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Relativistic Chess. Squares attacked by the opponent are considered not to exist. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
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]