Gaming Blog

 This week I played another variant of chess. This variant was called Fog of War. This is played like a normal game of chess, except that each player can only see the squares they can legally move to. All other squares are grayed out for them. Also, there is no check, checkmates, or stalemates. The way a player wins is by capturing the other player's king. When playing, it made me think about the calculated risks one might take in war that involves an absence of the certainty of whether one will survive. The strategies I employed were moving pawns for the mere purpose of getting a better view of the board layout. Also, I moved rooks along files to get long range views. I lost because I didn't notice the time limit on my turn was running out and I timed out. However, it was likely I would have lost anyways because I only had a few pawns and my king left.  The game felt just as immersive and replayable as normal chess. The game's rhetoric about war seemed different. The game...

 This week I played another variant of chess. The variant is called Automate. In Automate, both players take turn setting up their pieces. After they both finish setting up their pieces, a computer program plays the game for them. Each player must first decide where to play six pawns. Except for the king, each piece is assigned a point value. A player can not add pieces to the board such that their combined value exceeds 35. During set up, both players can see where the other player places their pieces and the player's remaining points. Pawns can either go on the 2nd or 3rd rank and no more than 2 can be in a file. The other pieces must be placed on the 1st or 2nd ranks. A player can have more than one queen, bishop, rook, or horse. My tactic when playing was to create pawn structures and put pieces like bishops and queens in spaces where they had open lines of attack. I tried to put as many queens on the board as possible. Once the computer program started taking over, I became aw...

 Since I started playing more chess, I have become a more formidable opponent. I learned about variants of the game of chess that can be played. I have been able to compare and contrast the experience of playing chess on a physical board versus playing online. Lately, I have been playing games against an AI on an app called Chess. I've been using this different app because it allows me to save my games against the AI. Either the previous app I was using didn't allow one to save games with the AI or I didn't see how one could save such games. I have beat the AI enough to get to a level called "Amateur". At this level and the previous levels, I notice the AI forgoes moves that are obviously to its advantage. In many instances I have foreseen the various ways I could have been beaten in a game in the previous levels. The AI, however, apparently did not act on those moves that could have led to my defeat. My game play is different than when I started. I did some resea...

 Yesterday, I played chess on a physical board. I haven't played chess on a physical for many years. It was a glass board with clear and white-colored pieces.  The game felt immersive in a different way when playing it on a board as opposed to do on an android app. On the app, the only physical action a human player takes it clicking the piece they want to move and space they want to move it to. The app removes captured pieces from the board automatically. Also, the app shows you possible spaces to move when you click on a piece, and highlights where the last move occurred so a player can know when it is their move. These three differences made the game immersive in a different, yet undefinable way. The latter difference requires a player's attention either to the other player or afterwards to figure out what the last move was. The app lets players save a game and go back to it later. This can be done with the physical chess board also. However, with the physical chess board t...

 Today I played another variant of chess. The variant was called Atomic. In Atomic, when you capture a piece, along with the piece you capture, the piece you used to capture and the pieces adjacent to the captured piece (except for pawns) "explode" and are removed from the game. Kings can't capture any pieces. A player can ignore a check if they can remove the opponent's king from the game. A king can go on a square next to the opponent's king. The player who removes the opponent's king from the game wins. Noticeable was the effect the game rules had on the symbolic meaning of the king piece. The king piece was now not just the weakest piece on the board, but the piece that couldn't do anything at all. However, despite not being able to do anything at all, the king was safe from being attacked by the opponent's king.  The rule saying that the capturing piece and all adjacent pieces to a captured piece explode (except for pawns) makes each move more ris...

 Today I browsed the different versions of chess available to play on www.chess.com. Included in the different versions are one called Giveaway and one called Horde. In Giveaway, there are no checks, checkmates, or castling, and a player can promote their pawns to kings. To win one must get oneself stalemated. In Horde, white has 36 pawns and black has the normal number and variety of pieces. White can promote their pawns. For black to win, black must capture all of white's pawns. For white to win, white must checkmate black. I played Horde. Me and my opponent did our moves quick, in about a minute or two for each move. The only strategy I could think of at the outset was to set up structures of pawns that protected each other (three pawns from a triangle shape). Not long after we started I realized it was important to prevent my opponent's queen from attacking me from behind since pawns that were ahead of the queen were powerless against it. I lost the game. The components of ...