How to Get Inspired and Create a New Form of Chess Game

Thank you.

Well, it could be better, but it’s coming along.

I’m a retired tool die, maker. I went to a trade school for high school, where I majored in the shop. I was hired a year before I got out of school. They were so impressed with my grades and skills that I graduated on a Friday and went to work on a Monday for a company called Lincoln Electric. You’ve probably heard of them.

They’re one of the world’s biggest arc welding manufacturing companies. I worked there for 36 and a half years, and then i retired. I moved to Florida and love it down here. I had had enough of that snow up north.

Yeah, tax advantages and the weather, you know, it’s beautiful down here. Anyway, with my retirement from making things and selling things, about 10-12 years ago, I was playing chess against my computer, and i found that if I made it hard enough, it gave me a challenge. The computer was taking forever to make a move. 20-30 minutes to make one move, and if I break it quickly enough, I don’t have to wait that long. I beat it every time, so i didn’t get bored with it, and i started thinking, you know, there must be a better way to play this game. I thought about it for a while and decided that if I added two squares all the way around the board, that would be more than double the size of the plane area, and it would give me so many more possible moves. It sounded right to me. So I went, got a piece of poster board the first time, cut out a 20-inch square contact paper, and caught up little squares. I stuck them on there, let it out and started playing with it, and the more it turned out to be just great, I started playing with, you know, friends and family. They loved it, and they’re all asking me to make their boards. Since I was a total diet maker, I could make anything.

I started making on board; you know that’s time-consuming; it takes hours to make a board to lay it out like that to make it look nice, so I did that for a few years, and finally, they were all telling me, hey why don’t you run manufacturer and then sell these. I thought, yeah, that might be a good idea, so I’ll give it a shot; here I am today. It’s so much more fun playing this way, or a good example is on your first move, it’s your standard chessboard; you’ve got a possibility of 20 moves to each with a pawn that’s 16 and to each what a night that’s a total of 20 moves. On the bigger board, you can move any piece on the board. It gives you a total of 55 moves on the first move; that’s two and a half times as many, so you can see just from there how much more exciting this game would be not only that you can run Rooks down the side of the board and attack from behind you flank your opponent, that’s way, it’s just so much more enjoyable it changes the game entirely. However, the game rules are the same, and it’s just a bigger warrant.

Exactly the same way.

That’s right, that’s what I’m trying to do, I’m getting quite old anymore, and my health’s failing. Before I pass on, I’d like to leave this, and you know, for the rest of the world.

The important difference is it’s much more exciting to play because the old standard strategies to win the chess won’t work with the bigger board, you have to come up with all new strategies, so it’s the same game, but it’s completely unique.

The game has stayed the same for over 400 years; it’s time for a change, you know, it’s starting to get boring.

Yes!

Yes, you can’t win in two or three moves anymore.

There’s a strategy; you hear about that happening; you could win with two moves, and there’s another one where you can win with three moves. They won’t work because when you put the king in check with those strategies, the king can move out of the way because the backspaces are open.

I am still figuring out the minimum number of moves.

That’s right, there are so many different moves, you know, I still need to figure that out. Even though I’ve been playing it for several years already, everything is different.

Less than an hour. They don’t take that long.

I’d like to leave this game to posterity, like they, you know, have other people know about it because once I’m gone, it’s gone too.

Yes, exactly, and you know you can still play this game with the board, you can still play the old way if you want, but I’m sure once you start playing the new way, you won’t want to!

Well, I’m not a genius either, but I enjoy chess too, and as I said, this is much more fun than the old way.

Hahaha, I hope that’ll probably take a little time.

Yes, thank you.

Yep, thanks, bye-bye.