Research Post: Coherent Worlds Chess

For the research report I will be looking into chess. My aim for the research was to delve into the history of chess and learn a bit about the game to give me an understanding of it's origin and how to properly play. This is for the purpose of the coherent worlds report and personal practise.

"Chess is the most popular board game in the world, Maybe because it’s a war game. But unlike in a real war, you don’t have to win the hearts and minds of the people, you just wipe them out." - Play Chess in 10 minutes - Brian Byfield

To start my research I decided to learn how to play chess. I started an account on chess.com and started learning basic opening tactics, how to developing my pieces and how to be aggressive from my first turn. I did this because it helped me understand the games mechanics. From this I have a better understanding of how it relates to digital games. 

One of the main objectives to keep in mind is " Control the center and you control the game”

I instantly related the turn-based play-style to games along the lines of Final fantasy, where you literally take it in turns, and Civ 5, in which you take turns, but what you do has a long detrimental effect on the game, forcing players to change their play-style and focus on different goals, while still having an end goal in mind. 

The world building of chess is interesting, most books and articles I have read speak about the pieces in the medieval army sense, which makes sense due to the pieces being placeholders for groups of a medieval age army, opposed to be just thought of as single warriors 

Here are a few quotes referring to the pieces, giving them a sense of life:

Referring to the pawn - “He’s the brave little foot soldier who marches into battle and cannot move backwards. Here’s how he moves…”

Referring to the king - “The king is the most important piece on the board, your job is to protect him. And boy, does he need it... He is slow and lazy, and will expect his army to do the dirty work.”

Brief history of chess:

"Chess was invented, like many other things, in India. In those days, chess was played with dice. Throw of dice was used to determine which piece to move.The original name of that game and therefore of chess is Chaturanga. According to the Indian mythology, the best chess player of all is the king of Gods, Indra !" 

"The word Chess is thought to be derived from "shah," the Persian word for king, and the word checkmate from shah mat, meaning "the king is dead.""

Apparently the complete rule set of this 'Chaturanga' is unknown. chess made it's way to Europe somehow, evolving throughout history to the common form of chess we know today. There are many theories as to how, but none set in stone. This shows how past forms of entertainment have still evolved from entertainment from even further back in history. "The chess pieces can be looked upon as not only parts of a game, but a window into the medieval past where everyone was born into their place and there was not much movement between classes." - The game reflects on the emphasis of class in medieval history, although if you look at the game in depth you see it's impossible to win without the co-operation of all of the pieces.  (Quotes from: http://www.chess.com/blog/Shadow_47/chaturangahellipthe-lost-game http://www.ludoteka.com/chaturanga-en.html http://www.oocities.org/pallavnawani/chess-history.html)

Chess as a war game: 

"Generals would love that parallel and they tend to see themselves in that way. But the truth is very far from that," says Beevor. His point is that battle is indescribably chaotic, with luck and chance playing a large role in any outcome.

Chess is used as tactic practise and has been for a long time, but there are major differences between a game of chess and real war. The quote is saying no matter how much you practise, how much you theorise, battle will always have a random aspect that can not be predicted, but it probably does help to be have a good theory of tactics.

"Chess is what is termed a "perfect information" game - each player can see on the board everything there is to know about his opponent's dispositions."

In many games as in real war you lose the aspect of "perfect information". In  strategy games the fog of war is usually your greatest enemy, the game gives you limited time to predict your opponents moves. Chess could have influenced this decision as you could relate the close-proximity tactics of chess to calculating real-time quick decisions, your overall thought process could be affected by the initial training of having time to choose your move, opposed to being forced into a situation (which does happen in chess too).