TimeFan

Link: http://requestcomics.com/podcast/episode25.mp3

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Mangez Frais!

Also: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/0 ... 61701.html

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Mangez Frais!

But where will you go next?

(64th post)

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The former tennant was anti-corporal-punish
Meant well, but it came to nothing.
... He is genius in allocation of space

Concerning the trick of playing against two grand masters at once, and making them play each other. I saw something on TV (perhaps a miniseries?) where this was a plot point. The protagonist was a rascally young woman. She was on a cruise ship. And there were two men on the ship that was very good at chess. And the woman made a bet that she could beat one of them (or both?) even though she wasn’t any good at chess.

She used the strategy of making the players play against each other. The men did not realize this, nor did the audience. Nobody was allowed to watch more than one of the chess games. The TV-audience didn’t know either, unless they were smart. My brother figured out what was going on.

The lady was very cheerful and pretended it was really easy to play, while the two men struggled at lot and was very upset that a woman was so difficult to play against.

One of the men gave up. The woman went to the other game and said “That other guy just gave up.” And then the second man gave up too! Unrealistic.

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On Futurama they had a parody of 3d Chess, 3d scabble. I once invented 3d crossword puzzles.

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In Chess boxing you lose if you lose either in boxing or in chess, whatever happens first. People that get punches in the head tends to get worse at chess.

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Here’s a variation of chess that I made up. (I’ve never tried it) The white player sets up all the pieces on the board, wherever he wants. At this points the pieces are neither black nor white, they are grey.

The black player then chooses a piece. He puts a little black hat on the piece to show it is his. Then the white player chooses a piece. He puts a little white hat on it.

The players take turns choosing pieces. When a king is chosen, the other player automatically get’s the other king.

When there is only one piece left, the player who’s turn it is automatically gets that piece without using his turn. Then all the pawns that is on a square that means they get promoted, get’s promoted. Then the player whose turn it is starts moving.

From then on it is pretty much like regular chess. Except there is no castling. And there is no draw, if a player can’t make any move that would mean he would lose, he loses.

Wait, who requested this? You attributed the request to me at the end and not at the beginning oh god my world is falling apart.

Eagle requested it, but I still hope you enjoyed it!

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Mangez Frais!

Lewis and/or Ben, how would you adjudicate on my two favourite Colour or Country moves:

a) Mexicobalt

b) Perulean

?

I once tried to write a play with a drafting mechanic. I might try again sometime, but it was pretty hard.

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And he asked:
Why am I here?
And the reply came back:
Where else should you be?

a player who says either of those loses, because each contains the full country name.

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Mangez Frais!

Oh good. I'm very happy to know I'm being thought of.

In the spirit of Lewis' answers to tis question, my favourite chess variant is Taikyoki Shogi. It's played on a 36x36 board and each player has about 400 pieces. Eventually I will get a set and set it up in the front room of my house to frighten houseguests.

Keep in mind, peru is also the name of a color.

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Not so fast, Unwinder! If you hold the toad, you have to join!

The only variant I could think of was 4-player chess, which is basically like normal chess but on a much larger board, and with more players.

Even though I have played all of the variants that Ben have described.

I have actually got a lot of chess experience under my belt. You should have included me on the podcast.

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Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?

White can actually lose on move 2 if he plays fool's mate 1. f4 e6 2. g4 Qh4#. But he can only win on move 3 with 1. e4 f5 2. f4 (or pretty much anything except Ke2, which would transpose into the bongcloud) g5 3. Qh5#. Scholar's mate is 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 (or Qf3) Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Qxf7#.

Fischer random chess is slightly different, because all the pieces (except the rooks and the king - so just the knights, bishops and queen, both bishops on opposite colours, and black's pieces the same as white's) are arranged randomly, and then the rooks and king are put on the remaining squares, with the king in the middle. It's also called chess960, because there are 960 different starting positions - so normal chess is just a special case of random chess.

I guess sort of another variant is blindfold chess, where the players don't see the board but just call out moves. And suicide chess where you have to get rid of all your pieces, and if you can capture something then you're forced to. I thought that checkmate still won, but apparently in most variants it doesn't. I really can't see Ben taking advantage of that ambiguity at all.



Derren Brown did this in one of his TV series, except he played 9 people, so he actually had to beat the 9th one. And then he revealed that he had written down the number of pieces that would be left on the boards, which is a little tricky on the games that you're not even playing. I'd already read about it in some other book, so wasn't very surprised.

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The former tennant was anti-corporal-punish
Meant well, but it came to nothing.
... He is genius in allocation of space

The worst chess variant I know of was invented by a friend of mine during high school. He had one of those chess boards that folds in half but the hinges broke, so he invented "Modern Chess" which only uses half the board but all the pieces (leaving no empty squares at the start of the game). Whoever goes first can always win by capturing the enemy king's bishop's pawn with either their king's pawn or their king's knight's pawn.

There's also a variant where after every turn, the player on the next turn gets an extra move (but you can only give check or checkmate on the last move). That is insanely difficult because it pretty quickly gets to the point where the player to move has enough moves to get checkmate. Eg, 1 e4, [e5, Nc6] 2 [Nf3, Nxe5, Nxc6], [Qh4, Be7, Bc5, Qxf2] checkmate. White also has scholars mate on move 2, the only variant where it's a valid strategy.

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The former tennant was anti-corporal-punish
Meant well, but it came to nothing.
... He is genius in allocation of space

There's a similar Chess variant called Monster. One side of the board is set up regularly, but the other side has 4 pawns and a king. The advantage that the 4 pawns and a king side has is that they can (and must) move twice in one turn. If you let the Monster queen a pawn it's pretty much game over.

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Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?