I want to thank George Macon in he future of Chess thread for bringing
up Calvinball, and bringing attention one website that offered one
spin on it, that is the basis of the this question.

This is a theoretical question, meant to test whether or not, even
through boundaries, if the ruleset to chess is finite or infinite.
This does NOT mean playing chess this way is the best way to play
chess, but it does as the question of whether or not chess itself
could remain unsolved if you introduce variant rules. A separate
question would be whether or not doing this would produce games that
aren't even chess. I will leave that as a subset question to this
question, to be asked another time, regarding what is the minimum set
of fix rules needed to still qualify a game as being "Chess". Anyhow,
onto the question posed by Heraclitus (aka Calvinball) Chess.

The philosopher Heraclitus said, "You can never step in the same river
twice" . So, on this note, I would like to run this concept as part
of the Chess of Tomorrow project. As part of the discussion of the
future of chess, someone brought up Calvinball. They posted a link to
one set of unofficial rules:
http://www.bartel.org/calvinball/

There is one permanent rule they have for Calvinball on that page.
That rule is: You may not play the Calvinball the same way twice.

So the basic framework for the ultimate chess variant would be: Can
you have a framework for chess and variants that would enable a person
to NEVER play chess the same way twice (by the exact same set of
rules)? Changes in rules consist of such things as the change in the
layout of the pieces, changes in what constitutes win conditions,
changes in how pieces move and capture, changes in what is in pocket/
reserve, and other things along these lines.

A softer version of this challenge would be that a person would play
both side (black and white) each once, before moving on to a set of
rules. Another softer version of this question would the prospects of
rules changing DURING a game, so a game which has rules change to
something different in turn 3, would be considered a different game
than one where the same rules change happened in turn 5. So the rules
can change in game. From an abstract strategy game perspective, one
could state such rule changes are either known by players when they
would happen at the start of the game, or are controlled by the
players as to when they happen during the game.

Would this be true for a COMMUNITY of players, that keeps adding new
players, given an infinite amount of time also? The community of
players as a whole would never see the same set of rules twice in the
games they play?

A Heraclitus (aka Calvinball) tournament would consist of this being
unique for each game. During the tournament, a limited set of games,
each game has a different set of rules. This is a practical
application of the whole Heraclitus chess approach.

The question then is: Is Heraclitian (aka Calvinball) Chess
possible? Doesn't mean that most of the games people would play of it
would be good, just if it is possible or not. Then the question
becomes how many restrictions can be placed on it to improve quality,
and still have it be Heraclitian.

Thank you for your time...
- Rich

By the way, this questions does impact the Chess of Tomorrow project
in regards to its objectives. If you care to want to input there,
please feel free to do so. The URL is:
http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/for...ed#post-139883

wrote:

I want to thank George Macon in he future of Chess thread for bringing
up Calvinball, and bringing attention one website that offered one
spin on it,

My name is Guy Macon. Not George.

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

On Apr 7, 1:02 pm, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:
wrote:
I want to thank Guy Macon in he future of Chess thread for bringing
up Calvinball, and bringing attention one website that offered one
spin on it,

My name is Guy Macon. Not George.

Sorry for that. I stand corrected here. I should of said Mr. Macon
instead. And to think, I went back to make sure I got your name
right. I did fix it above.

- Rich

(Who snuck sci.math into the newsgroups line? *WAY* off-topic there!)

wrote:

Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

wrote:

I want to thank Guy Macon in he future of Chess thread for bringing
up Calvinball, and bringing attention one website that offered one
spin on it,

My name is Guy Macon. Not George.

Sorry for that. I stand corrected here. I should of said Mr. Macon
instead. And to think, I went back to make sure I got your name
right. I did fix it above.

Hey, as long as I am in the "thanks to" section when CalvinChess
makes you rich (don't laugh; do you have any idea how much they
made off of Smess? It was a huge hit!) I will be happy.

BTW, here is a place to get some interesting ideas:
[ http://www.sjgames.com/knightmare/ ] and at the "specific
cards" section he
[ http://www.sjgames.com/knightmare/kc_faq.html ].


--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

On Apr 7, 5:13 pm, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:
(Who snuck sci.math into the newsgroups line? *WAY* off-topic there!)

I was looking for a group that would deal with the mathematical
theoretical issues regarding the idea that a set of rules to a game
could have an infinite varieties. Perhaps there is a better "game
theory" newsgroup.

wrote:
Hey, as long as I am in the "thanks to" section when CalvinChess
makes you rich (don't laugh; do you have any idea how much they
made off of Smess? It was a huge hit!) I will be happy.

Well, you will be made mention if Calvinball Chess (by whatever its
name) will get discussed, in regards to its history (and you will be
referred to as Guy :-) ).

BTW, here is a place to get some interesting ideas:
[http://www.sjgames.com/knightmare/] and at the "specific
cards" section he
[http://www.sjgames.com/knightmare/kc_faq.html].

Drops and gating, shuffles (FRC/960), and the ideas in Knighmare Chess
are what I was actually thinking of regarding Calvinball. With
Nightmare Chess, I believe you deal out a bunch of cards, and players
alternate turns taking one. Players know what can come into play, but
players decide when they come into play. You need to balance the
scoring somehow so it is fair, and have players both have the same
choice picking which cards to use. So long as you can keep spawning
more and more rules, Calvinball is in effect.

The idea you see in Knightmare Chess has been discussed as
"mutators". These are rules that change the rules of the game as you
play. They can be applied to the start, or possibly throughout the
game.

- Rich

On Apr 7, 9:55 am, wrote:

A Heraclitus (aka Calvinball) tournament would consist of this being
unique for each game. During the tournament, a limited set of games,
each game has a different set of rules. This is a practical
application of the whole Heraclitus chess approach.

The question then is: Is Heraclitian (aka Calvinball) Chess
possible? Doesn't mean that most of the games people would play of it
would be good, just if it is possible or not. Then the question
becomes how many restrictions can be placed on it to improve quality,
and still have it be Heraclitian.

I would think that each variant should be used twice - once for one
player as White, once as Black, for a series of two games between two
players. Just like the openings drawn in Checkers.

Since I am not discussing whether or not one could have a near-
infinite number of variants of Chess, I've removed sci.math.

But my version, on the 12 by 8 board, offers up to 16,200 variants -
all tidy and symmetrical like normal Chess, so it might meet this
particular goal.

John Savard

On Apr 7, 12:02 pm, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:
wrote:

I want to thank George Macon in he future of Chess thread for bringing
up Calvinball, and bringing attention one website that offered one
spin on it,

My name is Guy Macon. Not George.

I was wondering if this was a Freudian slip... perhaps he was imputing
the "we will adopt no chess variant before its time" viewpoint to you.

John Savard

I still don't get it.

Look, a game is a tree*, right? The root is the initial position,
below it one node for each possible starting move, one below each of
these for the possible replies. At the bottom of the tree (trees grow
downwards in CS and math) are the end nodes, which you can label "win"
and "loss". Or "tie", "draw", "both lose", "both win", "win but your
opponent doesn't lose", if you really want to.

The thing is, since we are talking _abstract_ games here, what really
matters is the shape of this tree. Whether you describe the game in
terms of moving pieces, connections, capturing, or changing rules, all
that is just flavour. Far from unimportant, but nonetheless it's the
tree that makes the game.

Moreover, observe that from any position in a game tree, there's a
complete game that starts right there. All games are already a vast
collection of subgames. Even for a game with a comparatively modest
tree such as Chess, it is already the case that you never play the
same game twice.

So what exactly are you trying to achieve?

Are you trying to make chess into a game which has a theoretically
infinite number of moves at one point in the tree? There are many such
games, like Eleusis and Mind Ninja, but it is neither necessary nor
sufficient to save the game from being solved, or even giving humans
the advantage. It won't get it on TV either.

Nor do the fact that big games include very many other games as their
subgames matter much. They have to stand on their own merit. I don't
feel that Magic: The gathering is an all that varied experience, for
instance, although the number of possible games probably dwarfs even
Go.

When I play abstracts rather than CCGs, it's not because they are more
varied, but because the variation I find there (indeed, the variation
in the ways a single good game can play out) is of a more interesting
kind. I suspect other abstract players feel that way too, especially
those of the traditional abstracts, so I don't see Heraclitan Chess
conquering the world any time soon.

(* technically a directed acyclic graph. Whether the rules say so
explicitly or not, all rules have an equivalent of the fifty-move
rule, because players aren't machines.)

On Apr 7, 7:55 am, wrote:


So the basic framework for the ultimate chess variant would be: Can
you have a framework for chess and variants that would enable a person
to NEVER play chess the same way twice (by the exact same set of
rules)?

It's only to easy. I have a very long, regular sequence of such
variants. Each is very much like standard chess. Each next one differs
only a little from the previous one. You use the standard chess
board, and standard pieces, only possibly more than in the standard
chess, depending on the game (the starting position is always the
same).

Furthermore, for a greater variety, I have 255 of such different
sequences (plus standard chess on the top of it :-)

I claim that each sequence is very long and not infinnite
because I am talking about games which are essentially
different, and not just formally -- if we treat the repetition
rule seriously then I consider each of my 255 sequences of
variants to be finite. (There are still more than plenty of them :-)

Regards,

Wlod

On Apr 8, 6:40 pm, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:
On Apr 7, 7:55 am, wrote:



So the basic framework for the ultimate chess variant would be: Can
you have a framework for chess and variants that would enable a person
to NEVER play chess the same way twice (by the exact same set of
rules)?

It's only to easy.

.... too easy.


Furthermore, for a greater variety, I have 255
of such different sequences [...]


I was very conservative. In fact, I have many more
of them, and each sequence consists of astronomically
many variants. (Variants from different sequences
are always different, and so are any two from any
given sequence).

Wlod