Is this some sort of joke, or are these people serious?
http://www.schemingmind.com/journala...?article_id=13

--
John Goulden

"John D. Goulden" wrote in message
...
Is this some sort of joke, or are these people serious?
http://www.schemingmind.com/journala...?article_id=13

I have not looked at the link but I know that it is all rather a weak joke.

"John D. Goulden" wrote in message
...
Is this some sort of joke, or are these people serious?
http://www.schemingmind.com/journala...?article_id=13

It appears to be a legitimate and playable chess variant, as is evident from
the article about it at chessvariants.org:
http://www.chessvariants.org/link2.dir/srchess.html

From what I gather, three Exhibition Games are in progress:
http://schemingmind.com/game.aspx?game_id=5786
http://schemingmind.com/game.aspx?game_id=6055
http://schemingmind.com/game.aspx?game_id=6089
I'm told that anyone can play Stanley Random Chess at this server. Anyone
with even half a sense of humor and an interest in chess owes it to
themselves to read some of the later annotations on the first of these
games, which are also recorded he
http://www.geocities.com/verdrahciretop/src8.html
Another contributer to this newsgroup has posted some tantalizing quotes, I
think, but the exercise could be repeated here if it's useful.

Some of the historical claims seem extraordinary, but it certainly seems to
be a playable and authentic chess variant. Apparently your enjoyment of the
game is proportional to your sense of humor.

* Shane *

"Shane Maven" wrote in message
.. .
"John D. Goulden" wrote in message
...
Is this some sort of joke, or are these people serious?
http://www.schemingmind.com/journala...?article_id=13

It appears to be a legitimate and playable chess variant, as is evident
from
the article about it at chessvariants.org:
http://www.chessvariants.org/link2.dir/srchess.html

From what I gather, three Exhibition Games are in progress:
http://schemingmind.com/game.aspx?game_id=5786
http://schemingmind.com/game.aspx?game_id=6055
http://schemingmind.com/game.aspx?game_id=6089
I'm told that anyone can play Stanley Random Chess at this server. Anyone
with even half a sense of humor and an interest in chess owes it to
themselves to read some of the later annotations on the first of these
games, which are also recorded he
http://www.geocities.com/verdrahciretop/src8.html
Another contributer to this newsgroup has posted some tantalizing quotes,
I
think, but the exercise could be repeated here if it's useful.

Some of the historical claims seem extraordinary, but it certainly seems
to
be a playable and authentic chess variant. Apparently your enjoyment of
the
game is proportional to your sense of humor.

LOL. All of those links are the same guy with the same tired joke over and
over again.
Are you in with the joke?

From the commentary of one of these games...

"However about how the season determines moves sometimes, Geert Holdebro of
Holland once lost a game because the adjucater, Dr Mendoza from Argentina,
was still thinking that it was summer,(it still was in Argentina)and that
Holstebros move was illegal due to it being an anti-horizontal winter attack
on a unmirrored position, thereby making it illegal, because it was
"summertime"..."

So it appears that SR is to chess what Fizzbin is to cards.

--
John Goulden

"Alan OBrien" wrote in message
...
LOL. All of those links are the same guy with the same tired joke over and
over again.
Are you in with the joke?

What's new are the moves and annotations that the players keep adding
regularly to these game.

Some of my favorites annotations I came across:

Nanashi No-Gombe: The current position reminds me of an exhibition game
between GM Viktor Demetri Plaztov and the Gdansk All-Soprano Choir. As
everyone knows, Viktor always preferred to indicate his moves through
charades. When he pantomined that his Bishop should take a particular
Knight, this was accidently interpreted as a rather vulgar suggestion by his
opponents. The resulting riot lasted for several days. Because of this
incident, there was a subsequent attempt to ban the use of charades in SR
Chess. A compromise was met when it was agreed that players who insist on
using such tactics must supply a qualified licensed interpreter, or at the
least cue cards.

GM Topov: Sadly black is forced to abandon the Fierce Knight Advancement
(Stage 2) for now, in favour of this clearly inferior broadside move first
used by the Englishman Sir Francis Drake. A skilled SR Chess player, Sir
Francis Drake was also noted for circumcizing the world with a 100 foot
clipper. The highlight of his career was when he defeated the naval
commander of the Spanish Armadillo in a decisive SR Chess Match in 1588 (a
game that historical revisionists later presented as an actual naval battle,
in a successful attempt to bolster Drake's reputation with Elizabeth I.) In
the course of a Rematch against the Spanish, Drake died suddenly on January
28th, 1596, and is still believed to be dead. For unknown reasons, his
playing career suffered a dramatic decline after his death.

Nanashi No-Gombe: White was able to avoid the worst aspects of the
Iberian-Karkarese Gambit by the 'balancing of the diagonals' with the Knight
move. But it is apparent by Black's King-side castling that the option is
still being maintained. If Black had gone with Queen-side castling, the
Iberian-Karkarese Gambit Reversed, or simply Karkarese-Iberian Gambit, might
have been possible but White's undeveloped Pawn at a2 prevented its
effective prosecution at this point. As to the over-extended Rook, Jeffery
Freud (an amateur player with no relation to Sigmund) presented a lengthy
dissertation during the 1927 Vienna SR Chess Sidewalk Exhibition about this
position. The twenty-hour speech revolved around the interplay of various
psychological complexes involving envy, fear and pride.

Austin Lockwood: A rare slip-up by GM Topov allows me to take control of the
key central croix area. This would normally guarantee a fairly easy white
win, but I'm sure the GM has something up his sleeve. Not, of course, in the
same way that the notorious 'Stanley Rascal' of 1924, Sir Cuthbert
Farquar-Smyth, kept a supply of spare white queens up his sleeve during the
international match between England and Romania. Amazingly none of the
officials noticed until the end of the eighth week of the match, by which
time it was too late and Sir Farquar-Smyth's results were allowed to stand.

Nanashi No-Gombe: One of the most notable cases of SR Chess fixing occured
when GM Jimmy Joe Ratchet discovered after a game that his Queen had been
glued to the board. Surveillance video proved that his opponent, and
brother, GM Billy Bob Ratchet was responsible. Stills clearly showed him
bringing in heavy equipment and excavating a tunnel from one of his Pawn's
position to the opposing Queen. The result of this game between the Ratchet
brothers was still considered valid, partly because Jimmy Joe never actually
touched his Queen during the entire game. In fact, he was able to win the
game by simply moving a single Knight around the field, whinnying and making
clop-clop noises. This audacious strategy, called the JJ Ratchet Equine
Bluff, has been attempted by many SR Chess masters but never successfully.

GM Topov: This is not the only scandal that has rocked the world of SR
Chess. One needs only think of the deplorable incident with the
copper-plated pawns and the nine-volt battery at the 1946 Finnish Nationals,
the case of the uncarved bishop at the 1962 World Championships, and the
1934 disqualification of Norwegian grandmaster Ola Nordmann for arriving at
a tournament with excessive body-hair. Although perhaps not to the extent of
other sports, SR Chess has also had its share of drug scandals, such as when
Canadian grandmaster John Benson was stripped of his GM title and sent home
in disgrace from the 1988 ISRC Olympiad, after testing positive to a banned
performance-enhancing stimulant said to improve hand-eye coordination and
lateral rook catapult control. Benson has since retired from SR Chess and
moved to England, engaged in his new hobbies of bee-keeping, and building a
collection of life-sized wax replicas of himself (his collection currently
numbers 93).

I'm following the game with great interest, and much laughter. Anyone who
can read this without cracking half a smile, has a heart of stone. I can
post more of my favorite annotations if there is interest.

* Shane *

Also there is no season for Stanley Random Chess as there is for its subset
Normal Chess which is played on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Years Day and
even Mothers Day.

So it appears that SR is to chess what Fizzbin is to cards.

--
John Goulden


No, the main difference is that Fizzbin is fictional and satirical, poking fun
at card games and their players whereas SRC is clearly an ancestor game of
chess.

Saying that Fizzbin is to cards as SRC is to Chess is like arguing that Donald
Trump's The Art of the Deal is the best book on cards or chess ever written.

"John D. Goulden" wrote in message
...

So it appears that SR is to chess what Fizzbin is to cards.

There is a conspiracy theory that there is a common link between Fizzbin
(card game), Mornington Crescent (board game), Stanley Random (chess game),
and Calvinball (field game), but this has never been proven. Are there any
other games that belong in this category?

Stanley Random and Mornington Crescent appear to be the most authentic and
most well-documented of this group, and are actively played online. Stanley
Random seems to be the easiest of these to learn, because it incorporates
the traditional rules that govern chess moves, as well as some obscure
additional rules that were later lost. I don't know of any web-sites where
Fizzbin can be played online - or can't the game be played over the
internet?

J. Owens

No, the main difference is that Fizzbin is fictional and satirical, poking
fun
at card games and their players whereas SRC is clearly an ancestor game of
chess.

Actually, the most recent research indicates that Fizzbin is the ancestor of
all card games and actually predates playing cards as we know them. All
modern card games - blackjack, poker, bridge, you name it - are simplified
variants of Fizzbin. In fact, since SRC uses a type of card, SRC itself is
derived, in part, from Fizzbin.

--
John Goulden