Only a 40 year break...

Agreed....what's with all the bad language and insults?

It is this one twerp who has decided they hate Chess.com. So he comes around once in a while and starts up this crap.

It is unfortunate, but, as you can see, he is usually disposed of quite quickly.

Yes, there are people who do attempt to spoil the forums for the rest of us. But, I think you can agree, this type of user is more the type you were talking about. Not the rest of us fun loving jokers.

The mods have deleted that jerk....

Order has been restored.

LOL!

Jamais!

kleelof wrote:

, I think you can agree, this type of user is more the type you were talking about. Not the rest of us fun loving jokers.

I

Apparently! Lol

Lol dude has some major issues

There was this great game called chaturji - four way Indian chess.  Me, the Maharaja and his buddies use to play back in the 15th century over a couple brewski's. Sometimes, we'd put down a few rupees.

By the way, notice we were using a form of algebraic notation... Ed3 (elephant to d3 - or in descriptive notation E-GK3 elephant to green king's 3)

-Mark R.

Mark ?.... Don't let them make you feel bad, okay ? 'Cuz when I go to the market ?...I never pick out the green bananas.

That game looks Awesome!

Yeah, it's pretty cool as a novelty.  As a kid I actually made a set (elephants, ships and all - painted proper colors) and my buds and I use to play over a case of beers (drinkin' age was 18 in those days) and a pile of dollars.  We actually won so much money from this one kid (who later in life became the mayor of the city) that his mom wouldn't allow us to play anymore...

But actually, if I recall correctly, once the novelty wore off it wasn't as interesting as modern chess - cool for a while, but the queen makes the modern game much more dynamic.

-Mark R.

It's terrifying to me when your 2nd'ary skool classmates become big goverment leaders.

And BTW, u sure it was beer ?....not mead ?

It's after midnite here....So, under the covers I go. I'll check back in the morning to see if he's still being roasted. Sweet ones to all (especially you Mark........)

Hey there Mark!  I did sort of the same thing.  I stopped playing in college, kept a couple of chess programs on my computer, and read the chess column in the Sunday newspaper.

Don't let the buzzards get to you.

The beta version of chess was so weird. 

I actually have the reverse problem with algebraic/descriptive- algbraic is what I learned and I am just getting used to descriptive notation I read in old chess books. I like algebraic notation much better- it makes much more sense to me.

Mark, you might want to learn some internet chess words a lot of people say here on chess.com. These are the only ones I know, and I had to infer most of them:

Patzer: I'm still not clear on exactly what this means, but it is an insult that is derogatory towards other chess players. It usually just means "amateur", "poor player", or "lower rated player", but other people have used it to imply that a patzer is also some form of a know-it-all, which is the part that confuses me. A lot of people on chess.com also use it as a joke to insult themselves, and I've seen a lot of members with usernames with "patzer" in them.

Kibbitzer: No clue what this means, but judging by the context people have used it in I think it is something like a patzer.

Woodpusher: Widely used chess term online and offline simply meaning "amateur", usually as an insult.

gg: Abbreviation for "good game". Many players will try to be polite and put this in the live or turn-based game online chat, but I think just typing "good game" is better as it feels more sincere and I only learned what "gg" was yesterday, so I kept receiving "gg"s and had no idea what they meant for a long time.

I am glad that you are getting back into chess. Better late than never! Don't pay attention to all of the people posting goofy/slightly insulting/offensive/random/just plain weird stuff on here, because you will see a lot of these people post stuff like that on chess.com, and you can't take it personally. If they say something really offensive, just report to chess.com, there's not much else you can do. I once was reporting all of this offensive, sexist material on this forum where a few users were pratically launching attacks on chess-playing women (and women in general) through forum posts, and they wouldn't stop for weeks, no matter how many comments were deleted. Eventually, the forum became completely off-topic (as many of these forums tend to do) and all of the offensive comments stopped. Even if someone says something offensive targeted at you specifically, just remember that they are not worth your (or anybody's) time.

The interesting thing about chess.com is that it chess can be played there purely for fun or for study. I do both, and study can range from playing game after game (time controls here range from 1 minute per player to 30 minutes per player) and then computer analyzing the games to solving problems on Tactics Trainer and playing games and openings against the computer (though to really access a lot of these study tools, you have to pay for a membership), and the fun can range from experimenting with "openings" in Chess 960 (I personally don't find this too fun, however), to binge-playing bullet chess with the same player over and over again late at night (which I tend to do, mostly to practice quick basic tactics, time management, and for the adrenaline rush). I hope you find chess.com really interesting and helpful, and even though there are people here I mentioned before who can be really annoying and mean, there are also so many great people who will be willing to help you improve your chess. Good luck on chess.com!

Welcome and an interesting side-topic you have there, Mark!

So let's put a couple of facts into place.

The first reference to *Chatu-raja* ("four kings"?) is from the book Taḥqīq mā li-l-hind min maqūlah maqbūlah fī al-ʿaql aw mardhūlah - or “Verifying All That the Indians Recount, the Reasonable and the Unreasonable” (1030) - by Persian 'philosopher' Abū al-Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī (who also has a crater on the moon named after him).

Now I will first say that this 4-sided version was most likely only a variant of 'Chaturanga' (meaning: "4-limbed army").

Chaturanga - as you certainly know - is an ancient indian game that is believed by many to be the ancestor of our chess (others believe chess comes for chinese or central asian versions).

And this is a short article from a reputed chess historian on the subject of the four handed version of chess you referred to:

http://history.chess.free.fr/chaturanga.htm

Moreover, there also exists a lovely film about chess in India, or rather in Awadh (a part of modern Uttar Pradesh) in the second half of the XIXth Century.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMtz_xYgs2o

The film (I don't own the copyright) is by Satyajit Ray, the great indian Writer and Film Director - and as you will notice the version of the game being played there (a two-sided one) is 'Shatranj', the arab version, derived from the indian 'Chaturanga' but with slight differences (both in the symbolism of the pieces and in the rules).

So what happened was that a (2-sided) arab version of the game, that derived from (a persian one, that derived from) an indian one was later re-introduced into India (probably as a novelty) by the first muslim invaders in the XIIIth Century and especially by the Moghuls in the XVIth Century...

Concerning your 4-handed game with the Maharaja, Mark, you see I am not saying you are making it up but errr... as I am having problems in placing it... are you sure he was not an Emir or a Shah?

Thanks Bumiputra, interesting back-stories to the games.

I can't tell whether you're joking here or not, but to be sure I did make this up. Well, sorta. Certainly I wasn't playing in the 15th century or with any Maharaja. That was just a jesting-response to the general age-roasting going on here

The truer story I based the fiction on is that I played Chaturaji back in the 1970s with a kid who became mayor of the city I grew up in.

... and, oddly, I called it Chaturanga back then too - but when I looked it up on Wikipedia last night, the version of Chaturanga we were playing looked more like what the wiki called "Chaturaji".

I discovered the game in a dusty old chess book in a back-shelf at the library along with a pile of other pre-chess variants.  I can't recall the book's title or author any more.

I also built a Martian chess set back then too, based on the one that appears in Edgar Rice Burrough's "The Chessman of Mars". I remember I painted my father's drafting board with a 10x10 black and orange square game board. That took a little arm-waiving explaining to get him to cool down and admit he'd probably never use the board again anyhow.

-Mark R.

Thanks awesomechess1729! It's useful to know the local lingo...

The only term I'd heard before is kibbitzer - that one goes way back. It means a spectator that annoyingly keeps suggesting moves to one player or the other or both; at least that's what it meant back then.  Not sure how that would translate to the online version of chess were the kibbitzer wouldn't really have the opportunity to chime in.

-Mark R.