#chinese chess

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

handmade mother-of-pearl inlay xiangqi 象棋（chinese chess）by 山白shanbai

[minecraft-llama]

Chess Blog Day #38 - Chess and Its Family

Although there still remains some debate on whether chess originated in India or Persia, most historians believe chess to have originated in India.

The common ancestor of chess-like games would then be Chaturanga.

"Chaturanga" literally means "four divisions". The four divisions were infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariotry. These would later become the modern pawn, knight, bishop and rook.

Chaturanga was played on an 8x8 board but this board wasn't checkered like a chessboard.

Chaturanga was probably the earliest game to have two things that chess has that other board games like Go don't: Different pieces with different powers, and a single piece that the game centres around trapping (a "king").

Chaturanga was then introduced to Persia (modern Iran) and became Chatrang, which was eventually given the Arabic name Shatranj.

In Chaturanga the king could be captured. Persian players must have decided that this was no fun because at some point in the 700s the rules of Shatranj were changed so that you couldn't put yourself in check and had to move out of it.

Shatranj had the king, knight and rook equivalents move the way they do to this day; but the pawn, queen and bishop equivalents were much less powerful.

This didn't entirely solve the problem of instantly losing games via a silly mistake though, as any online blitz player will attest. Oh well.

Players also had to announce "shāh" (meaning "king", the origin of the modern "check") when they attacked their opponent's king. And of course they also had to declare "Shāh Māt!" ("the king is dead!"), the origin of the modern checkmate.

Later on they started to engrave half of the squares and the iconic checkerboard came into play.

Shatranj sets are typically more minimalist than Chaturanga sets, likely because of the Muslim ban on idolatry that we mentioned yesterday.

Here's a Chaturanga set (left) compared to a Shatranj set.

Before we continue down the descent of chess, we need to take a look at its cousins.

Chinese chess, xiangqi, is thought to be derived from Chaturanga. There are some niche historical theories that it was the other way around, but these aren't well supported. It has the two properties of a chess-like game that we mentioned before - a "king" and pieces with different moves. Xiangqi doesn't have squares though. Pieces are placed on intersections like in Go.

Shogi, or Japanese chess, is also thought to be derived from Chaturanga and may have been invented in India. Some historians even believe that it was originally played with 3D Chaturanga pieces and not the 2D set that it is today. Shogi has the interesting property of being able to use your opponent's pieces after you capture them, reflected in the western variant of bughouse chess.

One theory is that this rule was added at a time in Japanese history when there were a lot of mercenary fighters switching loyalties.

Makruk, or Thai chess, is another Chaturanga derivative. It's actually much more similar to Chaturanga than Chinese or Japanese chess, and is probably the closest thing to Chaturanga still played today aside from chess itself.

In fact Chaturanga derivatives spread so far east that they reached what is now the USA, as chess-like pieces have been found belonging to the Tlingit people of Alaska.

Back to chess.

Eventually Shatranj was introduced to Europe and became associated with violence, revelry and gambling (I know). The historical cultural impact of chess could be its own blog post.

Eventually chess became more prestigious and associated with knights and royalty, who played with ornate pieces. Christian cultures didn't have the same issues with idolatry at that point in history and began making the sort of elaborate sets we saw yesterday.

At this point the rules hadn't really changed from Shatranj.

There were a couple of early European rule changes though. Pawns were allowed to move two squares on their first move and en passant was added to balance this out. King and queens could jump on their first move (queens were still weak and king jumping eventually became castling).

People also experimented with the idea of setting up the pieces behind the pawns however they wanted, although this never caught on.

Then around 1500 AD the Spanish came along and decided that chess was just too slow. They decided that bishops and queens should have the move ability that they do today.

This was initially called "Mad Queen Chess" or "Chess with the madwoman".

This update spread like wildfire though because clearly everyone found it led to much more action.

Finally in the 1800s the modern rule around stalemate was added, castling was standardised, and all later rule changes like threefold repetition were more technical in nature.

We talked a little bit about the rule changes over history, but some of them are quite interesting so it's worth looking into them in more detail.

Tomorrow: The rules of chess's ancestors.

[well-dressedwords]

Relaxing to watch, stressful to think of the hours and skills needed. 😅

holy shit is this gorgeous.

[paradigmwarrior]

stalemate ! my first game of xiangqi ever!!

[oppsaydaiisey]

For non Chinese speakers this Android app (maybe iOS idk), has entire manuals that you can download. If you don't speak Chinese, the entire book can be gone through on interactive board. It even shows variations.

If you have an s pen (idk if others do this) for Samsung s23 plus you can automatically translate the commentary given

[lonelyslutavatar]

Sasha

[xinyuehui]

“宫、商、角、徵、羽” Gōng Shāng Jué Zhǐ Yǔ · The pentatonic scale in Chinese music

"Gong Shang Jue Zhi Yu" was first documented in the Spring and Autumn Period more than 2600 years ago. The five tones are the basic scales of Chinese ancient music. Compared to the seven-tone scale of Western music - minus the semitone ascending "fa" and "si", Gong is roughly equivalent to 1 (Do), Shang is roughly equivalent to 2 (Re), Jue is roughly equivalent to 3 (Mi), Zhi is roughly equivalent to 5 (So), and Yu is roughly equivalent to 6 (La). In the Tang Dynasty, “合、四、乙、尺、工” "Hé Sì Yǐ Chǐ Gōng" were used.

云之羽 My Journey To You · 2023

[asiansinboots]

Red Queen takes Black Pawn!

[mountain-time]

Fricassee and Beyond part 1

[jacobhorseadventures]

Jacob Horse should play chess for mental enrichment

Jacob Horse tries to play chess(he needs a lil help)

[neige-leblanche]

also y'all

does anybody have the original japanese of this line from book 5 ch 27???

bc rereading it i was like. O_O. is he. not talking about vil.

i was thinking like "the first read through you're definitely meant to think so, and vil did absolutely change rook's life, but with context from both book 6 and his halloween vignette, what he's describing here leans more towards the latter" which is like. masterful gaybait i can't even be mad. it's like that post saying "some gaybaiting is like a box propped up with a stick and a block of cheese underneath" except this has all the intricacy of a steampunk clock.

but my VERY shoddy japanese skills r telling me the line translates more to "beauty in your eyes and the darkness, lighting up your entire life for you—in a time in your existence when you'll be able to have [such an experience] (expanding on the prev line where he says they'll be able to understand his ideology in the future)"

^ and i probably mangled this so bad but the main point is i didn't hear him refer to a "someone" like he does in the english tl & i'm wondering if i missed it or if it was in fact added!!!

[e-adlirez]

Just looked on the older books for refs of Thea and

Boi Curse of the Cheese Pyramid is insane

It literally starts with G heading to work on time at 9, but William comes in like "BOI YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY ON THE GAZETTE YOU HAVE TO CUT DOWN THE BUDGET" (Imagine this screamed directly into Geronimo's ear)

Obviously William's definition of "cut down the budget" is this

TW: Spoilers for Curse of the Cheese Pyramid, William behavior, do not click on if you don't want a spike in blood pressure

If you choose to turn away now, the following fume was just an intermission for finding this picture lmao

He pawned over everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in Geronimo's office, from his desk to his armchair to his carpet to his book collection to his art collection, and replaced it all with a single plastic chair and desk ("All you need in an office is a desk and chair!")

He fired ALL THE STAFF and decided that only family members will be working for the paper (because family members don't need to be paid as much probably (if at all) when working for a family business-- they all share their finances with each other, anyway maybe (it's not clear what their salaries are gonna be (wanna bet G is paid minimum wage while Thea is paid 50% of the Gazette's monthly expenses after this clean sweep))). The only person spared from the firing spree was Shif T. Paws, the Gazette's sales manager, who apparently offered to work there for free.

He delegates all the work of the Gazette to four people-- G does all the office work (taking calls, building maintenance, writing, editing, printing, clientele stuff), Thea does all the interviews and field work stuff, Trap does all the cooking, and Benjamin is "William's personal assistant". Lord knows what that last position means for little Benji. (Okay reading ahead Benjamin seems fine, but he does say that William is "a bit pushy".)

He sends G out on a work holiday thing and he overworks the crap out of everyone, to the point where even Thea is sick of William's senile old-fashioned ass, and it seems that the Gazette was also going downhill because of this mouse furry ripoff Daniel Dancer. (To give a preview of what he did in the working perspective, he basically had Trap work seven days a week)

He was planning to have staff give use old newspaper instead of toilet paper (T&B expenses), make a 30-second time mechanism for the restrooms (to maximize manpower efficiency and possible humiliation for anyone going number 2), and was considering cutting all electricity to the building and just have staff work on typewriters "just like the old days".

This man's senile ass--

[peemil]

my favorite thing about forcing edgeworth and lelouch to play chess against each other in my head is that canonically both of them have used insane (and illegal!) placements and are still both considered to be masters of the game or whatever

[mortalscience]

ten caps per episode - Law and Order Criminal Intent - s01e15 - Semi-Professional

Eames: History of violence. Sounds like a distinguishing feature of the semi-professional hit man. Goren looks at her, surprised. Eames: I only look like I’m not paying attention to you.

[hearts-a-heavy-burden]

Not to be the most niche of niche, but The Princess Royal (a historical cdrama) au for Edelgard x Claude would go so hard.