I want to thank George Macon in he future of Chess thread for bringing
up Calvinball, and bringing attention one website that offered one
spin on it, that is the basis of the this question.
This is a theoretical question, meant to test whether or not, even
through boundaries, if the ruleset to chess is finite or infinite.
This does NOT mean playing chess this way is the best way to play
chess, but it does as the question of whether or not chess itself
could remain unsolved if you introduce variant rules. A separate
question would be whether or not doing this would produce games that
aren't even chess. I will leave that as a subset question to this
question, to be asked another time, regarding what is the minimum set
of fix rules needed to still qualify a game as being "Chess". Anyhow,
onto the question posed by Heraclitus (aka Calvinball) Chess.
The philosopher Heraclitus said, "You can never step in the same river
twice" . So, on this note, I would like to run this concept as part
of the Chess of Tomorrow project. As part of the discussion of the
future of chess, someone brought up Calvinball. They posted a link to
one set of unofficial rules:
http://www.bartel.org/calvinball/
There is one permanent rule they have for Calvinball on that page.
That rule is: You may not play the Calvinball the same way twice.
So the basic framework for the ultimate chess variant would be: Can
you have a framework for chess and variants that would enable a person
to NEVER play chess the same way twice (by the exact same set of
rules)? Changes in rules consist of such things as the change in the
layout of the pieces, changes in what constitutes win conditions,
changes in how pieces move and capture, changes in what is in pocket/
reserve, and other things along these lines.
A softer version of this challenge would be that a person would play
both side (black and white) each once, before moving on to a set of
rules. Another softer version of this question would the prospects of
rules changing DURING a game, so a game which has rules change to
something different in turn 3, would be considered a different game
than one where the same rules change happened in turn 5. So the rules
can change in game. From an abstract strategy game perspective, one
could state such rule changes are either known by players when they
would happen at the start of the game, or are controlled by the
players as to when they happen during the game.
Would this be true for a COMMUNITY of players, that keeps adding new
players, given an infinite amount of time also? The community of
players as a whole would never see the same set of rules twice in the
games they play?
A Heraclitus (aka Calvinball) tournament would consist of this being
unique for each game. During the tournament, a limited set of games,
each game has a different set of rules. This is a practical
application of the whole Heraclitus chess approach.
The question then is: Is Heraclitian (aka Calvinball) Chess
possible? Doesn't mean that most of the games people would play of it
would be good, just if it is possible or not. Then the question
becomes how many restrictions can be placed on it to improve quality,
and still have it be Heraclitian.
Thank you for your time...
- Rich
By the way, this questions does impact the Chess of Tomorrow project
in regards to its objectives. If you care to want to input there,
please feel free to do so. The URL is:
http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/forum/t-51667/chess-of-tomorrow-project-who-is-interested#post-139883
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