Human Chess and Checkers

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:16 pm

What I was envisioning was a massive chess/checkers board (was thinking a painted sheet pined to the playa) where people took on the parts of the pieces, in the chess game the King would be in "command" of the "army" and in checkers having a piece elected "king" and having people literary jump each other, a la leap frog style.

Īm still wonder how it would work exactly and how to organize it, and to make sure its fun for everyone, as the chess game might be a little too slow, but an interesting experiment none the less

So basically thought id post and see if anyone attempted this before? or if anyone had any ideas to share and opinions on it as a possible activity,

BadDawg · Post by **BadDawg** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:29 pm

Sort of like in Mel Brooks movie "History of the World"
Bishop jumps Queen
Kinights jump Queen
Pawns jump Queen
"Gang Bang"

"It's good to be the King"

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 5:45 am

The problem is that there'll be plenty of queens, and not enough pawns.

Mister Jellyfish Mister · Post by **Mister Jellyfish Mister** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 6:38 am

Nice embrace of the theme, Tuatha. We do that all day long in our psyche.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:13 pm

robotland wrote:The problem is that there'll be plenty of queens, and not enough pawns.

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Maybe we need you broker more pawns

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:23 pm

I dont think anyone has tried it before. You can go to the main bman site and do a search in their image archive to check though.

I do remember twister, HUGE mat that someone painted different colored spots on. That was majorly popular.

Or maybe it was naked twister...? Hmmm....[/url]

moonbeam327 · Post by **moonbeam327** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 4:41 pm

i love the idea.. Ive seen live chess at a renaissance faire a long while a go, that was pretty neat, but not interactive like this would be!

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 5:19 pm

moonbeam327 wrote:i love the idea.. Ive seen live chess at a renaissance faire a long while a go, that was pretty neat, but not interactive like this would be!

_
it was at stoners fair. how else could you keep the peases on the board

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 8:01 pm

I Think the Checkers idea would work better as it would be more involved and fast paced,

I had the idea that we could run the chess game a la thunder dome style with padded swords and pieces would have dule each other to be taken (so just because the knight jumps the queen, the queen can still smite the Knight)
But we dont want people getting too carried away and someone getting hurt

The other idea i had was making it speed chess where the king has to make a move in under 5 secs or forfit their sides turn, but that still means that some poor pawn could be left standing for the whole of the game and not get involved, which is what i want to avoid,

Or maybe have it that pieces have to be given orders by a higher piece so the Knight can tell a pawn to move up, but then i think it desolves into chaos, or maybe each piece gets a turn to order someone else around?

Does anybody have any ideas on how to do that? i think it will be really hard to find a ballance between Fun and Playability

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 8:04 pm

Mister Jellyfish Mister wrote:Nice embrace of the theme, Tuatha. We do that all day long in our psyche.

Thanks man :) Well have to organise the Black Rock Burner Hostel Vs Kamp Apokiliptika. game Winner keeps the time machine ;)

sputnik · Post by **sputnik** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 8:16 pm

I wondered about this too, but worried about pieces that never moved and how boring that would be for them. What about equiping each player/piece with a radio based buzzer. First one to buzz in gets to decide which piece moves, even themselves.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 8:30 pm

sputnik wrote:I wondered about this too, but worried about pieces that never moved and how boring that would be for them. What about equiping each player/piece with a radio based buzzer. First one to buzz in gets to decide which piece moves, even themselves.

_
i've been trying tell gents, !t takes smokeing grass to keep everyone suspended and happy

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:14 pm

Thats not a half bad idea, actualy thats a pretty damm good one, but then how would you work out who it was in the mass of beeping?

sputnik · Post by **sputnik** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:17 am

It would be tricky. You'd need to have some master control board with a single person watching and then calling out who gets to move. Not a simple thing at all really. You'll also need some way to remember who is which piece. Had you planned on hats or costumes?

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 5:21 am

Giant human "Sorry" would be fun, too- You could make the Pop-O-Matic out of a trampoline.....
OR

Eplaya Whack-A-Troll
Roofieland (adult Candyland)
Domi(natrix)noes
HungyHungryHarveys

dougaldutch · Post by **dougaldutch** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:19 am

Have been pondering the waiting around issue, if hats were used to define which piece someone was, if that hat provided shade and possibly beverages (classic straw feed method) then the waiting would be less of an issue. Chat away to your fellow pieces, chat up the nearest queen, heckle the opposing pawns.

If people don't pay attention to their move, that little electric shocker you installed in the hat would surely get their attention and also provide quality entertainment; what can I say the simple things amuse me.

Can always go lo-tech on the buzzer front sputnik mentioned and just give everyone flags to raise (suitably decorated of course) or some sort of squeeky toy with different noises (go down to the pet store and stock up, I call the rubber duck).

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:58 am

sputnik wrote:It would be tricky. You'd need to have some master control board with a single person watching and then calling out who gets to move. Not a simple thing at all really. You'll also need some way to remember who is which piece. Had you planned on hats or costumes?

Yeah we were thinking about getting bibs made, i had some grander ideas for costumes but unfortunitly coming from New Zealand there is only so much we can do :(

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 12:02 pm

dougaldutch wrote:if that hat provided shade and possibly beverages (classic straw feed method) then the waiting would be less of an issue. Chat away to your fellow pieces, chat up the nearest queen, heckle the opposing pawns.

If people don't pay attention to their move, that little electric shocker you installed in the hat would surely get their attention and also provide quality entertainment; what can I say the simple things amuse me.

Can always go lo-tech on the buzzer front sputnik mentioned and just give everyone flags to raise (suitably decorated of course) or some sort of squeeky toy with different noises (go down to the pet store and stock up, I call the rubber duck).

I like, and its doable, i never thought about heckling and boozing, i can just see two pawns winding up face to face unable to move so one of challanges the other to a drink off, first one under the board looses and is "taken" so to speak :)

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 12:05 pm

robotland wrote:Giant human "Sorry" would be fun, too- You could make the Pop-O-Matic out of a trampoline.....
OR

Eplaya Whack-A-Troll
Roofieland (adult Candyland)
Domi(natrix)noes
HungyHungryHarveys

hehe yeah there are alot of games that you could run but building the board and getting it there would be our problem,

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 12:11 pm

[quote="Tuatha
Yeah we were thinking about getting bibs made, i had some grander ideas for costumes but unfortunitly coming from New Zealand there is only so much we can do

[/quote]
Shirts versus skins!

Tuatha · Post by **Tuatha** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:43 pm

Ohhh Then we get to play with Body Paint! Paddling pool of black and a paddling pool of white, lol

trancendance · Post by **trancendance** » Mon May 23, 2005 11:29 am

just heard that some ppl in our sfbay area are planning to do this - i'll direct them to this post so they can share more info...

warpup · Post by **warpup** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 3:01 pm

yar. i recall some group over at portland state did this in our fair city several years ago using the downtown city grid as the board. as i understand it, there were two players at a chessboard and the moves were communicated to the 'pieces' by walkie talkie. the pieces would then move to thier respective places and the 'killed' pieces returned to homebase.

novel concept, but as it turned out some 'pieces' were very active and couldn't take the strain of running around all day (okay, you're a knight. move 2x1 city blocks. okey, you're a queen. move 6 city blocks DIAGONALLY! and hurry, damnit! everyone is getting a little pissy!), while others never hardly moved and got bored and left their positions for frosty pints never to be seen again...

hoochie mama · Post by **hoochie mama** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:54 am

We had a giant twister board made by a sign company...vinyl with applied colored dots. 20 or so people could play at once. Our biggest problem was flying back to Canada after the burn with it. Folded into a duffle bag it kept coming up on xray as ominous black dots. Apparently black dots look like cannisters which are very very bad. Imagine trying to explain why you have a duffle bag full of dots. Or a giant twister board covered in Playa dust. And a purple tutu.

Peacekeeper · Post by **Peacekeeper** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 1:37 pm

well what about not having pawns at all? Its Burning Man, who cares about the rules?

If everybody involved were a power piece, everyone would get to move a whole lot more. And you could always play fourway chess with just power pieces, then it would be action from all angles. Or what about just cycling thorugh all the peices in order? That way everyone could decide their own move, to the simultaneous detriment and humourous disassembly of classic chess strategy. Shouting, and heavenword eyeball rolling all round. Hilarious......

djzip13 · Post by **djzip13** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:08 pm

I think the idea has legs. Tuatha, the idea of speed chess is a great one. Keeping the time to under 10 seconds will keep the game moving. Choosing teams randomly at the beginning of the game will likely provide a person you don't know next to you. If someone can't find something to talk about for 5 to 10 minutes with a person next to them, they need to drink as a penalty. (Not to say I don't plan on drinking for no particular reason)

It could be that simple. Good luck and hope to get in a game or two!

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:44 pm

Slightly off-topic, but I was playing with the idea of someday getting together a mounted live chess team (humans on horses, all the pieces, not just the knights) and take it around to horse shows and expos. Problem is I don't think we'd have enough people w/horses interested in forming a full two-sides troupe...

Has live chess ever been done on the Playa? It seems a natural. Sure, people have done oversized chess games and of course there's the classic Alien Chess Camp, but who's done it with live participants in costumes?

If I was coming this year I'd volunteer four stick horses for the knights to play with...

Ron · Post by **Ron** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:35 am

Sounds like a fun idea. To maximize the involvement of all the players/pieces you might consider giving them a limited autonomy. Say each piece gets a die and at the start of reach turn they roll it on the playa. If they get a 1 then they can move themselves that turn. Meaning a random number of pieces each turn will move. Furthermore you could change the odds of any given piece being able to move themselves by giving them different sided dice. Pawns might have ten sided dice, giving them a 10% chance to be able to move themselves, but the Queen might have a coin and on 'heads,' she'd get to move, giving her a 50% chance to move herself. Then the king gets to move one piece, in a 15 second window, with all the other pieces, spectators, and everyone around yelling advice.

:)

Ron, who used to make his living in the game industry....

sdlarry · Post by **sdlarry** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:34 pm

I wish I had checked the postings months ago...I had this very idea to do a theme camp with part of it being human chess games...speed chess at that. a relationship breakup put everything on hold, so I am not going to do that...I hope you are. If so and you like...I can gift you the ideas I had or help in some way.

JediDale · Post by **JediDale** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:17 pm

Fischer Random chess is where the pieces are placed at random except the pawns, yet even the pawns get more action in Fischer Random Chess
than in regular chess. Also, it puts tournament player types in balance with other players because they can't be "booked up" on all the various possible piece position setups. What about En Passant? thats PxP e.p.
in the old notation. I would be interested in playing. Currently I am rated
1815 on ICC (Internet Chess Club) my handle is Mysterio if you want to finger me. Finger means look up my stats on ICC, NOT what you were thinking!! for rules of Fischer Random Chess go to United States Chess Federation or Chessbase.

Genuinely,

Jedi Dale Of Reno

[email protected]

Human Chess and Checkers

Human Chess and Checkers

Someone's doing this

human chess pieces

twister

Human chess

Ever hear of Fischer Random Chess?