chess in parallel universes
exploring some hypothetical variants and some hypothetical paradoxes
- chapter 1. the opening
- chapter 2. library of babel
- chapter 3. hilberts hotel
- chapter 4. tall grass chess
- chapter 5. variants and more variants
chapter 1.
ok we all know chess is an extremely interesting, complex and beautiful boardgame. really i could use so many more positive word too, like its just that amazing. there's something special about having and controlling a whole chess army in your own hands. 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights and 2 bishop. the mighty queen and the all so important king thru all the never-ending action. everything from romantic king gambits to dramatical and chaotic karo kanns. sharp, grindy r + k endgames to everlasting positional queen middlegames, and anything in-between!
the dramatical journeys continues even further as we dive into all the wild chess variants too. from super obscure wacky variants where everything has been set upside down as the goal and rules is completely different, to maybe not so weird and well known ones were the changes are miniscule, yet still with their uniquely different twists and nature. and to all the other complitely alien like variants, ones that seems so weird not even our deepest fantasies are able to imagine. somewhere out there, in a dimension far away these are the normal ones. like who knows what the possibilities are out there especially considering just how obscure many of our own variants even are
that said in one parallel universe their chess culture aren't that different from ours. in fact the have the exact same chess as our standarized version, but they too like variants. maybe they also get inspired by other animals so they too have made animal type pieces. for instance if they also have birds like city- pigeons that are amazing at finding food on the spot and come in swarms instantly when they see u have some, like they do here, maybe instead of duck chess they have a variant where the queen has been replaced with a pigeon. the pigeons move and capture only like a bishop + king, But if ur able to get it exactly one square next to the opponents king all of a sudden every single other square on- and next to the king gets emidiately invaded by other city- pigeons, completely overwhelming him and forcing them to resign on the spot!
in another parallel universe they too have the exact same standard chess as us, but they take variants a lot more seriously. they also share alot of the same variants that we have, like racing kings, but with some tiny differences. or that is, they might not seem so big of a change but for instance just having one single different piece could greatly change the general dynamic and nature of the game alot! in this study I've made a few puzzles where we explore some interesting hypothetical situations that could accour if something was slightly different. however situations that commonly occurs in said parallel universe
*the first 3 chapters are rk, then 2 "one check" one "standard" chess one and lastly a koth puzzle (each title will note this tho)
the "one checks" are my favourite. like it always gets tensive when both players are down to their last check in 3+. now imagine starting like this already from move one. obviously it would be very unequal in favor for white, like even more than 3+, so maybe in some of the other parallel worlds they have simply justified this by having less starting pieces. f.exs just get rid of the queen and suddenly we have a super sharp endgame! that could get decisive on the spot if ur not careful (5+ is also an alternative variant we have with idea being also to be more equalised)
imagine the potential scenarios that could happen if double same sided bishops was a somewhat regular occurrence in chess. its wacky for sure but could lead to some srsly different and interesting new strategies and tactics that would be shaking up the middlegames and the endgames especially.
chess960 is an exceptionally fun variant! its like pure chess with almost all the opening theory -and all ur familiar favorite openings now utterly gone. its like starting in a completely unknown territory, positions uve never started with ur army before. even if the pieces are exactly the same its still so challenging how u should strategies and play the opening. its like entering an even greater level of obscurity of the chess universe. so many of the times pieces now starts on all sorts of wacky places, with rooks all over the place far from their natural habitats thats in the corners. bishops and knights have to be developed in all sorts of different ways. my favourite positions are the ones that allows you to castle on move one, its so satisfying^^ its possible in around 17% of the starting positions.
Fischer random do have some limitations tho, like rooks have to be on opposite sides of the king and bishops cant share the same coloured squares, of course. maybe in some parallel universes they have less restrictions? or even yet maybe they dont even have any at all making it truly random. like chess921600!! now absolutely that would make it a lot wackier! and Fischer would probably turn in his grave if he heard that, but playing with two same coloured bishops could make for some interesting tactics and problems on their own.
a possible dream setup in the endgame could be to trap the king between the controlly bishops. here white manages to mate just in time before blacks deadly pawn promotion
(white to move)
in crazyhouse it has been theorised that three same coloured bishops is roughly as good as a queen. if this was standard chess which side would you prefer here? sf evals 1.g3 to exactly +0.0, but def do take that with a grain of salt
chapter 2. library of babel
its fair to say that any of the chess games that you have played so far will very most likely never repeat again, by anyone, ever. even if you keep playing literally the most popular, -and the most played opening, in existence! it will be a complitely new game sooner or later. chess is just that deep, for each move there follows so many possible continiations again and again. from ply one theres 20 possible moves, then alteady after 4ply we have 71 852 distinct possible positions, (8 checkmates possibilities) and it just keeps increasing at a accelerating rate the further moves we play. its like looking at a opening three whos ranches never ends and expands constantly both deeper and wider into seemingly infinite. its hard to grasp, and maybe appreciate, just how complex chess truly is
the number of possible variations a chess game can be played is estimated to be around 10^111 to 10^123. that kind of a number is so ridiculously massive its impossible for us to comprehend. its just impossible to properly visualise. we might as well compare it to literall infinity. for instance the monster of a number we're talking about is already alot bigger than there are atoms in the observable universe (10^80) u can literally asign billions of chessgames in each atom in our universe (even imagine how much more variations chess960 has, or yet even crazyhouse! how could we even calculate something like that??)
now if we were to go over some of these games then sure the fast majority of these matches would be a complete mess. both sides just making random moves without any logical meaning what so ever, over and over until one colour just so happen to checkmate. or draw for that matter. here there's no such thing as piece values or controlling the center, here we just move and see what happens. it would be like watching a random-mover bot playing another random-mover bot (could be a fun match to watch for betting tho!) game after game
somewhere, at some point, deep under the endless ocean of random nonsense games, we will eventually find a suprisingly decent looking game. maybe in a variation where the napoleon attack has been played with both sides actually managing, with a somewhat fairly humanlike way, to convert it into a equallish looking endgame were black eventually manages to push his b pawn to a mighty queen before white and wins. now there was some very questionable blunders and other weird dumb moves here and there, but finally a game that wasn't just blunders on almost every single move. but again, a game like this would be ridiculously extremely rare. like fairytale like rare.
we dive even deeper thru this never-ending dark ocean of squares flying thru millions upon millions of even more really bad nonsense games, but out of nowhere a very familiar looking opening gets our attention. its no other than the majestic well known closed ruy lopez, chigorin defense. well over 20 moves in and it follows one of the most popular played variations by professional chess gms. too bad black moved bxe4??, and white not even taking back just to top it of, basically just making it uninterestingly dubious on the spot. to be fair tho, afterall, we can't really have high expectations when they're just playing random moves all the time. it was only a matter of time anyway
its kinda obvious at this point that going thru these everlasting dark and white squared ocean of games manually we will practically never find any decently played games that make sense from a human standpoint from start to finish. even at a lowest elo perspective. its just never never changes. unless if you're extremely super lucky that is. what's fascinating tho is that we know that there are some perfectly brilliant played games out there. games that have seemingly minimal mistakes and inaccuracy in them that it matches the level of two supergms playing eachother. amazingly positionally plays with long perfectly converted magnus carlsen like grinded Queen and pawn endgames, as well as bunch of beautifully Tal like sacrifices that even stockfish would see. since we know that every possible played variations of games are here, they certainly are millions of them. its just that they're literally swallowed by the deep ocean making it merely impossible to ever find.
taking this even further, not only would we see many new brilliant openings and opening ideas that has yet to be discovered, but there would be games thats literally perfect. literally 0 centipawnloss games for both sides. almost crushing compared to if some supergms would be in the same position. then some games would be the most elegant but brutally long aggressive fights imaginable, yet in perfect manners from both black and white. maybe in a variation where the Sicilian Najdorf is on the bord, opposite sided castlings with both sides marching thru with merciless attacks, and then we see both refuting just perfectly in the most dramatic fashion were we slowly transitions to a forever lasting queen v queen endgame before finally end up with a peaceful 3-fold repetition.
somewhere out there would be a game that follows exactly the same game as the infamous first game of the 1972 wc game between Spassky and Fischer, but this time Fischer doesn't make the famously blunder of bxh2, and instead we see a more classic Fisher like refutation were black sets for a long pawn storming grind in the endgame that eventually ends the game with 81. qxb8#. lastly some games would be exactly the same as the first chess game u ever played, with millions of similar variations and who knows how many transitions too. one will be exactly the same as the next game that you will play. one will be a direct copy of your last game u will ever play.
now idk how u can generate fully random games but this website allows u to generate complitely random chess fen positions. its a cool little tool:)
http://bernd.bplaced.net/fengenerator/fengenerator.html
(example)
Library of Babel, by Joerge L. Borges, is kind of a similar concept. in this colossal of a library we find every possible combination of English letters and the commas, space and period, thats possible to write within 410 pages long books with each page containing 3200 digits. the total amount of books are apparently something about 25^1,312,000 books! which is a number so gigantic i dont even know how to put in any kind of perspective. like this is a number compared to which the number of atoms in our observable universe is infinitesimal. tho someone actually did the math on about just how much space a physical form of library of babel would be, which I'll link below;
wonder if some of the parallel universes also have their own library of babel. maybe they have more digits in their alphabet making it even bigger
the library basically contains everything that has been written, could be written and will be written. every single topic, everything that exists, has and will, including everything and everyone that doesn't. like somewhere in a bookshelf far far out there in the abyss is a fenomenal book explaining the perfectly played games that we discussed earlier. now with indepht analysis and alternative variations and u name it. some will have transcripted your last chess game into a beautiful novel, like Shakespeare level of drama. others will just be a everlasting rant about how chess couldve been "better." tho also some will teach you how to play the kings indiean like a literall gm, and some even with a literall definition on how to solve chess itself. the list to goes on and on. wonder how many new, cool variants library of babel has out there^^
tho finding books that will teach or tell u anything will be ridiculously hard to find, practically impossible. infact trying to find something meaningful at all by searching naturally is calculated to be somewhere around 5.757e-135. so its kinda similar to the chess one that the 99.999..%+ or basically in other words; everything you will find will just be random gibberish again and again
on a really cool note you can actually browse a form of the library for yourself thanks to this cool website:
https://libraryofbabel.info/
chapter 3. hilberts hotel
if we made a hotel that has room for every chess player in the world, and somehow also have room for billions upon billions of aliens, robots and the other chessplayers in our fellow parallel universes that could play chess, to host the biggest and the most grand exclusive chess tournament ever made, wed definitely need a rather pretty big house to be able to host it. fortunately theres Hilberts hotel! which is this paradox that can host a infinite amount of guests, but only the countable infinities. the bigger infinities is too much. so for our sake lets just assume we dont have that uncountable infinite amount of guests, but a countable infinite one, so we will be able to get this mega tournament of classical chess under way
imagine the drama if someone calls a arbiter because they believe the opponent has done something that they shouldn't have. like maybe in some parallel universes its ok to use both hands to castle. or maybe for some, if u just as much as accidentally tip over a piece of yours its game over! if you're one of the arbiter chances are you probably have to go quite the distance to even get there. also nonetheless maybe in some worlds standard chess isnt even theyre main anymore, and instead have moved more over to variants like chess960 or even crazyhouse. or who knows maybe they have made their own tweaks to standard chess that in their opinion has made it even better, and this especially for the top level chess. back to our universe its going to be interesting to see what our future of chess will be, as a lot of people have pointed out that standard chess might become too theorised and drawish for top level play. several has made it clear that we should just reduce the timecontrols, and maybe thats already happened in a few other worlds, and they have gotten so used to it so that when we play them here now we will simply crush them
https://youtu.be/OxGsU8oIWjY
more and better explanation of hilberts hotel^
last springbreak i stayed at room 897373899999372618299120701 for a week, it was a pleasant experience, would recommend, but the waiting lines for the reception was always a little long..
staying on the subject of modifying chess, in some parallel galaxies they have hybrided chess with crazyhouse in hopes that it will make it sharper, whilst also not changing it too much away from the standard chess that everyone knows and loves. in this example the way theyve done it is to simply make the dropping rules alot stricter. 1) pawns are the only piece that can be reentered onto the board. meaning if you lose any other piece its done for good. and 2) dropping is only allowed within the first 30 moves. After that its now just standard chess. this makes it so that they can eventually get into a endgame as well, unlike in crazyhouse. overall these new rules haven't changed the game too much. for the most part its just shaking up the opening theories with pawns now flying even more all over the board. but for now only time will tell if the super gms on that planet approves to the new changes.
on a serious note tho im curious how
something like this would actually play out. especially for the openings, which kind of openings will have the most drastic effects? im assuming alot of gambits might not work so well. eitherway it could lead to some seriously interesting sacrifices that could also prehaps get followed up with some powerful pawnchains, like in crazyhouse, a very well-known and common tactic is to sacrifice a piece (epsecially usually knights) for pawns so that you can create some killer pawndrops. sometimes for pinning two pieces, sometimes even just for positional advantages or sometimes for making a deadly spot for future droppings. and sometimes for because all of the above!
one of the best feelings in zh is getting marching pawns like these^^ usually happens more times against me tho..
a great study for more tactical zh tactics <iframe width=600 height=371 src="
chapter 4. tall grass chess
in a other universe they focus more on some really different kind of concepts. firstly, a bit more friendlier approach when choosing the pieces. instead of having the common war zone themed style that we are so familiar with here, they have mostly just been using animals or random objects. and secondly; they put alot of attention to the actual board itself. like f.exs some variants have some special environmental concepts that greatly effects the gameplay as well. like this variant we we'll take a look at has this kinda really weird but neet garden theme to it.
most notably is the grass thats blushing over the middle and even changes every 20 plies. only the pawns and hedgehog can be on these squares, for the other pieces the grass is basically just stones that they can't be or capture on, making for some especially more positional strategy in play. otherwise the rules are very similar of orthodox chess with the "only" other main differences is how the pieces moves and captures and the promotion rank being the 8th. also since the board is so long an other 2nd way to win is to get the king on the last rank (formally known as campmate)
(yes I am self-aware some of the grass i drew ended up looking like literall dildos)
the grass always starts like u can see in the pic. After the 20th ply they get reversed mirrored. f.exs the right tall grass occupies f4, f5, f6 and g6 and then in the next cycle its on c7, c6, c5 and b5. if a piece was already on these squares they dont get effected (if they move out they can't move back to the grass)
the squirrel is very quick and moves identical like a rook. (castling too) the hedgehog is a bit more slow and steady moving only like a king but dont be fooled!, theyre still very special cuz they have this really fancy ability to be able to hide in the grass, where no one can bother them, well excepts enemys pawns but like pawns they can also promote. the hedgehog doesn't promote to anything fancy tho, it promotes to a angry hedgehog! which gets another special feature being they can now also be safe on the dams! (b3, d3 etc) no one can capture a angry hedgehog when they're on a water square. pawns and hedgehogs are the only pieces that can promote And go on the grass making them very special
the rabbit might be the weakest piece, tho theyre still also unique in their own rights, they really like to jump. they can jump both diagonally and vertically exactly 2 squares. (they can indeed also jump over pieces) the bun is a bit lazy though as they can capture only one square vertically or diagonally. which leads us to the strongest piece; the mighty crow. it moves like a archbishop/hawk from s-chess. so having the movements of a bishop and a knight combined u definitely should watch out for those mercilessly crows. and finally we have the checkmateble fox which is simply identically to a ordinary king.
with grass growing all over the battle zone i can only imagine it will lead to a lot of closed positional games. not to mention with pawns being alot safer on the grass it can open up for a lot of potential for some super outposts for other pieces. like having a pawn defend a major piece which can be really hard to get rid of as only the hedgehog and other pawns being able to capture it. tho do watch out for the plys before the grass suddenly changes away! Still ideally ull want to promote the pawns promoting it to a promoted pawn (i couldve been more creative with the names i know. although my excuse is that it wasn't made by me, it was made by someone from a parallel universe, remember) now the moves has been upgraded to be able to move like a combined king and a bun
a promoted pawn. S standing for super! and a promoted hedgehog
chapter 5. variants and more variants
we already have thousands of different known chess variants, with new ones being invented all the time. so many thats so interesting, fun and creative. some are really similar to standard chess, but then we have those that have really made their own unique twists to it. literally thinking outside the (64 squared) box. some such variants are the ones that's played on a infinite chess grid. a board with literally no ends. I find that so particulary interesting! an ocean of black and white tiles forever the same exact majestic pattern expanding infinitely forever. there's no end, just nothingness in every direction. of course 99.99..% in to their own infinite of 99%s will never be explored or even seen at all. its just hypothetical existing in a void of nothing. ok i got a little carried away but I will quote something equally interesting; "It has been found that even though the board is unbounded, there are ways in which a player can win the game in a finite number of moves." which i guess shouldn't be too surprising, but still kinda really cool, infinite doesn't always beat finite;)
(and link to its Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_chess)
another nice website with uncountably many variants, which id recommend checking out;
https://www.chessvariants.com/
and some more websites that are built entirely around variants, and are actually really easy to play with!; https://www.pychess.org/ and https://playstrategy.org/
oh and super random but another really bizarre but also fascinating one i found during browsing was this one^ Variants like these seems like absolute hell for actually calculating several moves ahead on, but that def doesn't mean i dont wanna try:o
I've been talking alot about how many new variants are out there and is possible to create and so on, but I should definitely note that composing variants that are actually compelling is very tricky. in fact its not that easy at all. not only should it be balanced, or at least feel fairly balanced, it should also be exciting and interesting to make u want to learn it and want to try and play it. maybe it shouldn't bee too complicated but it should definitely be complicated and rich enough that it keeps the variant interesting in the long run. make me keep want to come back play it and maybe try new openings and new trategies. like especially if theres only like one or two openings that doesn't just lose on the spot then thats not very good:)
this alone is challanging enough to create but maybe even harder is making something that's uniquely different form everything else. composing something that stands out from all the uncountably many variants that already exist is definitely much easier said than done!! tho definitely not impossible by any means. there's still way way more potentionally amazing new variants out there waiting to be "discovered" than we have now. ones that's yet to get their own presence in life and praising it deserves for their own special beautiful twists and nature of a game. with all the deeply rich potential of people studying it and history that follows. just like chess and so many other great variants
theres of course several more factors like pieces, board, additional rules etc, but i think i should really make clear that theres no agreed -or officially agreements on how 'good' variants should be. ultimately it basically just boils alot down to personal preferences. alot of people prefers extreme variants, variants that has the complete opposite of the points i listed. then we have variants like koth which doesnt try to be too special or anything, but instead is just super similar to chess, yet many people like it that way. i personally enjoy both these types of variants and luckily we have so many variants that we literally have something for literally everyone
another interesting question would be how long they've been playing chess in other universes. like do they also have a rich history reaching 100s of years back, or did chess not get developed until like mid 1950s? what kind of format do they host their chess wcs in? and tc? hell maybe they dont even use chessclocks but have a complitely different way to determine when to move. things thatd be weird for us might be the opposite for them
its fun to speculate how chess and chessvariants couldve been different in other universes, there's just so many possibilities, so many different ways a chesslike game can and could be. all it takes is a little creativity and who knows how many other creative peeps that might exist out there, making their own spins on chess. change one rule, or one piece and already its nature, tactics and strategies could be dramatically different. similarly add one more rule or change the board slightly and again it would have dramatical impacts. simliarly uniquely on its own rights. the most important questions would always be which of these would actually be as 'perfect' as our chess. who knows maybe our chess is the best, but honestly it would probably be well over thousands upon thousands of variants too that would get the same popularity and appreciations, and if not even more, like our standard chess if they had gotten a chance to have the same long history and developing.
many people in our world would probably argue that our chess is perfect as it is and dont need any changes at all, and I don't blame them! I do wonder if we'd ask the same question to some of our neighbours universes, they would probably say the same thing about their standardised chess too! regardless if they exist or not, chess, variants and strategy boardgames will forever be interesting, thrilling, fascinating and fun, and in so many ways.
