Stealth Chess
Publicado: 15 Ene 2005 12:31
Texto sacado del "The New Discworld Companion" (Pratchett-Briggs), me interesó mucho cuando lo leí. Lo traduciría, pero como dudo que pueda hacer un trabajo lo suficientemente bueno lo dejo tal cual.
(...) New members are always welcome for this exciting and taxing sport, which takes a few hours to grasp, but a lifetime to master. It is an excellent test of memory and a remarkable sharpening of that most valuable of skill to an Assassin - rampant paranoia.
It has been argued that a form of Stealth Chess was the original chess; the point of view is largely based on the discovery, in an ancient tomb in Muntab, of a preserved corpse with an eight squares by ten squares chessboard embedded in its skull and a pawn hammered firmly up each nostril.
It is entirely unlike its better-known offspring in actual play, althought there is only one unfamiliar type of piece. This is, of course, the Assassin.
There are two on each side, outside the Rooks, facing one another down the two outermost files of squares (coloured red and white on the Muntab board, rather than the black and white of the rest of the board). These are known as the Slurks. No one other type of piece may enter these. Assassins, as they say, keep to the walls.
Strictly speaking, an Assassin moves one square in any direction, or two to capture. And it may capture any piece on the board except another Assassin -that is, a player may sometimes choose to save a usefully positioned Assassin by letting it 'assassinate' one of its fellow pieces in orther to occupy its square but will never attack an opposing Assassin, because theris is an honourable trade.
So far, that makes it merely a powerful, if slow, piece. But it is 'movement in the Slurk' that is the Assassin forte, and an exciting move it is. It is hard to believe that the ancient had any concept of the Uncertainty Principle, but in short an Assassin's real movement in the Slurk may not necessarily be in the direction it appears to be moving in. All the piece is indicating is that is moving, not the direction; it is moving, as the wizards may say, through another dimension. If, for example, an Assassin takes three moves in the Slurk it can on its next move reappear on any square three point where it entered and then make a one square move to capture.
Players of the younger, conventional game find this hard to grasp and, once grasped, hard to live whit as silent death appears inthe middle of a classic King's Klatchian defence and checkmates the King. Once newcomers pick up the idea, then they find that undue reliance on the pwerful Assassin can be unwise if they neglect the opponent's Queen in stately yet conventional progress down the board. Around this point they give up -but for thrills and fascination there is nothing like wawtching a game between two skilled players with all four Assassins in play and working invisibily with the other pieces, in an atmosphere of concentrate fear.
The acknownledged master of the game is the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari, who won a Black four years running and honed its skill, or so is said, by playing blinfold.
(...) New members are always welcome for this exciting and taxing sport, which takes a few hours to grasp, but a lifetime to master. It is an excellent test of memory and a remarkable sharpening of that most valuable of skill to an Assassin - rampant paranoia.
It has been argued that a form of Stealth Chess was the original chess; the point of view is largely based on the discovery, in an ancient tomb in Muntab, of a preserved corpse with an eight squares by ten squares chessboard embedded in its skull and a pawn hammered firmly up each nostril.
It is entirely unlike its better-known offspring in actual play, althought there is only one unfamiliar type of piece. This is, of course, the Assassin.
There are two on each side, outside the Rooks, facing one another down the two outermost files of squares (coloured red and white on the Muntab board, rather than the black and white of the rest of the board). These are known as the Slurks. No one other type of piece may enter these. Assassins, as they say, keep to the walls.
Strictly speaking, an Assassin moves one square in any direction, or two to capture. And it may capture any piece on the board except another Assassin -that is, a player may sometimes choose to save a usefully positioned Assassin by letting it 'assassinate' one of its fellow pieces in orther to occupy its square but will never attack an opposing Assassin, because theris is an honourable trade.
So far, that makes it merely a powerful, if slow, piece. But it is 'movement in the Slurk' that is the Assassin forte, and an exciting move it is. It is hard to believe that the ancient had any concept of the Uncertainty Principle, but in short an Assassin's real movement in the Slurk may not necessarily be in the direction it appears to be moving in. All the piece is indicating is that is moving, not the direction; it is moving, as the wizards may say, through another dimension. If, for example, an Assassin takes three moves in the Slurk it can on its next move reappear on any square three point where it entered and then make a one square move to capture.
Players of the younger, conventional game find this hard to grasp and, once grasped, hard to live whit as silent death appears inthe middle of a classic King's Klatchian defence and checkmates the King. Once newcomers pick up the idea, then they find that undue reliance on the pwerful Assassin can be unwise if they neglect the opponent's Queen in stately yet conventional progress down the board. Around this point they give up -but for thrills and fascination there is nothing like wawtching a game between two skilled players with all four Assassins in play and working invisibily with the other pieces, in an atmosphere of concentrate fear.
The acknownledged master of the game is the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari, who won a Black four years running and honed its skill, or so is said, by playing blinfold.
