Being a nerdular nerd, I have a more than a passing interest in the game of chess. This classic two player board game is known the world over and with a set of rules which have long since been established, you can pretty well much play it with anyone else around the world who also knows how to play. My current streak in this game is 2 losses; which I shall take as a monument to my own spectacular failure; as both of them were lost due to critical and avoidable errors on my part and excellent control of space by my opponent.
The rules and the materiel of chess are known beforehand and unlike rear war, those rules do not change. You can not suddenly invent new pieces with new abilities and this is why I find this subject so fun.
There is a kind of meme going around which features a hoax chess move "Il Vaticano"; which involves the two bishops with two spaces in between them, swapping positions, and then taking the two pieces between them. I have no idea exactly where this hoax chess move started but a quick Google search tells me that there are loads of discussions on a Reddit board called AnarachyChess; which seems to be quite apt.
This hoax chess move is in response to the other 'special' moves which exist in chess, of Castling which involves moving the king and a rook, and En Passant, which allows pawns to take an opposing pawn by moving into the space behind them if that pawn has move forwards two spaces for its opening move instead of one.
I personally like what is known as either Fantasy Chess or Fairy Chess pieces. These usually involve combining the existing moves of other pieces to create new exotic pieces such as the Elephant, Knightrider, or the Cannon, or changing the board in some way to either allow extra space and/or extra pieces. Il Vaticano is different to this as it merely adds a new very specific power to an already existing piece.
Il Vaticano as a move really happens to tickle my fancy because it is sufficiently interesting enough as to be different but not so outlandish as to be absurd. It already comes with inbuilt lore as "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our Chief weapons are 'Surprise'..."; which makes even more of a fun and rare thing to do. To set up the necessary conditions to even allow Il Vaticano means that no less than three pieces have to be in position and it is really easy to counter.
It wouldn't even take all that much effort for people to agree to allow Il Vaticano as a legal move. Two players could simply come to an agreement and provided it caught on as a chess virus, the move could just extend into regular play. Already the set of conditions required to produce Il Vaticano are sufficiently difficult enough that it couldn't be used a lot and if one of the bishops had already been taken, then it couldn't be used at all.
If you ask the question why shouldn't this Il Vaticano move be allowed and the answer given is that this hoax move is 'made up', then this is a nonsense as all of the moves in chess and indeed all of the rules in every sport ever are in fact 'made up'. Unless we have some kind of law which is based upon obvious morality (such as not killing people), then more broadly, all laws are made up and we just happen to collectively agree that the authority which made them is sensibly just to do so.
Of course the natural objection is that the Bishops would now get a new power and be fundamentally worth more than they used to be; even if that power could only be accessed through a very specific set of circumstances. Likely the value of a Bishop would rise to 4 points, as opposed to the 3 that they currently share with Knights.
At some point, all of the rules in chess must have been decided upon and agreed to. I have to imagine that even though there were regional variations as was the case with football and most card games, that with the invention of the printing press that standardised rules were codified. If Il Vaticano were to be adopted by the international chess federation which decides this sort of thing, then the addition of this one rule with its very particular set of circumstances would actually become real.
...
I like the symbolism that chess is supposed to conjure up: of medieval knights, the clergy, a royal court, and the peasants who are expendable. Chess is supposed to represent war in miniature, while at the same time openly lying by suggesting that war has rules. If this was a genuine war, then the game should be played in a fog with spies, intel being received about enemy positions, and even then it should be only semi reliable.
Of course the mere existence of Bishops on the Chess board does make you kind of wonder what kind of war was going on. It used to be that Kings and maybe Queens would lead troops into battle as originally the basis of all power is derived from who can control the most swords. The royal family is really a fancy kind of dictatorship which has been dressed in shiny hats and ermine. The fact that there are Bishops on the board, is culturally confusing.
Why are the clergy on the battlefield? I can understand chaplains who might act as counselors amidst death and destruction going on but the clergy? On top of this, they are fighting clergy. It is quite a thing to be preaching loving your enemies on Sunday and then hacking them down with a claymore on Monday. I do not know if these bishops are supposed to be wearing a mitre or a helmet either.
I am hideously confused.
No comments:
Post a Comment