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Comment by shp0ngle | Hacker News Reader

Well. The speech police started changing "blacklist" and "whitelist" in programming context, even when those had no racist history; maybe it's time to change it in chess. (After all, white always goes first, that is not very PC.)

Rename "black" and "white" to "second player" and "first player".

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We should recolor the pieces with neutral colors such as #d3e6fa (because green and yellow have connotations).

And remove the obviously sexist Queen (why stronger than King?) and King (why should it decide when the game is over?).

Rook is shady as well.

And so on. As Aristotle said: "once we look close enough, we will find someone offended".

> We should recolor the pieces with neutral colors

If only! Clearly we need different chess skin colors so that everyone can identify with their chess pieces. I think five skin tones [0] should cover everyone.

[0] https://emojipedia.org/emoji-modifier-sequence/

need different genders for the pieces too.

What connotation does green have? Where can I find the land of green people?

Greenhorns are the new and inexperienced.

See also: green usernames here on HN.

Note: I'm serious and not serious at all here at the same time.

No: the colors doesn't matter at all. Yes: If someone wants to get offended they will find a way, even how they are held outside since no one makes jokes about them.

Exactly this. I am tired with fake official correctness, and that people get back to racist/homophobic when they are off.

I am French and we have a history (and culture) of parody, and freedom of doing it and being offended by it. This was the case when I was a kid and up until some 1( years ago.

Now criticizing or making fun of some groups is *dangerous* - you cannot publish a picture of the god of Islam without literally putting your life in danger. Yes, I know that this is a small minority yada yada yada, but I have only one head.

At the same time you can make fun of Catholics. They are not happy, but also somehow "protected" by the culture and history of France. This is similar to Jews, though they became more offendable recently.

The worst is that the people who are going to officially claim how much everyone is equal will say in private that someone is a "tapette" (I do not know the English word for that: derogatory expression for gay), or that Muslims are middle ages savages, or that Blacks are dumb (we had a few cases on TV where the invited person thought that they were off when they were not).

I do not know what the solution is - it certainly does not help the normal part of the communities above that people are afraid to put them in the same bag as Catholics (in France). They would not be officially immune of criticism/fun, but they would be perceived as "people like us".

That’s not tied to a specific race though? Sometimes being ‘green’ is an advantage cause you are able to ask inexperienced questions and given more slack when in a new job, etc.

First and second implies a hierarchy and uneven power balance. Both players should have their turns simultaneously.

I thought of this and realized it'd actually be a fun game. Both players write down their next move and then move simultaneously once both are ready. To avoid race conditions, if a player moves a piece that is to be taken by the opponent's move, then that player has saved that piece with that move. That creates an interesting dynamic where you may not wish to take the most valuable piece if you predict the other player will move out of the way.

I used to play a real-time version of this called Kung-Fu Chess. Each piece takes time to move to its destination, and when it arrives, a timer ticks down before that specific piece can be moved again. Very fun game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung-Fu_Chess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVob7meb83w

"To avoid race conditions", indeed!

> "To avoid race conditions", indeed!

Ha! True enough, "a good pun is its reword" ;).

How would two pieces moving to the same square be resolved? Both lost, or ... ? Regardless of the specifics, it would create a very complicated (but potentially interesting) dynamic when moving any valuable piece within a contested region.

You gamble with how many points you have left. Let's say each player starts with 40 points (most games take about 40 moves). You spend anywhere from 0 to however many points you have left to move a piece. If it's early on and there's no chance of conflict, bet 0. If it's an important piece in a crowd, spend more. If there's a conflict, whoever spent more wins that spot.

It might add an element of subterfuge to the game.

> How would two pieces moving to the same square be resolved?

I'd say that the one that has traveled the longest distance wins, and captures the piece that started closer.

(My implicit mental model is that both pieces "depart" from their home squares at the same time and travel at a constant rate, so the closer piece arrives at an empty square, while the more distant piece arrives second and captures the first-arriving piece. This may also encourage more dynamic play)

Maybe highest value price wins, with ties losing both pieces.

My son and I would play chess this way, with my wife actually moving the piece. We use a dice or piece ranking to determine ending turns on the same square depending on the actual game we’re playing.

Diplomacy works like this.

They are uneven, having the first move is a documented advantage called "initiative". Your first move as black depends on the first move that white made, typically you won't have the same response for 1. d4 and 1. e4!

Anyway, I've been looking forward to this day, where SJW start trying to change chess because it's "racist" because white have advantage of initiative and "sexist" because it makes you sacrify the queen to save the king. Looking forward to see that level of stupidity being reached!!

That’s weird, there’s a documented advantage to being the second player to move as well known as the “defender’s advantage” since you have more information to make your move. Your information includes both the board state and the knowledge of the other player’s move while the first player only has knowledge of the board state. No idea where the idea of an advantage to being first came from

Statistically in chess however there seems to be an advantage for the first mover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

You can be #1 and I'll be #A.

That sounds like segregation. Putting different players in to different sets.

Yeah, or the Mongooses, that's a good team name. "The Fighting Mongooses."

Be wise, randomize!

Why not try to be more inclusive and have each piece with its own color?

"Actually this rook identifies as bishop"

You didn't capture my king it now identifies as a queen, please stop dead-naming my queen. Funny enough chess already have has a rule that allows for pawns to become queens, touche

Relatedly, the world champion played a game where the player with the black pieces went first to make a statement about racism [1].

[1]: https://www.chess.com/news/view/moveforequality-carlsen-giri...

Understandably, it was difficult to adapt to the change: "It is difficult to change your mindset in a chess game with a different start. But if we can change our minds in the game, we can surely help people change their minds in real life."

I'm sure chess board manufacturers would love this. Think of how many new sets they could sell if everybody decided they had to replace their old black and white sets.

Eh, many wooden sets are light and dark woods. Also many checkers boards are red and black.

It’s still ridiculous -like cultural revolution level ridiculous.

At least nature will never change and nights will be black and days will be light.

> Eh, many wooden sets are light and dark woods.

Ah, but one could argue that the colours of light and dark wood are closer to the skin colour of humans culturally classified as "white" and "black" than are the actual colours white and black!

Until “they” force you to have eye implants that correct for this natural racism

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

"In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic."

Sounds like "The Giver":

> The Community lacks any color, memory, climate, or terrain, all in an effort to preserve structure, order, and a true sense of equality beyond personal individuality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver

As far as boards go, most tournaments in the US have long been played on green and white boards. Here are a couple of common boards you'll see for most games in most tournaments [1][2].

[1] https://www.chessusa.com/product/vinyl-chess-board.html

[2] https://www.chessusa.com/product/silicone-chess-board.html

In Shogi aka "Japanese chess", while for some reason in English, the players are Black and White, in Japanese, they are 先手 (sente, literally first hand/before hand) and 後手 (gote, literally second hand/after hand). Black is first, BTW.

It would be easy to choose a narrative that casts the first player in the bad light as well.

Chess is a game of war, isn't it? So whoever goes first is the aggressor.

So if Black goes first, that can also play into certain racial biases people have.

Except there are actually no color difference in Shogi. Which player a piece belongs to is indicated by its direction (at least that's my layman understanding). I have no clue why English goes with Black and White.

The speech police didn't do anything. I stopped using those terms because they're not descriptive.

This is false. At least two very large organizations (Microsoft and the Department of Defense) have decreed that their employees not use "sensitive" terms like "whitelist" and "blacklist".

How about just light and dark? A lot of chessboards don't have strictly black and white colored pieces anyway.

(For the record I think the whole thing is stupid)

"Light gray" is easy to misspell as "light gay", e.g. "light gay knight takes dark gay bishop". IMHO, it's better to use "wine" (w) and "blue" (b) as colors.

If you use English rather than American, you have "light grey" which is less ambiguous.

And attack and defense to moving forward and backward. And I guess we should abolish winning and losing while we are at it

Chess already has the terminology of light squares and dark squares, so adopting that for the pieces too would add confusion and awkwardness.

For example “black’s light squared bishop” would become “light’s light squared bishop”.

It would still be light-skinned pieces vs. dark-skinned pieces.

But the pieces would still be white and black. We just need to recolor them to a color that hasn't been claimed as part of an identity... (looks at rainbow flag) well, shoot...

Infrared-coating player and Ultraviolet-coating player? Chrome player vs. Brass player? No kidding, I like this last idea.

> Chrome player vs. Brass player?

Chrome Player: sponsored by Google.

Sorry, I can't stop from posting this joke!

The only logical solution is to make all the pieces the same color.

Change the colours too. Red and neon brown.

"Night" and "Day"

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