Re: OT Weird Chess News.

Paul S Person wrote:

On Mon, 19 May 2025 16:07:44 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Paul S Person wrote:

On Mon, 19 May 2025 17:50:24 +1200, Titus G <noone@nowhere.com> wrote:
>

Chess banned in Afghanistan due to gambling and religious considerations.
https://www.khaama.com/chess-banned-in-afghanistan-due-to-religious-restrictions/

>
That's very strange, as chess itself may well have come to Europe via
Islam (from India, IIRC). You would think it was firmly traditional.

>
You would think so, but there's a long history of religious
"authorities" calling for the banning of chess, both in Christianity and
Islam.
>
Mainly because chess distracts people from the Proper Duty of Man: Beat
up unbelievers, pay the church, pray, have children and raise them in
the faith, beat up unbelievers, and so on.
>
No room for games in that.
>
Very early versions of chess are said to have involved dice (I'm not
sure if this is generally accepted but chess with dice does exist) and
if so early bans, circa 600 or so, may have been part of a larger ban on
gambling.

 Interesting. Well, the dice bit anyway.

Further reading tells me that part of the early bans is that the pieces of the Indian/Persian game were representative, and came under the forbidden category of "images".   Arab chess sets became very abstract then, pieces not taking at all representative shapes until the game reached Europe.

 It occurred to me last night that, since the most powerful piece is
the Queen, chess could be banned as woke or as DEI.

There is some "scholarly" writing which claims that the increase in the power of the queen from the weakest to strongest piece reflected an increase in women's rights about 1400-1500. Very DEI.
But perhaps they could ask Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard about that.
A few players are probably on record as complaining about the new powers of the queen.  But that was probably because they were suddenly playing a new game, almost all their hard-earned expertise suddenly useless. Much as a mature pitcher might complain if they changed the nature of a baseball.
The powers of the bishop were increased at the same time, and doesn't seem to represent any kind of episcopal empowerment in the real world.
In fact, as this change seems to have occurred in Spain, a real world inspired change would have seen the piece renamed "Inquisitor".
The new game was faster and more likely to end abruptly.  Whether that had anything do do with differences between European and Muslim cultures at the time is no doubt also under scholarly consideration.

 Particularly if the person banning it thought that it was a Drag
Queen. That would be fully compatible with MTG's views on Ukraine, for
example.

Well, some old sets show the queen wearing armour, the same armour as worn by males. Since, as we all know, true females wear armour with enormous breast bulges, this must represent a man pretending to be a woman.  Worse than a drag queen, a Warrior Drag Queen!
William Hyde