Instead of thousand possibilities - About Story And chess
Hi, everyone.
You may have read the story Instead of a thousand possibilities and clicked on this blog post because you decided to learn more about it. If so, thank you and we'll talk about it in a bit. But maybe you clicked on this post because you were intrigued, and if you were also intrigued by the story Instead of a thousand possibilities, the link to part one is here. Anyway, enough of this talk and let's get started.
Chess pieces in the story and in chess
Here in this part of this post I would like to introduce the most significant chess pieces that appeared in the story, how they look in real chess and I would like to remind you of their importance in the story. Above each piece you will find a picture, with what it looks like in real life on one side and what it looks like in the story on the other. Well, here we go!
GRASSHOPPER
In Instead of thousand possibilities
The grasshopper chess piece first appeared in the second part of the story, it was the first living chess piece (not a chess man like Roland) that Ray met on his journey. Later it appeared in the eighth part when the rebels who opposed the chess king flew at it.
In chess
A grasshopper is a jumping piece that moves like a queen - horizontally, vertically or diagonally - but with one major difference:
- She jumps over another piece (friendly or enemy) that is directly in her path.
- She lands on the first free square behind this piece.
- If there is no piece there, it cannot move.
XIANGQI KNIGHT
In Instead of thousand possibilities
Xiangqi knight first appears in the second part, although he is mentioned in the part about him. He is a cold-blooded guardian of the frosty tundra that bears his name. Ray is both fascinated and terrified by this figure, and so prefers to flee. Xiangqi Knight makes his second appearance in the eighth part of the story as a warrior on the side of the Chess King.
In chess
The xiangqi knight moves first one square orthogonally (up, down, left, right), and then one square diagonally from the new position.
- In other words: his move resembles the letter "L", but is not a jump as in classical chess.
ALFIL RIDER
In Instead of thousand possibilities
He first appears in the third part of the story. When Ray descends into the ravine of despair, he discovers on a rock ledge a figure of Roder the alfil that resembles a tree with grapes growing on it. Ray has a taste for grapes, but he has a hunch they're cursed. This doesn't quite come across as true during the story, because the constructed pieces, such as the alibabarider in the seventh part and the chess king in the tenth part, drink wine from their grapes.
In chess
The alfil rider is an expanded version of the alfil, which is a historical piece from the ancient Arabic game of shatranj - the forerunner of modern chess.
- The alfil itself jumps two squares diagonally, skipping any pieces between the starting and finishing squares.
- Alfil rider is its "rider" version - that is, it can move any number of double-diagonal jumps as long as there are free squares in that direction.
ELEPHANT (IN INSTEAD OF THOUSAND POSSIBILITIES: ELEPHANT MAN)
In Instead of thousand possibilities
Although it is not a chess piece but a chess man , the elephant man is almost an icon instead of a thousand possibilities. He first appears in the fourth part as a ferryman across the river in the ravine of despair. Then he appears in the fifth part where he helps Ray get out of the ravine. He last appears in part eight as a rebel fighting the chess king. In this part, he also dies by being chopped up by the ejection head of the chess piece sergeant.
In chess
In Sanskrit, elephant is called "gaja" (गज), which means elephant.
- In some versions it is called "alfil" - an Arabic name that later made its way into Spanish chess.
- He moved diagonally by two squares, and jumped over the intermediate square - thus like a jumper.
- In modern chess he has been replaced by the bishop, but his original movement was more limited more.
CHANCELLOR
In Instead of thousand possibilities
These figures first appear in the fifth part of the story, when Ray tries to use them to get out of the ravine. Their job is to filter the water in the river. These figures can also fly. They later appear in the seventh part when Ray is trying to get off the roof of the arena. They then appear in the eighth part as fighters for the rebel side whose goal is to end the regime established by the Shah King and end his rule.
In chess
Chancellor (sometimes also called marshall) combines movement:
- (rook) - can move any distance horizontally or vertically.
- (knight) - can jump in an "L" shape, that is, two fields in one direction and one field perpendicular.
This means that the chancellor is an extremely powerful piece, as it combines long range with jumping ability.
WILDEBEEST
In Instead of thousand possibilities
First appearing in the seventh part, they are creatures that wrestle like bulls in a bullring and suck blood like vampires. The second time they appear is in part eight as warriors on the side of the chess king.
A minor curiosity: in the story, wildebeests are portrayed as bulls, even though wildebeests are, well, wildebeests, of course.
In chess
A pawn is a chess piece that moves like a knight and a camel at the same time.
- This means that:
- Knight: classic "L" move (2+1 squares).
- Camel: a longer "L" move - 3+1 squares (called (1,3)-leaper).
- The combination of these two moves makes the wildebeest extremely mobile and unpredictable - great for offense and defense.
ALIBABABARIDER
In Instead of thousand possibilities
She first appeared in the seventh part of the story. He owns an arena where a sort of bullfighting equivalent takes place. He's a very powerful chess piece who was murdered by Ray in collaboration with some pawns. Her death was the main point that started the rebellion in part eight.
In chess
Alibababarider can repeatedly jump 2 spaces in one direction - i.e. as a rider.
- For example: he can go from e4 to g4 (Dabbaba jump), then to i4, k4... if all intermediate squares are free or skippable.
- Likewise diagonally: e4 → g6 → i8 etc.
So it's a long-distance jumper that moves along "dabbaba" and "alfil" trajectories, but many times.
About the world of the royal game
Royal game world is the name of the world Ray gets to after he comes through the wall. The name of the world is first mentioned in the second part of the story.
The name of the world came to me when I was thinking about the name of the world hey it's related to chess and doesn't sound anything like chess world or chess variants world, so I thought of what they call chess. Well Royal game, or also game of kings which sounds good, it's related to chess and the world is ruled by a chess king living in a giant building that looks like a chess piece of the king and which is already visible when you enter the world.
Since the world of the king's game lacks something like a map, I created it with the help of artificial intelligence, and later modified it a bit. You can see it below.
About Story
To say something I didn't mention, I'll present the story a little bit behind the scenes. The idea for the story came before the idea for the Dragon wasteland story. I even started writing the story before that, and it was titled: The Road to the King. In this original story, a young man playing chess against chess engines like stockfish or komodo, got to an engine in a really different league. He's gotten to a giant quantum computer that plays chess so well it's impossible. Eventually, there's a problem and the quantum computer explodes. But something goes wrong and the young man finds himself in a world where the most powerful chess engine fights against chess pieces from different variants of chess, all while the chess king watches from afar from his stone king building. In order to reach the house the young man must defeat the chess king. Well, I didn't even write the first part and the story seemed pretty chaotic. So I put it down for a while
In the meantime I wrote the short story Dragon wasteland and came back to the story after a few weeks. I started writing it again from scratch and kept the original idea, but changed the story, including the first part which is considerably slower despite how many years in Ray's life it goes through. In the end I changed the title of the story, because Instead of a thousand possibilities appealed to me much more and it refers to chess and chess variants. Although the title is described in the second part as referring to more than two thousand chess variants it also refers to a thousand possibilities of moves and decisions.
The first part of the story had a rather unexpected number of views. It wasn't overwhelming but it was more than I expected, I think it was about twenty. After I wrote the second part the number went up a bit which I liked and hoped it would only grow with the next parts. The number of views increased a bit after I promoted the story on discord chess.com in the promotion section just for promoting blogs. A little while after that the number of views increased when I promoted the story at a small event, it was about twenty. The number of views was close to a hundred and há wrote the third part. Then the number of views of the first part increased again a little. After I wrote the fourth part of the story I was expecting an increase in the number of views of the first part, but it didn't happen. Moreover, part four had a significantly lower number of views than the previous parts. Before I published the fifth part I learned how to use the canvas and so I edited the images that are supposed to draw attention to the story to make them more noticeable. Then I posted part five, which despite the new image had the lowest number of views. So I promoted the story on reddit. And I saw an incredible increase. And although many readers only read the first part it was worth it. The story had a higher number of views but it still went mostly, with a few exceptions, lower number of views and I decided to shorten the story from the originally planned 16 parts down to ten—figuring that no one would probably read the final chapters anyway. In the end, I made the journey with a few loyal readers—and while it’s not a huge number, I’m grateful the story found some people it truly resonated with.
As mentioned in the first two parts, the story was translated with the help of artificial intelligence. Back then, I also shared portions in the original Czech. Later on, I stopped including those, thinking there wasn’t much interest. But if I was wrong, let me know in the comments—and if you’d like to read the story in Czech, I still have it and would be happy to send it your way.
A few words from the author
I think I’ve said just about everything I wanted to say here—so if anyone has questions, feedback, or anything they’d like to share, feel free to drop a comment or join my Discord server, where you’ll find something a little different.
Either way, thank you all so much.
