Through the Time

[crazymaharajah]

                         "and few can find players who can get through the game without a headache"

                         Archiv der Spiele oder fortlaufende Beschreibung aller Spiele der Vorwelt 1821




This chapter is a continuation of the chapters "Proto Crazy" and "Decoder zh".

I must disclose with some annoyance the earlier misconception associated with Bierschach, which means "beer chess. Up to a certain point we thought it was an ancestor of Bughouse but in reality it is one of the many German names for Four-player chess.

H. Wilhelm SAUSE "Das Vierschachspiel ... Nebst einer Abbildung" 1841 - 

"Four-player chess, or chess among the beasts, or four-man chess, or the great game of pernicious games, is that variation of the original or simple game of chess played by four players on their own board, with two pernicious pieces, in which they are joined by two and two opposite each other, forming one team, and fighting against another."

The game is also described in K. Enderlein "Anweisung zum Vierschachspiel" 1826 under the name Bierschach.

There are also quite a few other mentions, sometimes these books say that two players can, for example, play as two armies at once. The fragment is found in various old books, as well as in German newspapers.

So I had to make edits to the crazy&bug genealogy chapter.

After the translations done by Granach in 2019 and visualdennis in 2021, I took up translations from old chess books myself. I used OCR text services working with both pictures and pdfs and some other methods.







1. -  "Archiv der Spiele oder fortlaufende Beschreibung aller Spiele der Vorwelt" which is listed in Pritchard's Encyclopedia as the first reference to The Double Chess Game.

This collection describes completely different games from Rhythmomachy - Das Zahlenspiel (Rythmomachia) to card games and hybrids of cards and chess. As in all old chess books, the description of the games looks very literary, using such words as "your grace", "captive", pawns are called "peasants", the movements of the pieces "allure" and all this is mixed up with speculative arguments about the world.

In one place there is a description of Das Chinesische oder Siamische Schachspiel. I will remind you that one of the many names for bughouse is Siamese chess, but this fragment has nothing to do with what we are interested in. The book also describes bowling and billiards.

But as for the chess section... A lot of very amusing things for our time such as the mention that [chess] "In a pinch you can cut them from potatoes and beets"... The section itself consists of descriptions of half a dozen variants and for us is important only a few fragments.

I translated these passages from the fragment completing the description of Rhythmomachy:

"On the other hand, a player's ability to turn over stones taken by his opponent and then use them against himself, which is lost in chess games, seems to be based on a really lucky opponent and can be used for a variety of combinations."...

"All the struck stones are immediately turned over, so that whichever color has taken fits. They are then set next to the board, and afterwards all or some of them are set again for use by the one who beat them by placing their"...

I must say that I found two books with title Archiv der Spiele, probably the different volumes. Maybe both links are identical and I just don't know how to search in these books, because both links have 1819 on the title page. Pritchard and earlier Tressau was referring to Volume 3, 1821.

The other one contains a description of the Doppelschachspiel


2.- This description explicitly states:

"This year's German invention, whose inventor has not yet allowed us to make it available. He has, however, informed us of preliminary results, noting that it was a game of numbers or rhythms that led to its invention"... 





Meaning Rythmomachy.

I can say that this is a real discovery. I knew about Rythmomachy, but I never thought that my fascination with philosophy, familiarity with Boethius' texts and chess variants would turn out to be so tightly connected in the study of the history of the crazyhouse. Rhythmomachy or the number game is considered the chess game for philosophers, and it goes back several centuries. It is also considered related to set theory.

Here are more fragments of my translation:

 

"This game is not without interest, new considerations and combinations arise which have no place in the ordinary game of chess, and new rules follow from them.

 

If a special device is needed to remove the distinguishing features from enemy pieces without further movement, and to change them into friendly ones; just as soldiers of foreign armies or prisoners of war who wish to transfer to service are dressed in patriotic uniforms...

 

Thus, in this game, it is particularly advisable to remove officers from their positions as quickly as possible and bring them into play so that places can be obtained to set up the same-named beaten officers.

 

There are always three problems when taking a piece: first, whether the piece is covered so that the opponent can take it again; second, whether the piece taken can be taken but the opponent cannot take the piece to be taken against him; and finally, whether, having taken the piece again, one can offer the opponent's king or queen an equal check, cover a disturbing check or attacked piece, double cover his own taken piece or gain other advantages...

 

According to these rules, the simple exchange of officers in this game, which is practised by good players only when necessary, could become prevalent; and one was required not only to consider carefully what one would gain by capturing a piece, but also whether and where one could put it again, what position a piece of our army, which the enemy would capture, might take in a penal piece, etc. This, however, makes the game more difficult...

 

It makes the game more difficult than an ordinary game of chess, but the difficulty is not caused, as in the above-mentioned games of chess, by vagueness and excessive imprecision of memory, but rather by a lack of use of the power of imagination.

 

We want to pay special attention to just one aspect of this question, even though we do not yet have enough experience..."

 

We see that this discussion of the characteristics of the Doppelschachspiel is reminiscent of the same discussions that arise around crazyhouse these days.  

 

3. - Another reference is this article of this game in the German daily newspaper "Allgemeiner Anzeiger der Deutschen" in 1829.






It is a newspaper essay in which the author reflects on the technical side of the invention, at the same time diluting the everything with arguments about morality, as is typical of old texts. From these reflections on "double chess," one might quote, for example, that "I add, looking at it simply as a game, that it is indecent. That it would be unseemly to disrupt a move opponent, who is already taking a loss, into an even greater one opponent to an even greater disadvantage by taking stones taken from him are also used against him....". 

He also notes that "it raises the essence of chess...  the game does not remove, it retains the basic features applicable to chess... the positions of pieces in a chess game are not yet computed by further developing the methods mentioned there: are not calculated, this is not a reason for a person to find an interpreted idea...".

The zh element there is called reintegration, and it draws attention to the need to hold in memory captured chess pieces...

At the same time, he calls Doppelschachspiel "apolitical" and notes that "the two most basic moves in double chess have not even been polished." It must also be said that he mentions discussions of the game in 1827 where a "much larger board" was proposed and in 1828.      

We decided with visualdennis that when he had time he would do a more detailed translation of this text. 

I would like to point out that the word "Doppelschach" which in German usually means "double check" is also found as a reference to a game with 2, 3 and 4-6 players.







In this reference Doppelschach also meaning  to the Four players chess and this article is found in full in the German newspaper "Zeitung für die elegante Welt Berlin Mode, Unterhaltung, Kunst, Theater" (Zeitung für die elegante Welt, 1816. n. 101). This word is used here because the description asks players to put two chess boards together (Mitrbeilungen für Schachſpieter).

I also have seen the German word "Zweischachspieler" which means "player in double chess" in books about Bierschach. 


4. - 1840 is a description in Tressan's book.

There are some fragments that have not been translated before.

"But one can also think of figures that, from certain points of view, in certain positions and circumstances, may make different movements and strokes than their original ones, temporarily or permanently. This variation is not idle, but opens up a fertile source of new and interesting combinations. Obviously, it can be used in many different ways, of which we will highlight only two and discuss them in more detail at the end of this section, since they are among the most noteworthy. One can, as a recruiting principle, the second can be called the relay principle. Both are borrowed from the Rhythmomachy described by Selene."...

"The principle of recruitment is to immediately incorporate captured enemy pieces into one's army according to certain rules. No further explanation is needed here, since the game of double chess, described in the following sections, is based on this principle... By the principle of staggering, the striking pieces seem to absorb the defeated into their own selves and their movements... In the case of damson-like figures, this can be done by simply raising the striker's beaten figure in a friendly color, which requires nothing more than the figures above and below being colored differently, and the colors of the army being colored similarly. To prevent falling, the stones can be pierced and put on vertical cables attached to the middle of the pedestals." (pg.39)

Thus we see again a reference to Rhythmomachy and a direct explanation of the invention of the game!

"What is recommended in this game is that it shows the skill of the entire army, which increases with the length of each war, as well as the skill of each individual warrior, from commander to private soldier, and that each reward is rewarded. in place by an expanded field of activity. Such rewards or achievements in conventional chess are somewhat paltry. They are limited to the promotion of a peasant to a general, i.e., an abrupt passage from the lowest to the highest with no intermediate steps... According to the echelon principle, a pawn that takes an enemy knight blesses the bound echelon and now walks as a pawn and a knight... If he defeats another bishop, he adds a second relay and walks the bishop, etc... Thus a real system of order is formed, so to speak, which not only gives the owner the pleasure of having the crowd gawking at him, but actually increases his power, since he no longer just attacks the enemy one at a time, but at 8... 2... steps can be reached and defeated."... (pg. 40)

Next there's some more reasoning about the variant.

It must be said that visualdennis once made the surprising suggestion that chess with its captured and drop pieces could have been invented in France. He correctly mentioned the Cafe de la regence, which as we know was the center of chess culture in the early 19th century. But so far this remains only a guess and we only know that the earliest forms of crazyhouse originated in Germany. We can say for sure that the crazyhouse was invented in 1821 or early and so it has been around for more than 200 years.