3082: Chess Position

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Chess Position
It's important to learn the moves that take you into the vortex, but it's best not to study vortex itself too closely. Even grandmasters who have built up a tolerance lose the ability to play for a few hours after studying it.
Title text: It's important to learn the moves that take you into the vortex, but it's best not to study vortex itself too closely. Even grandmasters who have built up a tolerance lose the ability to play for a few hours after studying it.

    Explanation[edit]

    Ambox notice.png This explanation is incomplete:
    The various paragraphs are not organised. Also, might need to reduce the focus on describing the scene and focus more on explaining the jokes. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!
    Cueball talks to Ponytail about a chess game he had last week against Knit Cap. After Cueball made a blunder, a critically bad mistake which frequently changes the course of the game, both of them quickly made inaccurate moves, probably rated as a "blunder", "mistake", or "miss", leading to an odd configuration of the chess pieces. Blunders that are not taken advantage of can lead to this effect for less experienced players.

    The rest of this comic becomes absurd, as Cueball then describes himself and Knit Cap descending into a fantasy world "on a deep branch of the game tree." However, it seems that Cueball and Knit Cap each made a sequence of seemingly obvious blunders that neither opponent then took advantage of, reaching a board configuration that Cueball had never even anticipated happening. Ponytail reacts nonchalantly to this story, as she says this is a common scenario for new players, and that there is even a defined name for it: the Kasparov Vortex Gambit. Ponytail's advice to Cueball after he "recovers" from the disillusionment of the "vortex" is that she can teach him how to defend against the attack, by using the f pawn.

    Chess strategy is commonly described in terms of following a decision tree or game tree, as one usually needs to calculate multiple moves ahead when planning out what move to play. As a chess game progresses, the phase space of possible positions increases wildly, though this will include many more configurations than are typically seen or anticipated by players. Rarely, an expert player may 'discover' a truly clever novel opening, but centuries of recorded gameplay has explored many of the possible moves, both good and not so good, that are often recognized by experienced students of the game as common stepping-stones on the way to possible victory (or frequent traps that send the unwary down the road to defeat). Both precise game-board states and more general variations may be easily recognized by an experienced player, and even be given a name by the player community as a whole.

    In some apparently mystical (or at least psychological) manner, by travelling such an unlikely and unfamiliar branch of the player/board game-space, the precise positioning of pieces combined with the state of mind that Cueball had developed created the impression of literally entering a mythical garden, with time even stopping. This could be a reference to the story "The door behind the wall" by HG Wells in which the protagonist explains to the personal that he is haunted by trying to find a door leading to a mystical garden, which he had stumbled across before. In chess, you want pieces to be in a position to attack other pieces, while at the same time being protected by other pieces. Typically you'd have some pieces on the offense, some playing defense, and some doing both. It seems that in this board configuration, somehow all the pieces ended up in both offensive attack positions able to attack every other piece on the board while at the same time each one was being protected by against attack by their other pieces. It was this perfect balance of position and protection that led to the time distortion and the magical garden.

    This is impossible under standard rules. If all of the pieces are being attacked, that includes the king. It is illegal to end your turn with your king under attack; if you have no way to do so, the game ends, in checkmate if your king started the turn under attack or in stalemate if it did not. This may be a variant where this rule is suspended and the objective is to actually capture the king; if so, whoever's turn it was had an easy win (since the other king was under attack, take it and end the game), but given the number of blunders made, neither player may have realized it at the time. Alternatively, Cueball might not be including the king in "every piece".

    Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster and former world champion. He was the number-one rated chess player from 1984 to 2005, and is considered one of the greatest chess players of all past time, if not the greatest. A gambit refers to a chess opening in which a player sacrifices material with the aim of achieving a subsequent positional advantage. This name seems to indicate that Kasparov himself either discovered/’invented’ or made popular this "gambit" to suck new players into a "vortex" and trap them from getting out. This is not the case, but, within the xkcd universe, he has performed an equally absurd gambit (also named after himself) in 2936: Exponential Growth.

    The f pawn is the pawn that begins on the f file (the 6th column of the chessboard from white's perspective, which is designated with the 6th letter of the alphabet since rows are designated by numbers). The pawn would start either on f2 (sixth column, second row) for the white player or f7 (sixth column, seventh row) for black. The fact that an apparent distortion in the fabric of space can be countered with a single pawn just adds to the absurdity of the situation. Equally absurd is the fact that moving the f pawn early in the game is itself usually a blunder that exposes the king to a diagonal attack, due to its starting position relative to the starting position of the king; perhaps the intent is to purposefully "blunder" down a different (non-vortexed) branch of the game-tree with resulting board positions that are far less mesmerising (at least to Cueball).

    In the title text, Ponytail continues with her advice, telling Cueball that he needs to understand how the vortex can be entered, but not to study the actual vortex. It appears that if you spend too much time focusing on the vortex you will lose your ability to play chess. Even experienced players, such as grandmasters who have built up some kind of tolerance against the effect of the vortex, lose their chess abilities for a few hours after studying it. Thus being able to get your opponent into the vortex, without getting caught in it yourself, should win you the game, since they would lose their ability to play chess.

    Transcript[edit]

    [In the first panel, Cueball is walking in from the left, while talking to Ponytail.]
    Cueball: Something odd happened to me last week in a game at the chess club.
    [Cueball is playing a game of chess against Knit Cap.]
    [Caption above frame:]
    I moved, then instantly realized I'd blundered. But my opponent didn't notice and made a weird move.
    I got rattled and moved almost randomly, then I think we both panicked and made a couple of nonsensical moves, rapid-fire.
    [Zoomed in on Cueball, with three question marks above his head]
    I don't know how it happened, but suddenly I realized I was staring at an indescribably strange board position.
    [Cueball is talking to Ponytail.]
    Cueball: I've never seen anything like it. It seemed like every move attacked every piece, yet every piece was also protected. Pieces refracted through crystalline pawn structures.
    Cueball: The game clock slowed and then stopped.
    [Cueball and Knit Cap are floating in a complex five-fold symmetrical plant-like pattern of "game tree branches".]
    [Caption above the frame]
    It didn't even feel like we were playing chess. We had stumbled into a magical garden tucked away on a deep branch of the game tree.
    [Cueball is talking to Ponytail.]
    Cueball: I don't remember how the game ended, if it did.
    Cueball: I don't remember how I got home.
    Cueball: It's all a blur.
    [Close-up of Cueball's head.]
    Cueball: I've spent all week trying to reconstruct the position and can't.
    Cueball: It's consuming me.
    Cueball: I don't want to play chess. I just want to return to that garden.
    Cueball: Does... any of this make sense to you?
    [Cueball is standing with hands on face surprised as Ponytail talks with him.]
    Ponytail: Yeah, that's the Kasparov Vortex Gambit. Common trap for new players.
    Cueball: What?!
    Ponytail: Once you recover I'll show you how to block it with the f pawn.

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    Discussion

    This is very nearly the core plot conceit of the movie Π (1998). 172.70.130.190 22:36, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

    I believe you want lower-case Pi: π not Π. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_(film) --PRR (talk) 22:54, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
    Unless they're talking about an obscure spinoff where the protagonist becomes weirdly obsessed with the products of sequences of numbers. 172.69.195.180 14:47, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
    Which, for xkcd, is ... indeed plausible. -- JimJJewett (talk) 15:33, 4 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    Does anybody know whether Randall has taken up chess as a hobby? 5 of the 82 comics in the 3000s have been related to chess and only 2 in the 2000s were. If so, this should be included in the explanation. BobcatInABox (talk) 23:11, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

    3000s? 172.71.190.236 23:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
    Oh right comic number not decade/millennium. 172.70.43.157 23:41, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
    Wouldn't surprise me, there's a three year gap in between chess comics 2465 (May 2021) and 2936 (May 2024), then the aforementioned 5 in 5 months. 172.70.114.251 00:46, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    I really suspect that the full explanation has something to do with this: https://www.kasparov.com/the-implacable-logic-of-the-vortex-of-history/ 172.68.7.206 23:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC) Dan

    Doubtful, that article was written in 2013, and it is unlikely that Randall came upon it just now to make this comic. Vortex is a general term for something that sucks you in. 172.70.214.66 00:38, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
    Quite possible, since simple web search on Garry Kasparov reveals the aforementioned article about Kasparov's theories of the "vortex of history'. And there is a PlayStation game called "Virtual Kasparov" which is reviewed on the PlayStation review site Virtual Kasparov on GameVortex.com. So, there are at least two places where Kasparov and the word vortex are connected. The term "vortex" would be very tempting for Randall to exploit for comic effect. Rtanenbaum (talk) 16:15, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    I sure hope that it stays as not a real thing Commercialegg (talk) 01:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    It might not be, but it's easy enough to make: Train an adversarial network on human chess games. 172.68.22.41 04:56, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    The part about losing the ability to play chess even after building a resistance feels familiar. Isn't that how the Elder Scrolls worked in Skyrim, at least. Even highly trained sages would lose the ability to see for a time after reading an Elder Scroll. And the Oblivion remaster just released the other day... --Ragashingo (talk) 01:54, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    This comic has serious classic SCP energy. I feel like I'd read about this in an old Series I - II article, back when it was still good. Pie Guy (talk) 18:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    Cf Von Goom's Gambit by [Victor Contoski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Contoski) published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1966:

    And what of Von Goom's Gambit? Chess is a game of logic. Thirty-two pieces move on a board of sixty-four squares, colored alternately dark and light. As they move they form patterns. Some of these patterns are pleasing to the logical mind of man, and some are not. They show what man is capable of and what is beyond his Take any position of the pieces on the chessboard. Usually it tells of the logical or semi-logical plans of the players, their strategy in playing for a win or a draw, and their personalities. If you see a pattern from the King s Gambit Accepted, you know that both players are tacticians, that the fight will be brief but fierce... Now suppose someone discovers by accident or design a pattern on the chessboard that is more than displeasing, an alien pattern that tells unspeakable things about the mind of the player, man in general and the order of the universe. Suppose no normal man can look at such a pattern and remain normal. Surely such a pattern must have been formed by Von Goom’s Gambit.

    I wish the story could end here, but I fear it will not end for a long time. History has shown that discoveries cannot be unmade. Two months ago in Camden, New Jersey, a forty-tliree year old man was found turned to stone staring at a position on a chessboard... 162.158.217.38 (talk) 05:22, 29 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    "Cf Von Goom's Gambit" https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v031n06_1966-12_PDF/page/n63/mode/2up?view=theater --PRR (talk) 17:46, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    When you stare into the vortex, the vortex also stares into you, a famous quote from Kasparov. Ralfoide (talk) 17:49, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    If I may, can we find a position that would match Cueball's description? Where he states "every move attacked every piece, yet every piece was also protected,"? That would be cool. 172.69.33.220 (talk) 20:26, 29 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    Why is karpov mentioned in the explanation? I assume more chess comics as chess has grown in popularity to answer the above question. 172.70.91.160 22:19, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

    I think the Karpov part was copied and pasted from the explanation for xkcd:2936. I will delete it unless someone objects 172.69.23.211 00:40, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

    I somehow expected this to be a political comic162.158.166.252 03:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

    I don't play video games, but I'm pretty sure that this refers to the weird glitches in video games you can get into by choosing wrong moves at just the right point in the game. Players sometimes actively seek out, even if you can't play the game properly from inside the glitch. Of course the idea of entering a glitch while playing a real-life chess game is absurd, but in video games these errors are hard to prevent because it's so easy to overlook some rare but possible situations players could get into. See also [1] Franziska (talk) 10:51, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

    This feels like it would open into the House of Leaves. 172.70.130.177

    Might've been romanticizing disregard for the meta. "It's funner to not keep score" thinking. Heavy "I don't want to play chess anymore" it's-better-than-chess romanticizing. --172.68.35.116 14:24, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

    "The fact that an apparent distortion in the fabric of space can be countered with a single pawn just adds to the absurdity of the situation." - I'm fairly certain the idea is not that this chess position alters reality somehow, but that it is cognitohazardous - i.e. perceiving this particular board configuration interacts with the brain's learned pattern recognition for chess in a deleterious way. An 'adversarial example' for a human brain instead of a neural network. Somdudewillson (talk) 19:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

    This reminds me of a story I heard about Kasparov, please feel free to fact check. Kasparov was playing Deep Blue, the top chess playing computer at the time. Apparently, Deep Blue had a glitch, and made a legal but unreasonable move. Kasparov did not know it was a computer mistake, and looked for meaning in the move. Unable to find a reason behind the move, Kasparov was "thrown off his game" suspecting that the computer was trying something he could not figure out. This lead to a stalemate in that game, and ended up being the turning point between the matches between Kasparov and Deep Blue. 104.23.190.20 (talk) 18:43, 1 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    Personally I don't think it absurd to move the f-pawn in the opening as mentioned in the explanation (Kings gambit, Vienna gambit, Dutch defence, etc. are all respected openings which move the f-pawn early)--Darth Vader (talk) 15:56, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

    Return to the Garden[edit]

    There are strong vibes here of the idea of a garden you stumble across but can never return to. I can't put my finger on which though its pretty common in literature and philosophy. Obviously the Garden of Eden and the Secret Garden. But in this case maybe something in Calvino's Invisible Cities or Borges' Garden of Forking Paths? Tim Gent (talk) 07:56, 6 May 2025 (UTC) Tim Gent
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