropshire.
05/06/2009 at 14:34 Gap Gen says:
Actually, by 1960 Mr Chester Chess had been made Lord Chess for his services to interactive sculpture.
05/06/2009 at 14:38 Thingus says:
The next obvious step is a crossover: Chess vs Go; Battle of the Boardgames.
Out of Chess and Go, I much prefer Go; I find it a more abstract game. Chess always seemed so cluttered to me.
(Also, I wasn’t any good at it :S)
If you do want to give Go a try, then http://www.gokgs.com is a good place to start; there’s a fantastic tutorial on there, and there’s always people playing.[/gratuitous plug]
05/06/2009 at 14:50 Psychopomp says:
NITE IS OP NERF PL0X
05/06/2009 at 15:22 Culprit says:
Amazons is a chess/go hybrid that is pretty interesting. It seems to lend somewhat well to a narrative interpretation. I think the thing is for westerns, board games need conflict that resolves with in a short period rather than a ‘posturing for advantage’ long lead up. In chess, there is generally some capturing even early on, whilst Go is totally about balancing forces over time.
This is a common elemental difference in many game genre. The best example I can think of is Bushido Blade vs something like Tekken or Street Fighter. In BB everything is decided really quickly once engagement occurs, so there is a large sense of a stand-off until positioning is optimal. Whereas Tekken/Street Fighter is more about finessing multiple attacks and counters in successions. (correct me if I’m wrong; haven’t played these in years)
05/06/2009 at 15:59 Quirk says:
I’ve played a lot of competitive chess in my life. I captained my school team, played at university, played for a while for the second oldest chess club in the world (on their first team only once, but played on the second team for a year or so). I haven’t taken it seriously for seven or eight years now, but I still remember the basics of most of the openings. Playing for fun these days, I tend to gravitate to the King’s Gambit where available; optimal it ain’t, but it’s a lot of fun.
Chess, to me, necessarily incorporates both the pattern-matching and the looking ahead. Your long-term strategy is intimately connected to pattern-matching; doubled pawns are weak, supporting pawn chains are comparatively strong, controlling the centre is important. Pieces are moved firstly to develop them to better squares, secondly to begin focusing pressure on a vulnerable point and thirdly in the service of a well-thought-out plan with a clear and definite goal. It’s sometimes possible to see forced mates or ruinous loss of material four or five moves ahead; only a subset of the pieces can meaningfully be brought to bear on a given section of the board at any moment, and if you can keep forcing threats the array of possible responses is tightly constrained. However, to get to the positions where it’s possible to explode into a game-ending combination, you need to be able to trust your pattern-matching strategic judgement.
Chess and its ilk make PC strategy games look sad, because most of them are not meaningfully strategic in anything like the same sense. They may feature larger statespaces, they may feature a greater variety of pieces, but these things are not by themselves sufficient to ensure that there are a breadth of subtle strategies. (To illustrate how this can be the case: there is a chess variant called Maharajah, in which the black king has the powers of the queen and knight but no army. It is therefore capable of checkmating the white king by itself, and is correspondingly hard to checkmate. The statespace it has is quite considerable, but a simple heuristic is enough to win the game. White need only ensure his pieces are protecting one another and that his king is safe while queening as many pawns as possible to attain an inevitably crushing position.) Subtler strategies often spring most readily from simple and flexible rules, tinkered with until they yield a balanced variety of strategic options. Of course, you then also need to write an AI capable of dealing with human pattern-matching, and it all gets a bit more complicated… much easier to ditch the balancing and attempts at sophisticated AI, and go straight for the gimmicks.
05/06/2009 at 16:29 bonuswavepilot says:
Its been ages since they brought out a patch for chess. The last one that let you double-move the pawns on their first move was good, but n00bs always accuse you of cheating if you use the en-passant attack that came with it.
05/06/2009 at 17:42 Colby says:
I really hope that box has some Go stones in it…
05/06/2009 at 18:13 Adam T says:
The neatest thing about ‘go’ is that it’s tactical element is about as simple as possible. Much more so than chess.
This lets players more quickly begin to develop past simple attrition (purely tactical) play into strategic thought.
That’s where the fun is.
05/06/2009 at 19:36 clive dunn says:
Me and a freind way back in the day used to be chess nuts (no pun intended) and one night found ourselves without a chess board and completely off our faces on acid. So for about three hours we played ‘mind-chess’ where you play on imagined boards. I tell ya, something broke in my brain that night.
I had no idea Prussian soldiers used to do this for kicks as well.
We later developed a form of chess that would fill an entire room with a thousand sided board but still the same amount of pieces. I kind of regret in a way that computers turned up and stopped us having to entertain ourselves in such a manner. ahh well, ………….sigh
05/06/2009 at 20:00 Fede says:
@Thingus
Which is your KGS nickname?
05/06/2009 at 20:54 Rei Onryou says:
Wow, we really are this geeky on RPS, aren’t we? That’s why I love this place so much. ^.^
05/06/2009 at 22:18 Funky Badger says:
Culprit: man, I loved Bushido Blade. Fantastic party game – skilled players would win most often, but if you got your timing wrong for a moment a lucky swing would have you dead. Great stuff…
06/06/2009 at 09:14 LogicalDash says:
Chess 2:
http://www.sjgames.com/knightmare/
06/06/2009 at 10:03 Man Raised By Puffins says:
Haven’t played chess for bally ages, in fact probably not since I was at secondary school, really should try and get a game in sometime. I think I subscribed to the clumsy attritional school, although with markedly less success than Kieron found.
@ John:
One of my favourites that, the John Heroicka! caption still makes me giggle.
06/06/2009 at 12:05 redpanda says:
I checked the demo some time ago and I thought it was a little unbalanced. The white pieces were far quicker than black ones and they always ocuped the center first. They should patch it.
And in multiplayer mode it only accepts two players each time? two players? nowadays? come on! They should release a version where every piece could be controlled by a individual player! Or a map with more squares, for 64+ players.
And what’s about that “capture the king” thing? what’s wrong with the good old “capture de flag”? We want flags, not kings!
06/06/2009 at 12:30 dbdkmezz says:
I’m amazed how many Go players there are here, I thought we were much rarer than this.
As for the depth issue, I’d agree with Keiron on the limit of the human intellect issue. Both Chess and Go are easily deep enough to satisfy most human players, so it isn’t really an issue if Go is techically much “deeper”.
Where I’d say Go has the big advantage is the accessibility of strategy to the avergae player. I’ve played a fair amount of Chess, but my strategic skills are very limited, and most games end up being pretty much a tactical game of attrition, which gets dull after a few games. In Go, on the other hand, I’m easily able to think about strategic issues, making it a much more interesting game to play. In Go you still have the tactical fun (“If I go there then you’ll go there, and then I can go there, but then you can there”), but that’s mainly restricted to the mini-games when fighting over the life/death of groups on the edge. What makes Go great is that those fights are less signigicant, so you can mess up a move, lose one of those fights, but still win the game if you play well strategically. (Just realised I’ve just said the same as Adam T, sorry!)
Also Go has the great ability to play fun games between players of different abilities, using the very natural handicap system. Chess between players of different skill levels is almost inevitably just a humiliating annihilation of the weaker player, not that much fun for either of them. It’s a shame more computer games don’t have good handicaps, but I suppose it’s really hard to set one up which doesn’t ruin the game (I remember Warcraft 3′s: ouch, playing with lower hitpoints than normal made micro hard work!). Perhaps TF2 has the best solution: no handicap, but it somehow manages to make it great fun to play even if you’re a bit rubbish.
In summary, yay! Go! And yay for RPS doing board games! :)
06/06/2009 at 12:32 Malibu Stacey says:
I’m guessing redpanda never played the Hunted map in TFC.
Also TF2 is supposed to be a max of 24 players but a lot of servers bump it up to 32, beyond that it becomes ridicul-arse (check the scoreboard on a full server with more than 24 slots, only the top 12 on both teams will be visible & any server with more than 24 players has the “increased_maxplayers” tag).
Just to big up myself, I play Go at work during breaks with some of the co-workers, it’s awesome & way more fun than chess. The lovely glass chess set we have sits unused gathering dust these days. Looks nice though.
06/06/2009 at 13:12 aoanla says:
@redpanda:
I know you’re not being serious, but: it’s astonishing how many “user community patches” exist for chess. The Chess Variant site includes multidimensional chess variants (for at least 5 dimensions…), and various new pieces and extensions. Strangely, none of these are as popular as the original…
(And, yes, there are various co-op extensions.)
06/06/2009 at 14:50 Funky Badger says:
I think Chess is more accessable than Go because its clearly combat – and the skills you need are military ones, strategy, tactics, concentration of force, tempo, space and time – whereas Go’s delights always struck me as more ephemeral…
06/06/2009 at 16:40 Thingus says:
@ Fede I’m not permanently registered, but usually go (mandatory comedy drums) by the name of Thingus.
23/06/2009 at 00:10 Robin Brown says:
I also spent a lot of time in the early noughties trying to sneak in absurd references and jokes into 101, though most of them are forgotten or too feeble to receive a second airing.
My favourite routine was making up imaginary RTS games: Call Centre Despot and Sim Pope being about the only two I can remember.