The Chess Thread (formerly a spam post)

[Suaidan]

The canons never lose force but become a guide for future judgments.

[Stylite Nous]

The way that canon guides me now, I think, is that I don't play craps at the gaming hall. My soul wouldn't like it.

[SavaBeljovic]

I called my Vladyka today, he said the prohibition against Chess is really only if you're playing for money. So, there's his opinion.

[Suaidan]

I called my Vladyka today, he said the prohibition against Chess is really only if you're playing for money. So, there's his opinion.

So, chess as gambling. I think we're seeing a trend.

[SavaBeljovic]

So I guess that would mean playing in a chess tournament would be wrong since a lot those have a prize pool?... I don't know what the tournaments that St. Tsar Nicholas II were, since I know a lot of early chess tournaments didn't have a prize pool and people just played for titles... But I'll look more into this

[eish]

Fun fact: Orthodox monks modified chess to be played on a circular board. They tried lawyering their way around the prohibition by claiming that the circular board represents eternity and is therefore pious.

https://www.chessvariants.com/historic. ... ntine.html

They weren't alone. The exact same trick existed in the West with dice:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240222081 ... ion-dicing
https://workzchange.com/posts/vice-or-virtue-play

[SavaBeljovic]

I asked my brother in the flesh (who is an international master) about the chess tournaments St. Tsar Nikolai organized. He said they probably had a monetary prize, but quote, "being a chess player didn't pay much and no one could make a living off of it prior to the 1940s". I also asked him about Byzantine or round chess, he said it was based besides being based off Shatranj (Persian chess) like the article Eish posted, it was also based off a similar game in Arabia that was popular with the Muslims. It might not have been invented as a way to circumvent the Canons but rather was just because it was the popular variant at that time and place.

The original version of chess was called Chaturanga and is much different than modern chess... There were a lot of historical varities of Chess across every culture that got exposed to it... Board games go back the Sumerians with things like the "Royal Game of Ur".