Michael the Iconographer
6th September 2004, 10:58 AM
http://www.theoniondome.com/2004/09/03/jb/
Ancient Game of Strategy Gains New Face, New Champions
September 3, 2004
Pawntucket, Massachussetts, USA — Michael (St. Michael the Archangel) Kasparov and Billy (St. Demetrios the Turk-Slayer) Hieromedes played to a draw in the third game of the International Liturgical Chess Championships in Pawntucket, Massachusetts, this week.
Kasparov is a five-time world champion of liturgical chess and a former West Virginia state champion of the ordinary variety (no relation to former world champion Garry Kasparov). “I got into liturgical chess,” Kasparov said, “because the field was narrower—er—because it was a more interesting game to me.”
“Hah! You secularist!” Hieromedes said. “You give yourself away now, don’t you. You think liturgical chess is easy, but I will beat your socks into the table.”
“Just try it!” Kasparov said.
Liturgical chess is played on a cross-shaped board, with the laity in white coming from one direction, and the clergy in black coming from the other. Many of the pieces have similar moves as in the more familiar game, but they have different names on the different sides. The king in chess is the bishop in the clergy and the parish council president in the laity. The queen, the most active and powerful piece, is the deacon in the clergy and the babushka (yia yia in Greek usage) in the laity. Taking the role of the castle are the priests on the clergy side and the sopranos on the laity side.
An interesting piece in liturgical chess that doesn’t appear in chess is the choir director. Neither clergy nor laity exactly, or perhaps both, the piece holds a central position at the disposal of first one side and then the other.
In a complicated turnabout, for pawns the clergy use pious laypeople, and the laity use altar servers.
The object of liturgical chess is not to “take” pieces and remove them from the board, but to move them around as much as possible without their bumping into each other.
Liturgical chess was invented in the early 1960s at an Orthodox seminary in the Northeastern United States, when two seminarian roommates, who didn’t share a language but did share a love of chess and a warped sense of humor, spent a snowstorm moving chess pieces around on a board. By the following term, one had carved some pieces and the other had modified a chess board. The international championship was born. It happens in the week before seminary starts every year, because most of its players don’t have time for games once classes start.
The game ends when one player gets so frustrated that he knocks all the pieces off the board. Off-track betting is running 3-1 in favor of Hieromedes, although whether it’s in favor of Hieromedes’ throwing off the pieces or winning the match isn’t clear.
This report was filed by Onion Dome rambling reporter Jan Bear
Ancient Game of Strategy Gains New Face, New Champions
September 3, 2004
Pawntucket, Massachussetts, USA — Michael (St. Michael the Archangel) Kasparov and Billy (St. Demetrios the Turk-Slayer) Hieromedes played to a draw in the third game of the International Liturgical Chess Championships in Pawntucket, Massachusetts, this week.
Kasparov is a five-time world champion of liturgical chess and a former West Virginia state champion of the ordinary variety (no relation to former world champion Garry Kasparov). “I got into liturgical chess,” Kasparov said, “because the field was narrower—er—because it was a more interesting game to me.”
“Hah! You secularist!” Hieromedes said. “You give yourself away now, don’t you. You think liturgical chess is easy, but I will beat your socks into the table.”
“Just try it!” Kasparov said.
Liturgical chess is played on a cross-shaped board, with the laity in white coming from one direction, and the clergy in black coming from the other. Many of the pieces have similar moves as in the more familiar game, but they have different names on the different sides. The king in chess is the bishop in the clergy and the parish council president in the laity. The queen, the most active and powerful piece, is the deacon in the clergy and the babushka (yia yia in Greek usage) in the laity. Taking the role of the castle are the priests on the clergy side and the sopranos on the laity side.
An interesting piece in liturgical chess that doesn’t appear in chess is the choir director. Neither clergy nor laity exactly, or perhaps both, the piece holds a central position at the disposal of first one side and then the other.
In a complicated turnabout, for pawns the clergy use pious laypeople, and the laity use altar servers.
The object of liturgical chess is not to “take” pieces and remove them from the board, but to move them around as much as possible without their bumping into each other.
Liturgical chess was invented in the early 1960s at an Orthodox seminary in the Northeastern United States, when two seminarian roommates, who didn’t share a language but did share a love of chess and a warped sense of humor, spent a snowstorm moving chess pieces around on a board. By the following term, one had carved some pieces and the other had modified a chess board. The international championship was born. It happens in the week before seminary starts every year, because most of its players don’t have time for games once classes start.
The game ends when one player gets so frustrated that he knocks all the pieces off the board. Off-track betting is running 3-1 in favor of Hieromedes, although whether it’s in favor of Hieromedes’ throwing off the pieces or winning the match isn’t clear.
This report was filed by Onion Dome rambling reporter Jan Bear