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Showing posts from February, 2009

Thought for the Day: Chess -- Orthodox, Egalitarian, and Reform

Please bear with me, this really is a d'var torah kind of thought. We all know how to play chess, at least the basic rules. Moreover, we have seen different size boards, different colors, different shape pieces. I have even seen a Star Wars chess game with wookies and darth vader and whatnot. It's all still chess; as odd as the pieces and board may look: every version has all the same types of pieces recognizable by how they move and they have the same goal. Let's invent a couple of new games. First game: same board, pieces, and moves, but lets remove the inequality between the king and the queen. The game ends whenever either the king or queen is captured, the king can move the same as the queen. Oh, and we don't let pawns become queens (or anything else) when they reach the other side of the board. We'll call this Egalitarian Chess. Second game: this time we feel that it is very unfair that pawns cannot move backward. We also don't like that piece