Photographs of the Prison Chess series were taken in 2008 and 2009 in a maximum security facility of the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Jan 27, 2012 -
18 comments
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, "International Chess" was the only widely known chess variant in the West. It had its problems. People
tried to
solve them. Of course, they could just play
xiangqi instead. There's also
janggi,
Makruk, and the granddaddy of them all,
chaturanga. Perhaps the most refined game in the family, however, is Japanese Chess--
shogi.
[more inside]
posted by sonic meat machine
on Feb 15, 2008 -
9 comments
For nearly two decades, fifty computers have been running day and night on an extremely complex problem. Today, scientists from the University of Alberta announced the result of all that work - they have
solved the game of checkers. Chinook, the computer program they developed, can never be beaten -
try for yourself. While checkers is the most complicated game to be solved so far, it is
not the only one. You can play a
perfect game of tic-tac-toe, of course, but also
connect four, and a 6x6 board of the game
othello. Chess players are already
thinking ahead to when their game is solved, with
Advanced Chess being Gary Kasparov's answer. The hardest game to completely solve might be Go, which
may not be solved until 2100.
posted by blahblahblah
on Jul 19, 2007 -
76 comments
Chess has a long, if somewhat
shrouded,
history, with beautiful chess pieces found dating from the
5th century. It has spawned
hundreds of fascinating stories, and
many interesting names for moves. For the last five decades, the history of chess and computers have
been intertwined in many ways. Chess continues to adapt to a new age, with controversies around
computer-assisted cheating, attempts to
sex-up chess books,
thousands of variants, and an
amazing online database that can search through recorded games for the last 200 years.
posted by blahblahblah
on Dec 4, 2006 -
5 comments
ChessRogue =
Chess +
Rogue. (Open source, versions available for Linux and Windows.)
This console-based game takes the pieces of chess and puts them into a Roguelike environment. You start out with a weakened King who can only move and capture horizontally and vertically, in a randomized board full of multi-directional Pawns. As you capture more pieces, the king slowly gains additional powers, like diagonal capture and movement, Knight jumping, and eventually even Rook movement, among others. The opposition gets tougher too, until eventually the entire selection of pieces is out to get you.
Originally created for a three-day programming challenge on
rec.games.roguelike.development, it's surprisingly cool, and works rather better than you might expect. It's useful as a break between
Nethack fatalities.
posted by JHarris
on Aug 2, 2005 -
19 comments
