Nonviolent Chess

I'm eventually aiming to program my own java chess set and make a new set of rules - simply that no piece can take another piece ever, all you can do is check and checkmate a king. Also - pawns will simply change colour and turn into enemy pawns going the other way, every time they reach the end of the board

The games will of course take much longer, but the checkmates will be really good ones... produced by negotiation tactics rather than killing pieces - whoever negotiates their pieces in the best fashion is likely to end up securing the game. Things like being outnumbered can't happen and all those devilish moves where you sacrifice a piece in order to make a serious dent in enemy forces... will also be prevented.

If this chess model works out I intend to try and get israeli and palestinian players to play this and get press coverage of them doing so. Anyone here good at java programming? If so let me know, I need help with making this if I am to pull it off in less than a year! (It'll take me that long to just sit down and start writing the program!)

Good idea. If/when you finish, I'd like to try it. There will be a MUCH different strategy, but it seems like it would be interesting.

1. sounds really interesting,you will require a lot of brains to play it...

I think this would end in many many draws.

I think it will be extremely easy for either player to set up a blockade; there won't be a checkmate.

A similar chess variant you might like to look at is Benedict Chess.

Wow I could see knights being especially deadly in this game. The only way to endgames would probably have to do with zugzwang.

That makes it all the more clear how much this game is a reflection of chivalry. Fighting to protect, not destroy. The role of the queen is pivotal. Without being able to die, the queens are permanently controlling where the Kings are..

I will see if I can play this version on a real board with friends some time, because it's going to be aeons before I stop my day job work and write this software in java - I'm going to have to do it from scratch because as yet I'm not good enough to edit opensource java code - although I do have some which I'm trying to read through and understand, but that could take forever.

You should try it out on your own chess boards at home: let me know what happens. I want to see who is right - whether 99 out of 100 games will end up in impossible blockades or whether the knights and queens can constantly find ways to put the kings in check and keep them on their toes.

If it works out, we can name it Chivalry Chess! I came up with the idea when i started to try protecting my queen much more when playing and stopped seeing it as the chief piece of aggression, always sacrificing it in the name of annihilating the enemy defences completely. Once I started to do that I ended up focusing much more on little strategic methodologies, like planning out little teams to do different tasks, one main one to do most of the heavy defending and two small ones attacking partly and also defending the outer area of defences, so that my king and queen end up much better protected.

With non-death/non-violent/pacifist/chivalry chess, of course, it's all or nothing - you can't just play chess where you make your own rule not to kill the enemy pieces. A pawn reaching the end of the board... there's only one thing it can do (bite your posterior), and those ever-advancing aggressor queens that come your way and sometimes don't watch where they're going...

Still, it is possible to make much better use of pieces of your own by aiming to keep them all alive and aside from when vital defence work has to be done, and occasionally when an aggressive strike can end the whole war, in moments... I'm only a handful of games into this new way of playing chess (in the past I was quite an aggressive player, frenzied one might say).

Even if I succeed in starting a nonviolent chess version, I still have a lot more to learn in terms of real chess, where pieces get killed, very often! Most of the time it's safer to totally disarm your opponent and reduce them to nothing before you strike. And most of the time you seem to sacrifice a certain percentage of the pieces in certain ways, in order to utterly vanquish all those armaments before trying to get the king. But can you get the king whilst keeping ALL the pieces alive? Surely then your king deserves to rule all 64 squares, since he can be trusted not to let anyone die!

I wonder which, out of Israel and Palestine, will rule all 64 squares of the board when I myself am 64... I expect it's not the one people would imagine. By the way, I think we should all boycott all israeli goods and companies until they change their whole two-tier society - not even just the end of the blockade of gaza and accountability for killing dozens of young babies by dropping missiles which blew up entire buildings and anything near them, in built-up populated neighbourhoods similar to where you and I mostly all live.

The boycott of apartheid south africa led to the freedom of MILLIONS of black people from being treated as second class citizens for their colour. This happened only a few years ago, most of us in the world were alive even when in south africa being black was no different to being a dog.

Boycotting Israel can change the whole middle eastern situation. Maybe it will even end the war on terror because of how the whole world has to change when Israel/Palestine are  no longer fighting a war over their land.

Think about that while you play non-violent chess, because the game will take you a VERY VERY long time. But my guess is - it CAN be won, and you cannot get gridlock. 64 squares, 32 pieces... any piece can check a king - people can try and put rings around their own king, but remember - an enemy piece can be part of the ring around your king too - a blockade can be infiltrated early, so you can make it like one of those puzzle games, with a space next to the king which allows you to always keep shifting all the other pieces around.

The more I think about it the more I feel confident that it will work. Maybe in a year I'll have written it and set it up online and I'll let you know about it and whether or not it works. If the programmers behind the chess.com software are in house, perhaps they could add a few tiny changes to the software and make their own version of chivalry chess, for testing.

Short question: How can a pawn com to the end of the board? There is always a pawn blocking it. ;)

Je n'aime pas, moi.

good point

apparently very rarely! so that just means there's no need for any extra rule! the only rule is that you can't take pieces. it ought to be really easy to program that into a normal version

I wish I had a proper chess set so I could try playing a game of this version with myself.

so how is this idea coming along?

Surprisingly well. I have done something with it, unbelievable really. I have a commercial online site which has been poised for a very large period of activity and income growth - user growth. I was about to promote 1000s of brands and manufacturers to about 2 million people. It required sheer slave labour. THEN... for reasons of love or war or both (i think that both the israeli army AND osama bin laden want to kill my black queen) I sorted it out so that my growth happened without the need for the slave labour (my own slavery of course, I'm ethical, please) and I now have what people call a "passive income" which can growt to GBP 8000 profit per month within 3 months with careful handling.

Realising what charity means, I returned to my campaign tools and (to cut a long story short) signed an oath to my overwhelming desire to carry on toward the opponent's king (where life is the opponent) even in victory, blood-stained as it is by defeat. A sort of bastardized sinner - on the one hand all that is arab or indian in me has failed with slavery, blood and murder on all their hands - no one makes a move as dozens of babies and other children, the age of so many players here, pour out every day unchecked by ANY of the "peacekeepers" of the world. In gaza children look to the sky and ask "will it be me next?" I want to play chess with people in gaza, but that's not going to happen just yet. Maybe I can play some people in the rest of Palestine and israel?

Anyway. I didn't cut the long story short. You never play the game exactly how you planned. The short of it is I've signed myself up to 2 years slave labour which will reach not 1-3 million people as the original instrument does, but about 300 million+ people instead, using 2 years labour

The boycott israel campaigns, such as they are, are noble, but impotent. I am a capitalist son of the forces of good and evil and I can play either way - to kill the other guy's rack (that's where I just stick to making money and give up my 2 year contract with the Children of Palestine) or to save my own.

I am launching a campaign to reach people at 10,000 UK forums, 50,000 US forums and 150,000 global blogs to boycott many of the goods my machines were originally going to try to sell them! Independently my commercial mechanism will not be touched by the change - people will buy the same goods from me, just different brands. Within months I'll employ someone to vet everyone who tries to buy profit from me (I sell a lot of profit, I do).

These goods are goods supplied from Israel. In other words, I'm playing non violent chess myself, with the ENTIRE state of israel, excluding nobody.

here's a list of the first few people I am going to tell 300 million people to boycott by the end of the tax year...

Auchan
Biotherm
Banana Republic
Boss (Hugo Boss)
Bumble and Bumble
Calvin Klein
Buitoni
J. Crew
Carrefour
COCA COLA
Danone
Clinique
DIM
Disney
Donna Karan
GAP
La Mer
Laboratoires Garnier
Perrier
Helena Rubinstein
Jo Malone
Just my size
Lancome
Giorgio Armani
Libby's
Lindex
JC Penney
Tchibo
L'Oreal
Prescriptives
Aramis
Hema
Marks & Spencer
Kleenex
Origins
Maybelline
Maggi
Nestle
La Roche Posay
Pryca
Redken
Ralph Lauren
Playtex
Vichy
Selfridges
Shreddies
Structure
Tommy Hilfiger
Kit Kat
Vittel
Victoria's Secret
Ambi-Pur
Wonderbra
Johnson and Johnson
Aoste
Douwe Egberts
Kiwi
Bali
Hanes
Leggs
Bryan
Lovable
Champion
Hillshire Farm
Sara Lee
Outer Banks
Pickwick
Revlon
Ballpark
Jimmy Dean
Kotex
Sanex
Maison du cafe
Huggies
Superior Coffee
River Island
Kimberley-Clark
Nur die
The White Barn Candle Co
MAST Industries
Express
Expo design center
Georgia Lighting
Structure
Villager's Hardware
Lerner New York
Pilao
Maintenance Warehouse
Henri Bendel
Intimate Brands
The Limited
New York & Co
The Home Depot
Apex
Dr Pepper
Fanta
Sprite
Schweppes
Lilt
Fruitopia
Sunkis
Kia Ora
Time Magazine
ICQ
AOL
CNN
Nokia
IBM
Sky
20th century fox
Star
National Geographic channel
New York Post
News of the world
The Sun
The Times
The Daily Telegraph
Harper Collins
Nursery World
Intel
Gossard
Starbucks
McDonald's
Timberland

The only way a game is won is if one of the players is not content with a draw.  Given about 10 moves, I could probably make my King un-mateable with your rules.  All it takes is the King in a corner with 5 pieces around it.

You sound very sure... maybe the answer lies in changing the position of the pieces for this version of chess? But that doesn't sound right. I've got someone whom I'm teaching to play normal chess who, once I've taught him enough, will help me put nonviolence chess to the test - we'll see if you're right. If so, I'll just have to find a new arrangement - after all, back row pieces can easily exist on the front row if there's no taking involved. It's a thought.

one doesn't need 64 squares,just leave my square in peace and we'll get along well.

Great joy. I have conjured up a way to write my chess game VERY soon and easily.

i have used a thing in perl called gd which enables you to produce a gif from a perl script - and that means, if any of you have any idea what i'm talkin bout, that i can write an entire chess game IN perl, which i know reaaally well, and i can make it so the game is like this - there's a single gif of the entire chessboard and a wee box underneath and you just type your move and press return

ALL in a gif. so i can make that chess set very soon, and promote nonviolence chess!

New upgrade to my idea:

it becomes egalitarian nondeath chess

the king is not special except for 'formal victory'

NO PIECE is allowed to be "in check" - therefore nothing can stay under attack. nor can it kill.

thus the arrangement probably cannot change, back pieces stay as they are

what to do about jousting pawns, i wonder?

anyway, now that I've come up with my perl/gif chess idea, it'll easily get done quickly - for me perl is just a matter of #!/usr/bin/perl, and we're off

i'm going to get some help from an expert perl forum or two to turn it into 100% opensource perl code, and ideally try and stick it into the universe of distributed material (just the gif chess game, but of course non-death egalitarian option included, if it survives testing)

I have started playing a game of nonviolent chess and my opponent would have got a checkmate in 6 moves, but apparently let me off a schoolboy error. Looks to me like this game really works! You can NEVER take a piece, so checkmate is easier - you can't take the attacker, you can only dodge or block.

I have begun planning my programming. I WILL have an online chess app running some time this year and it will definitely include nonviolent-chess as standard (with the option to play 'old chess' as well)

I would like to ask: How can chess be not "violent"? Bobby Fischer once said that chess is like a war on a board.

If you create a chess variant where you cannot capture pieces the games will end in a stalemate.

like I said, I just started playing and it definitely works. I almost lost on the 6th/7th move. You just have to get used to the idea that you're not allowed to take anything. It has downs, but it has ups. The queen can go anywhere. Nothing can kill her, so she can do whatever in hell she wants. This gives you a form of power never previously enjoyed by you in chess. It is in fact more FUN to play this way, I'm starting to find. I shall 100% have my version made so I can try and draw more people into the idea of playing it. Seems to me the internet is the only place to get anyone to play chess these days.

Give it a proper try. Think about what you need to do to win. Just dive in. You'll find yourself moving pieces everywhere, producing strategies, figuring out how to go for the throat and then going for it. It's definitely a working game and I doubt there will be any more stalemates than in ordinary chess. Give it a try on a real board or just do it on here but make a real agreement not to take each others' pieces. NO PIECE can be taken, so when you put someone in check, they can't kill the piece used to get them in check even if they have a piece which traditionally could. Then to end the game, resign. That way it is still saved on the log properly the way it happened. It really works and it is really fun. I am already coming up with schemes of how to win my game and they're just as much fun as the schemes involving attacking.

Anyway, I'm sufficiently convinced that it works: I will have this version ready and online soon enough and an opensource collection of perl software will be freely available and you can run it on any website that uses perl. And after that I'll go and get the proper perl chess modules and write an additional module for that public collection, so that nonviolent chess can get a larger user-base. After that I'm going to my original scheme and doing it in Java. I may also make chess the application I use to "break myself in" to all languages I want to either finish mastering or indeed start and then master.

I prefer nonviolent chess to old chess, 100%. It is much more pleasing to play. Anyone who gets into it will find this REALLY quickly. It's a lot of fun. It's much harder to win, but there's no stalemate nonsense. It's just a game in which you can't be lazy. If you are lazy you'll lose quickly.