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From: Butch Malahide on 1 Aug 2010 19:34
On Aug 1, 9:45 am, Counterclockwise <snowmenofd...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Chess is only a game. It is a single abstraction of two nations at war with a sea between them, (The bishops were originally ships), to practice the strategy behind troop placement.

Do you have a cite for that? The way I've usually heard it, the
bishops were originally elephants.
From: Counterclockwise on 1 Aug 2010 17:27
> Do you have a cite for that? The way I've usually
> heard it, the
> bishops were originally elephants.

Elephants? I've never heard that before.
No, the bishops move diagonally, because that emulates ships tacking against the wind.

Lemme see if I can find a source saying that now . . .

Hmmm . . . a short search reveals both rumours, and one that says the bishop was a ship, and the ROOK used to be an elephant. (Not a rumour that's the other way 'round, though).

So, you might be right, I might be right, I dunno, I can't find a cite that isn't a rumour.
From: Robert Kaufman on 1 Aug 2010 17:29
Hi,

Quasi, you seem to be saying that since there are only a finite number
of positions all we have to do is to go through all of them to verify whether
or not we have a winning position or not. I have problem with this. It seems
that you may have confused the total number of possible positions which is definitely finite with the total number of sequences of positions following
a possibly winning position which is not finite and which is necessary to
peruse in order to see whether we truly have a winning position.

Respectfully,

Robert Kaufman
From: Tim Little on 1 Aug 2010 22:13
On 2010-08-02, Robert Kaufman <Yearachmeel(a)verizon.net> wrote:
> It seems that you may have confused the total number of possible
> positions which is definitely finite with the total number of
> sequences of positions following a possibly winning position which
> is not finite and which is necessary to peruse in order to see
> whether we truly have a winning position.

It is not necessary to peruse all possible sequences of positions into
the future.

You can work backward from the set of won states, call them "mate in
at most 0 moves". For each N, use the set of all "mate in at most N
moves" to form the set of all "mate in at most N+1 moves". Eventually
you must run out of new states to add, which means you have the set of
all winning positions for each player.


However, doesn't chess have stalemate rules that would prevent an
infinite search forward in any case?


- Tim
From: Jesse F. Hughes on 1 Aug 2010 23:42
Counterclockwise <snowmenofdoom(a)gmail.com> writes:

>> Do you have a cite for that? The way I've usually
>> heard it, the
>> bishops were originally elephants.
>
> Elephants? I've never heard that before. No, the bishops move
> diagonally, because that emulates ships tacking against the wind.

Check wikipedia. Namely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj.

Rukh (chariot; from Persian %Gرخ%@ rokh) moves like the rook in
chess.

P~l, Alfil, Aufin, and similar (elephant; from Persian %G~~~�~�%@ p~l;
al- is the Arabic for "the") moves exactly two squares diagonally,
jumping over the square between. Each P~l could reach only one-eighth of
the squares on the board, and because their circuits were disjoint, they
could never capture one another. This piece might have had a different
move sometimes in chaturanga, where the piece is also called
"elephant". The P~l was replaced by the bishop in modern chess. Even
today, the word for the bishop piece is alfil in Spanish, alfiere in
Italian, "f~l" in Persian and ~~~~ (which means elephant) in
Russian. The elephant piece survives in xiangqi with only the limitation
that the elephant in xiangqi does not jump and is restricted to the
owner's half of the board. In janggi, its movement was changed to become
a slightly further-reaching version of the horse.

>
> Lemme see if I can find a source saying that now . . .
>
> Hmmm . . . a short search reveals both rumours, and one that says the
> bishop was a ship, and the ROOK used to be an elephant. (Not a rumour
> that's the other way 'round, though).
>
> So, you might be right, I might be right, I dunno, I can't find a cite
> that isn't a rumour.

I suppose that it depends on your faith in Wikipedia, though this
material seems uncontroversial.

--
Jesse F. Hughes
"If anything is true in general about Usenet, it's that people can go
on and on about just about anything." -- James Harris speaks the
truth.
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