Week 5

 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 the game were different. This did not remove the strategy that is involved in a game of normal chess, however it changes what strategies are available. Comparing the strength of one's pieces to the opponent's is different than in a normal game of chess.

Playing Horde did not impress with a rhetoric that was different than the rhetoric of war and the importance of thinking about the big picture that normal chess had. This suggests to me that in a game of chess, the king doesn't play a necessary part in its connotations of war. Nor do the other pieces, which is more expected, since they all represent less social status than the king piece. 

The game Horde at this point seems re-playable. I am not sure how many outcomes the game has. Perhaps there is not as many as a normal game of chess. If there is not many outcomes possible, perhaps a skilled chess player would discern this.