@paulsrockinmastodon @amy it isn't actually forced on lichess but it might as well be when I'm playing because i always take it for the meme

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon Playing OTB and insisting that Il Vaticano and Knightboosting are real techniques

@amy @paulsrockinmastodon i actually perform il vaticano every time it just doesn't take up a move so you can't tell

@amy @paulsrockinmastodon oh in the original meme it captures the pieces in between, i thought the joke was that it doesn't actually do anything

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon Someone once asked ChatGPT to invent new chess moves, and one of them was "Swap your light and dark square bishops", but Il Vaticano was different

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon I genuinely think knightboosting is so cool. I understand that we can't just add that to chess now but. Man. It's so cool

@amy @paulsrockinmastodon i prefer the Cincinnati sidewinder

@amy @paulsrockinmastodon

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon Ha ha ha ha ha ha

(Though it should be noted that FIDE considers castling a funny king move, as opposed to a funny rook move)

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon

Queen drift to D7!!

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon (There's also a real answer)

@amy @paulsrockinmastodon shrike club is allergic to both of these 😭

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon Oh no!!!! It's one of my favorite AnarchyChess posts ha ha

Does it work if you click through to this instance? https://efdn.club/@amy/112290668524265431

@amy @paulsrockinmastodon yes it does! hahahahaha

@amy Well, I'm stumped. Unless I don't understand the pawn capture rules at *all*, which is possible, since I haven't won a game of chess since 1990.

@Austin_Dern @amy there is a legal move that wins you the game here, but you can't know that it's legal just from looking at the board. you have to infer that it's legal from the fact that there's no other solution

@monorail OK, if _that's_ the case then yes, I do see it.

@Austin_Dern :3

@NatVoltaic @amy @paulsrockinmastodon OH

@NatVoltaic @amy @paulsrockinmastodon okay yeah i get it

@pataphysicker @amy @paulsrockinmastodon

@pataphysicker @amy @paulsrockinmastodon (...for some reason the "special move"s made me think "what if chess pieces in Smash")

@pataphysicker @amy @paulsrockinmastodon love to use the Knight's limit break

@pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon @amy JADE: gog this is like how paul henderson's former roommate marcy nabors used to always go for 13 orphans in mahjong

@pleonasticTautology @pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon Redrawing for nine terminals is for cowards, I understand

@pleonasticTautology @pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon I trained for this. I prepared. I did homework for this post

@pleonasticTautology @pataphysicker @paulsrockinmastodon (By which I mean: Holly posted this and said "i have it on good authority that this is a funny meme" and it was explained to her)

@amy @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon @junebug hey junebug i don't play mahjong can you explain this to me?

@pataphysicker @amy @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon yeah i already did it once but i'll do it again hang on

@pataphysicker @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon @junebug Mahjong is a game about making sets. If you draw your tiles at the start and you have nine tiles that aren't even part of a pair (nine "terminals") you can abort the round and everyone draws again

But. If you manage to get thirteen tiles that aren't even part of a pair, that's "thirteen orphans" and it's worth a lot of points, even though it's the opposite of what you're usually doing. So you can choose not to "end by nine terminals" to try to get thirteen orphans

@pataphysicker @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon @junebug She's the one who told me :)

@amy @pataphysicker @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon yah! It should be noted that in mahjong you can make straights (1-2-3, 5-6-7, etc) or three of a kind, and 13 orphans thus requires you to get all 13 of the hardest to work with tiles: a 1 and 9 of every suit (called terminals) and a single tile from each of the special Honors category, which are just extra tiles. Like if u shuffled 4 jokers into a poker deck, and you couldn't make them into a straight but u could get 3 of a kind

@junebug @amy @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon i understand the joke now it's very funny :)

@pataphysicker @amy @pleonasticTautology @paulsrockinmastodon I appreciate this joke because it's true. If you choose to re-deal because you got a bad hand like that you're a fucking COWARD. Go for thirteen orphans you bitch