Human chess

Game of human chess. Monselice, Italy.

Human chess is a variant of chess, often played at a Renaissance fair, where people each take on the role of a chess piece. Human chess is typically played on an outdoor field, with the squares of the board marked out on the grass. Many Human Combat Chess Matches are choreographed stage shows that are performed by actors who are trained in stage combat. A move that results in a piece being taken and then removed from the board will cause a choreographed fight to be played out, to determine whether the piece is actually taken. Alternatively, the pieces may spar, following rules that are similar to those used by the Society for Creative Anachronism. The fight can be refereed as in a wrestling match or a judo fight.

A costumed human chess game has been staged every two years in the Italian city of Marostica, near Venice since 1923. The game commemorates a legendary and possibly fictional chess game that was played in 1454 by two young gentlemen, to settle which of them should woo the fair lady that both had fallen in love with.

In fiction

Human chess appears before 1923 in written fiction, such as Through the Looking Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll and The Chessmen of Mars (1922) by Edgar Rice Burroughs (as the Barsoomian game Jetan). Later it appears in "All the King's Horses" by Kurt Vonnegut as well in Pawn in Frankincense and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In the Discworld novel Interesting Times, it is played by the Emperor of the Agatean Empire, and those who portray captured pieces are summarily executed.

On television it can be seen in The Prisoner episode "Checkmate" and the Simpsons episode "Tennis the Menace."

This term may also refer to political maneuvering between individuals and/or groups that resemble a chess match.

In computer games

Computer chess programs have often simulated living chess matches with animations of combat between pieces. The first and most infamous of these games was Battle Chess by Interplay, released in 1988, which featured comical but bloody battles between animated characters. Other variations include pop culture icons such as Star Wars Chess. The most popular commercial chess program on the market today, Chessmaster, features an option to use animated 3D pieces that assault one another.

Many video games have included chess themed levels, such as American McGee's Alice and World of Warcraft, which have incorporated chess iconography and some chess rules, but usually do not simulate an actual game.

Cosplay human chess

In 2004, Metrocon created and hosted the first ever anime human chess match. It was pre-scripted and used choreographed combat which resulted in a new type of anime stage show.

Since then, other anime conventions ranging in size from Anime Boston to Manifest began featuring cosplay human chess, in which the chess pieces are people cosplaying as anime or video game characters. Some cosplay chess matches have themes for the teams, such as good vs. evil, Shounen vs. Shoujo, occult vs. science, or angst vs. sugar. Often those running the match and controlling the chess boards are also in costume.

Depending on the convention, the game of chess may be pre-scripted or improvisational, and its format may vary a great deal. The Anime Human Chess performed at Metrocon is a wholly preplanned stage show. Each year's cast members are selected by auditioning. The show is rehearsed for months in advance, with all captures and victories decided ahead of time. The fights take place with choreographed stunts and stage combat, often with live steel and special effects.

Smaller conventions such as Vericon, Connecticon, and AnimeUSA have held much simpler matches where pieces are played by volunteers who come to the convention in costume, sometimes selected only a half hour before the match, who follow a live chess game improvised by two chess players as the match continues.

Anime Boston has developed a hybrid of these two styles. There, the chess pieces are convention attendees who apply in advance online and are selected, thirty-two to be pieces on the board and more to be special attacks, which are extra characters who come out from back stage to help or interfere with a combat, as well as two chess players who also portray characters. The special attacks are often pre-scripted, as are certain special events, in which groups of characters attack or interfere with the chess game as part of an ongoing plot line fitting the game's theme. The order of moves and overall chess game may or may not be improvised as decided by the chess players.

AnimeNEXT has their own style of cosplay chess as well. The game is completely improvised by the coordinators to generate the best battles possible on the board with preselected pieces. Also the coordinators have one player playing out both sides, while someone else "mock" plays the other side. With one person making all the moves, it gives the mock player a chance to banter with the emcees - usually voice actors are emcees for AnimeNEXT - and keep the audience entertained.

The chess at Tora-Con is performed by RIT Cosplay Troupe. The entire show is scripted and rehearsed beforehand, with preparations starting months in advance. The people in command of the chess pieces have been characters acting outside the board as well as pieces themselves. When pieces come into conflict, the board is temporarily cleared for space as they engage in a mock battle. Although the rules of chess are followed for the most part, brawls and fights involving multiple pieces are not uncommon. The show is peppered with comedic banter. Themes in previous years include anime vs. video game and good vs. evil. Members of the RIT Cosplay Troupe design their own matches and provide their own costumes.

External links

• http://www.metroconventions.com – METROCON – Florida's largest anime convention featuring the original Anime Human Chess Match. Located in Tampa, Florida.
• http://humanchess.typepad.com/project/ – an ongoing series of life-sized chess games in urban settings
• AnimeBoston.com – featuring New England's most complex Cosplay Human Chess game
• http://www.ng-master.org/cm/thumbnails.php?album=554 – detailed photos of Anime Boston 2007 cosplay chess
• [1]/[2] Animeiowa 2008–2009 anime themed human cosplay chess
• http://www.animenext.org/cosplay-human-chess - AnimeNEXT's Cosplay Human Chess
• [http://ritct.webs.com/ - RIT Cosplay Troupe official website