Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Carlos Cetina wrote on Fri, Jul 20, 2012 06:51 PM UTC:
I don't want to be considered like a stubborn, obsessed person. Your argument, Fergus, is precise and convincing. I'm about to admit it and to declare me as convinced; however there is something within my mind like an intuition that says me White's viewpoint is right [that is, his king is not checked by the pawn]. I'm doing an effort to state, to articulate said intuition.

If we admit the opposite viewpoint, where is, what is the relativity concept of this variant?

We should view this matter like something that happens at two different levels or planes of reality: the first would be the "players level", a virtual field; the second, the true reality, that we all see as viewers, as spectators.

Let's call them

VP = virtual plane
RP = real plane

At RP the board is physically existent and formed by 64 squares that always are existent.

At VP both players see two different things. Red sees that he is checking White's king; White sees that the pawn is not checking his king.

Let's suppose h6 is empty, that is, White's king is not checked by any other piece.

White's turn to move. Since he sees his king is not checked, he makes any normal move.

Then comes Red's turn to move. Although he sees that his pawn is checking the king, he cannot make anything because in this variant the object of the game is to checkmate the advesary king, not to capture it; Red cannot force White to move his king from f3!

What Red must make is with the participation of his remain pieces to put White's king in a position such that from White's viewpoint White's king be checkmated, such that White admits that condition.

We all that enjoy living at the RP what is what we see? The pawn is not checking the king.

Regarding the knight way of movement, as Christine points out there are three ways of describing it. Which of them we will choose? I'm definitively inclined to adopt the way that Charles suggested, mentioned at his first comment: to move the piece like if the action were a drop placing it directly on a square (1,2) away from the "origin square", regardless of whether the intermediate squares are or not existent.

I know this also raises a cloud of questions but we can go solving it gradually.

I'm going to email Kevin asking for his viewpoint. Searching by the Net I found his email address: [email protected]


Edit Form

Comment on the page Relativistic Chess

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.