Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Kevin, you raise some interesting points about how few people play variants on most servers.  Nevertheless, I think in the near future it will be much easier for the average person to create their own variant software, as well as testing them out on very strong engines (to ensure it's fair and has a limited draw rate).  This will eventually result in some great tried and true variants.

I believe that some draw possibilities were added in the original development of chess in order to give some chances for the slightly weaker player who is behind in a game (in other words, the winner has to really earn it by avoiding stalemate or insufficient material, 50 move rule, etc.)  Orthodox Chess has a strong advantage of tradition.  Many people (probably not those on this site) actually like discussing known openings and they like to see how players try to do something new on move 11.  I'm with you though - I'm not a fan of that as a spectator.

Still - as you mentioned, it would be nice if draws were limited (and that the decisive games have clarity in what the winner did differently).  I know that grandmasters can still appreciate a hard fought draw, but I agree it's sometimes just ridiculous.  Not long ago I was looking at the results of Karpov vs. Kasparov matches in the 80's, and they have so many early draws by mutual agreement (over ten games in a row sometimes)  Even when GMs comment on something like their drawn Berlin defense game, they seem bored and ready for the next game.

Like I implied at the beginning of this message, better apps and software will make the future ripe for variants - and the most clever will win out.  Challengers could take turns playing each others' inventions and favorites, analogous to the classic basketball game H.O.R.S.E.

Jeffrey, I can add a number of things to my previous post on this subject. As you wrote, chess has the advantage of a strong tradition. For many lesser variants of popular card games, a lot of people prefer playing well established games that everyone already knows how to play, when sitting down face to face, so it's not a question there of lacking equipment (a deck of cards), as I think Fergus once alluded to long ago. Unless there are relatively few rule differences from chess, a chess variant faces a similar hurdle of familiarity alone to overcome, on its way to ever obtaining widespread acceptance (for everyday face to face contests, at least).

One of the things that may well have made chess so popular is simply the beauty of the pieces for a physical set. Shogi, for example, may lack this advantage (at least in Western eyes), besides games of it tending to last somewhat longer than chess on average, in terms of moves, afaik. Crazyhouse has the excitement of shogi drops and attacking, as well as somewhat retaining the beautiful physical pieces to play with. I don't know how long the average game lasts though, and it may not be strategic enough to encourage a large percentage of chess fans to ever switch over, even if they've already ever retired chess. Crazyhouse has been out there a while, so presumably it's reasonably well tested, yet it still accounts for less than 1% of all games played on that chess server I wrote of in my previous post, in spite of the fact that it's quite a popular chess variant currently. I once noticed someone's suggestion of using Chess960 style random setups for Crazyhouse, to avoid any opening theory developing, but this might have some of the same disavantages as for Chess960 that I wrote of in my prior post (i.e. some setups perhaps favouring White, at least).

I actually prefer a fixed start position for the setup of a given variant if possible, given that merchandising and movie scenes can be aided by this, not to mention books on opening theory and the attraction of a decorative set in one's home with pieces already set upon the board in an orderly fashion. I'm also not too averse to a certain amount of opening theory developing over time. That's though I've heard that's actually getting to be a concern for Shogi, which otherwise seems almost an ideal next chess in many ways - not least, the low draw rate in elite play even, and a fixed setup may make any potential next chess not an 'Immortal Game' (i.e. it may eventually ought to be abandoned/replaced if a dominant variant is deemed desirable or not). As I wrote earlier, a way to avoid this is e.g. Chess960 style shuffling of the setup, or using card decks, as much as I don't entirely like either means, at the moment at least. However, nothing as seemingly perfect as chess once seemed to be (to chess players, at least) may ever be possible to find. My own Sac Chess variant, for example, has a lot of possible pros as well as cons in my own eyes, and when people have commented on it it's often been to wonder about possible cons. The range of good relatively early opening moves for a game of it might actually turn out to be significantly lower than for chess, but as reserve pieces are brought into play from the rear, the later stage opening possibilities hopefully hugely multiply. That's without any Chess960 style shuffling of the setup being tried.

One thing that might happen at some point in time is that FIDE or someone else may get a committee to study many chess variants, if it looks like chess is getting to the point where it needs replacing 'officially', at least for big events. I hope that The Chess Variant Pages website, or some variation of it, will still be around at that point, with all of its diverse chess variants to consider as candidates for the next chess, besides variants that might be found elsewhere, say on the internet. I'd note that not all chess variants were intended to be practical or serve as a possible next chess, however.

I think the main reason Chess960 (Fisher Random Chess) works is that it is still otherwise Chess. Adding randomization to another variant, such as Sac Chess or Gross Chess, seems like overkill. We are not going to live long enough to see significant opening theory develop for these games, not even if one of them replaced Chess in popularity today. So, even if there is a good chance of these games becoming popular and developing extensive opening theory, that would be a problem for later generations to deal with. And maybe they would handle it by slightly tweaking the game or replacing it with another variant. I also agree with the points about a fixed position being advantageous for displaying the game, whether in movies or in your home. It gives a frame of reference that people wouldn't have with a random setup.

At the risk of getting side tracked Fergus, I can see how a fairly large body of tentative opening theory might quickly be developed for a given chess variant. Get two (or more) fairly strong and seperate fairy chess engines to play each other many, many games of the variant, at a brisk (but not quite blitz, perhaps) time control, and put the games into a large database over time. Initially have each engine give an evaluation on the position following each sequence of moves from the start of a given game, after a certain number of moves, but only permantly record the winning engine's evaluation (in case of a draw, use the average evaluation of the two engines). Then anyone might study a portion of the database results at leisure, and decide what to trust or perhaps even write books about as far as a variant's opening theory is concerned.

In the case of chess, I use a certain opening database program that includes an engine's evaluation of a position at more or less almost every point of a sequence of possible chess openings (at least the fairly major ones; many human evaluation symbols are thrown in for comparison too), so the idea I put forward in the paragraph above may not be that unrealistic conceptually anyway. A serious drawback that the chess opening database has which I use, as far as I'm concerned, is that it does not helpfully point out when a position is a forced draw, let alone if it's a drawish position that's hardly worth playing out for a chess master at least, though even chess books by humans often fail to point such things out.

Last night I was thinking: why should I continue to play or try to invent chess variants? Aside from entertainment value, and to escape from standard chess, while still being involved with board game(s) like it, the answer seemed to boil down to the quest to find or invent the Next Chess. First, I will speculate that such a golden variant will not replace chess for 100-500 years, i.e. not in any of our lifetimes. So, finding/inventing the Next Chess would be a generational project, realistically it seems. Here at CVP website, alone, we may leave our own contributions (our games played and/or invented, and opinions about what the Next Chess should be, or include/exclude in the way of characteristics) and just hope one day when a Next Chess is sought for, due to real need in the far future, our two cents worth might help our decendants decide on the beast, rather than make a less informed choice, perhaps in haste.

After trying to define the parameters of what the Next Chess ought to include (or exclude), I must say that I concluded tentatively that there is not much left to invent that fits in well with the boundaries I came up with - perhaps not so shocking when one considers there's 5000+ variants on this website, with 1200+ presets on Game Courier alone (of the latter I even remotely like around 10%, which fits in with Sturgeon's Law, i.e. that 90% of anything is crap).

What are the parameters for the Next Chess I came up with? Well, I didn't need to convince myself of too many before it looked like the possibilities left might be rather confined. First of all, chess, the most successful variant, is played widely and most seriously in physical tournament halls. You cannot expect it to go mainly online anytime soon, if ever. So, 3D, 4D+ variants are all ruled out, as a physical board needs to be convenient. Circular boards aren't too bad for the size of the cells, for decent physical size pieces as well, if 4x16 or even 5x16 is used. The problem is, another conclusion I drew, that most everyone (especially if one wants to include children) would want to include rooks and/or bishops as the primary slider pieces to have in any sort of variant, and on circular boards, a single rook, powerful as it is, is incapable of mating a lone K normally, which is hardly a step forward for anyone graduating from normal chess - looking ahead, this is an argument against e.g. Omega Chess, with its extra corner squares [edit: which also effectively act to make the variant practically 12x12 in terms of taking up physical space, and for the physical sizes of cells and pieces]. Hexagonal boards so far have not proved popular, as Glinski's never took off, and at 91 cells the size of the cells and pieces is rather reduced, too, for a typical set I'd think.

That leaves 2D square or rectangular boards, which must be at least 8x8 in size, or at most 12x10, if a board is to fit fairly nicely on a coffeetable or on a table in a tournament hall. Any bigger, and the physical squares and pieces become unattractively small, arguably (it's hardly a step forward for those graduating from standard chess sets, at any rate). Also, well played games could prove too many moves long on average, on such big boards. Anything smaller than 8x8 will likely prove to make for games that are too short in length.

For games that aren't too long, 32-48 pieces in total would be ideal, IMO, both to pack up the pieces, and so that after all the exchanges in a game, it finishes at a reasonable move number (say pieces are traded at the rate of a pair every 5 moves, as in chess, and an average game of that ends when about 16 units are left on the board). 60-72 pieces in total might be tolerable, and 56 for a total has at least two historic precedents.

A nice pieces/empty cells ratio for the setup is 50% as in chess, though it's hard to prove this, and this is a more flexible guideline I'd say. 10x10  is an otherwise nice board size that has trouble meeting this ratio smoothly. That's aside from the fact that board-lengths greater than 8 cause pawns to take longer to promote, if no special rules or pawns are used. Betza has expressed respect for the ancients who invented the chess pawn type, and I'd consider it the best pawn type as a rule, IMHO. Pawns being on the 2nd rank in a setup are ideal, but on the 3rd rank is not so bad for the pawn-line either, except we lose the sweet possibilities of smothered and back rank mates that come with chess' setup and rules.

As for the pieces, for the sake of the children's participation alone, symmetric moving pieces are best as in chess, though divergence might be allowed (i.e. capture differently than move). For a given variant, I agree with Fergus that at least some of the piece types should be close in value, so as to make for more interesting trades, and perhaps a greater range of opening possibilities. With Rs and or Bs being desirable, along with at least one piece with queen-like strength, all the above rather limits the piece types that can be included in the Next Chess, no matter the board size (if rectangular or square).

Other parameters would be that the Next Chess should not be too drawish, and that the pawns all be guarded in the setup, to try to minimize White's early initiative. I'd say drops are double-edged, if allowed, making a game more tactical, and less of a blend of strategy and tactics like western chess. The pieces should continue to be nice figurines, and there should be a fixed setup, for people's coffeetables, merchandizing and movie scenes alone.

As for computer resistence as a feature for the Next Chess, I'd pretty well give up on that for any board game; AlphaGo put in the last nail as far as my hopes went, especially should AI keep going forward in big strides in our future.

[edit: 18 April 2018: Other parameters would be if there's queens in a game, start with one per side. Also, have no bishop's adjustment rule or multi-path piece types or Ultima-style ones, for simplicity for the sake of children's participation. Having the king as the one royal piece and pawns that promote as in chess (i.e. last rank, any piece type) also seems tradditional, logical and wise. Lame pieces don't seem particular attractive, with chessplayers graduading from nimble knights. Any element of chance should be avoided, as per a strength of chess. Neutral piece types seem best to avoid. If compound pieces are used, ones with R power should not be placed in the setup so that they can develop symmetrically then swap quickly. A near-symmetrical setup of some sort is always a good idea. Also good is to avoid extra off-board squares and/or pieces, for the sake of streamlining, e.g. for decorative sets on coffee tables or perhaps even clubs and tournament halls. Ideally all the ranks in each army should have no empty cells, although a minor deviation from this that looks rather nice may be okay.]

[edit: 18 April 2018: Based on all the above criteria being applied stringently, I came up with just 5 'Next Chess' candidates (after an initial pick of 41 from my massive but fairly choosey favorite games list) - disappointing since so few, and since only one isn't one of my own inventions (the 4 of mine all had these stringent criteria in mind in their design, though): 10x10 Shako (the only one of the 5 not mine), 10x10 Sac Chess, 10x8 Hannibal Chess, 10x8 Frog Chess and 12x10 Wide Nightrider Chess.]

Hi Kevin,

About the topology I agree with you with the same train of thought actually, with the reserve that I would not consider much circular boards, unless as a niche. I would consider though boards akin to Balbo's. But it seems to me that almost no one else does :)!

Also rooks and bishops should probably be the backbone of all "nextchesses". Some larger one could even have four each or 4 bishops (they probably have to be evened numbered as they are color bound) and 3 rooks. The later is a bit uncomfortable to me.

Probably 12x10 is the largest possible next step, but then we could have the nextnextchess, and so on. Who know where future technology will, if ever, limit us.

I think that an initial piece density of around 50% is desirable even if I tend to go a bit over when inventing :)!

Bigger games means longer games. We should all accept that.

On a 12x10 game, pawns starting on the 3rd rank are almost a must unless you use gating (as in Musketeer chess), or some similar technique. JL Cazeaux uses pawns that may always move twice in his larger boards. That one is a great idea :)!

Even trades of different pieces should definitely be a goal. My apothecary series has such a goal. Although having multiple levels of such trades is quite interesting 2 (like Q and unicorn- BNN- on first level, the griffin is out there on larger boards, too).

Games with drops should have weaker pieces by default, but they do have their own special flavor. I'm aiming for my apothecary shogi games to introduce multiple levels of promotion so staying on the board is encouraged :)!

About AI, I agree unless we become cyborgs or something.

So the only thing I'd like to add is that there is no reason to have a sole next chess. I had said before that I find Grand Chess and Omega Chess as good candidates who should not exclude each other. Also different armies games have special flavour but they are extremelly difficult to desing, as they add a balanced armies requirement. Also once there why Stop at that level? If say 3 12x10 games become very popular why not improve them into 18x14 games for example or 16x16?

Hi Aurelian

Some folks don't mind a game that is lengthy on average in terms of moves. A game of Go goes about 75 moves (that is, 150 ply) on average, a game of Shogi takes rather less than that on average, but a game of Chu Shogi apparently can easily go over 200 moves (that is, 400 ply), which may be an extra reason why it was eventually replaced in popularity by standard 9x9 Shogi (i.e. with its innovation of drops) in Japan (noting Easterners are supposedly a bit more patient as a rule than Westerners, I seemed to learn somewhere long ago [edit: this may especially be true of kids, whose interest would benefit the participation numbers of any Next Chess]). I suspect a lot of chess players like that an average game of chess only takes about 35-42 full moves, and any Next Chess would probably benefit from a similar average length of game. As an aside, I remember once the start of a subsequent round of a weekend chess tournament in Toronto in the 1980s was held up by one game not ending till well after over 100 moves, as there were no exchanges in it until past move 100 (sufficent pawn moves to keep the game alive till then, though). Variants that use very large boards, unless they're somehow special/limited like the game of Go, can only produce 100+ moves long games on average, I fear.

Regarding whether there ought to be room for more than one Next Chess, my guess would be if a given variant becomes enormously popular, ever, a world or regional organization for the play of it will inevitably spring up, and it will effectively become its own board game that's independent of other chess variants. This CVP website acts as an incubator for less popular or less well known variants - Game Courier lets one choose many variants to play at once, in particular. However there are dedicated Shogi websites and organizations already, for example, and most serious Shogi players would tend to be catered to mainly by these, I suspect. A single Next Chess would simply be the most overwhelmingly popular chess variant at some future point, if it overtakes standard chess for that.

As someone who has played a few Chu shogi games lately I can safely say than many moves are not as loaded as in other games- like early generals pushes. That is something actually to my knowledge computers still don't properly acknowledge as they treat most moves roughly the same :)!

I don't think there is a comfortable way to make a larger game as long. We should just accept this and move one. Larger board and more pieces just mean more moves. You can make workarounds, but they are just that workarounds :)! They create more trouble than they solve, usually at least. Sure I could miss something. But from an Occam's razor point of view until proven otherwise longer games stay. I see lower down you agree with this assessment. As a comparison my apothecaries are a bit over 80 moves on average (2-3 more Apothecary 2 as it's pieces are weaker). So not exactly 100 but towards there. I did not count actually checkmating turns though. Som techniques are long and Fairy Max is good but not an expert probably (I was using 2 minutes for 30 moves anyway).

On the more games matter this is not exactly the issue I wanted to tackle. I think Fergus (if you see this Fergus) said somewhere (I don't remember when or where) about chess variants evolving in the ways of biological natural selection. There could be one winner but I find this unlikely. More, maybe even 4-5 with a number of players of the same order of magnitude is possible. As remember when you increase the board you also increase the number of possibilities. That comes as a personal preference also as I don't see "the most natural pieces" as the only ones to tackle the game. But this is the foundation (I should have probably insisted on it more earlier). I just think we should consider more games rather than just finding a perfect fit, which could very well never come .

I've added a couple of edits to my old second last post in this old thread, increasing or clarifying the number of there-posted stringent criteria for a 'Next Chess' candidate that I personally have, as well showing my only (5) picks for candidates as of today, which are largely games of my own, thanks only to having my said stringent criteria in mind when designing them. To recap these 5 picks for this present fresh post, they are: 10x10 Shako (the only game of the 5 not my own), 10x10 Sac Chess, 10x8 Hannibal Chess, 10x8 Frog Chess and 12x10 Wide Nightrider Chess. Having given all these, I'm personally not yet convinced any of these 5 are nearly as good, or completely satisfying, as standard chess, if only due to one pleasing feature or another that the 5 seem to lack compared to that game (albeit while having their own peculiar charm[s] that compensate at least to some extent). A lot more testing of the given 5 may be required to judge their worthiness, in terms of playability, as well.

Well Kevin,

I hope I won't upset you in any way but I find my 2 apothecary games "superior" to yours which in my view are a bit blend. A few more pieces don't mean much progress and the joker (fool,imitator etc.) is a quite interesting piece with a rich tactical contribution and which is quite difficult to evaluate in advance. My wider combination of pieces make these game more interesting :)! Also I think, although many seem to not agree my promotion rules brings more choices to the game :)! After all it is a matter of taste, after some point but not much. I like shako, too. Also Eurasian, Grand and Omega. They are good, 10x10 at least, progressions (technically omega is 10x10+4 but you get the point). They are probably better and more general than mine although I don't like the promotion rule in Grand and Eurasian is a bit too tactical as for many hoppers. As I had said before all these 4 : Shako,Grand, Eurasian, Omega could become similarly popular, as I mentioned earlier, it is like biological evolution. On the other hand probably human non-android like transhumans chess is passing away, at least as far as I can see. So maybe this whole thing is moot :)!

 My rather restrictive set of criteria (as developed so far!) for a Next Chess took heavily into account what I thought is the importance of simplicity of piece movement rules as a whole for the sake of a game's greater popularity, that is to attract even very young child players. Sad to say, but if someone gives up on an activity as a child, they might not come back to it with fresh eyes for many years, if ever.

Even setting that aside, the Apothecary games, while quite rich and complex, even rule-wise arguably, have the added possible handicap, in my view, of having off-board extra pieces and squares (not to mention the lack of a fixed setup position), which could well be a problem for displaying set up decorative sets, e.g. in the home, or for even use in clubs or tournament halls; the board effectively becomes 12 rows long with the extra cells, if nothing else, as far as making the size of physical pieces needing to be smaller than for a 10x10 board (remember, a lot of tables are much longer than they are wide). On a computer this is no problem though, at least if cash prize events can one day commonly be held online, which includes maximum precautions vs. possible cheating, easier face-to-face at a physical playing site.

I'm assuming somehow hopefully we're never going to be cyborgs en mass, and so will generally continue to want to meet at clubs or tournament halls, but I suppose if humans becoming cyborgs (perhaps us being 100% machine is the ultimate goal here?!) somehow is not impossible, nor a hellish folly, then I assume we can all just send each other internet or some other sort of signals rather than having to ever physically meet, should we still care to play chess variants or even enjoy sharing a meal. Beware of what men (including our dear leaders) may wish for though: immortality and omniscience were promised, but not delivered, in the mythical(?) Garden of Eden by one infamous serpent. Put another way, one retired Ottawa chess organizer once wrote half-jokingly that those of us who aren't paranoid have been weeded out by natural selection.

Has someone deleted a comment of mine here?

I think minor variants with different pieces would have a better shot at becoming popular. Games like Shako or even Hannibal chess seem like good candidates. Weird shapes like hexagons or too many exotic pieces aren't likely to catch on fast; while those two games just have cannons, alfils, etc. Pieces that are simple enough to learn, but provide a significant change that might interest people. And given how small the changes have been historically it seems to fit. Look at chaturanga vs regular chess, or shatranj. Even Xiangqi and Shogi aren't massively big in terms of a change. Historically chess and games in general seem to change very slowly with a few slight modifications that people find useful. Like the alfils turning into bishops rather than being gimped and only touching 8 squares on a board. 

And change is likely to be slower because there is an "orthodox" chess. It isn't like the old days where someone forgetting a rule or house ruling the game (in this case chess) slowly over time will branch off into its own thing and become a different game. People can just look it up now and information travels faster. And there aren't any real issues in chess that bug enough people for a change to catch on. The average person who plays chess isn't a grandmaster who knows the most precise moves or memorized openings a ton and faces any real annoyance to their gameplay. Whereas the weakness of the alfil would spur people on to change it. But what piece is really weak in chess? Aside from high level play, there is no real gameplay weakness to speed up the desire for change among your average Joe sitting down to play a game. Yeah, at high level play this results in a lot of draws, and it may bore people who watch it, but most people aren't sitting around firing up their engines and seeing those underlying flaws. They're just playing the game or watching it and it's still fresh to them. 

Standard chess is just too well balanced for there to be some outcry against a weak or gimped piece like with shatranj and such and there aren't enough people who know chess like an engine and find the game dull. Change rarely happens for the sake of it. And I'm just not seeing what would make chess change in any significant way when chess has barely changed from Shatranj, and that was barely, if at all, changed from Chaturanga. 

@Jarid,

A significant change has already taken place in the 20 years or so. Computers are taking over. I think it is natural that as a result of this enviroment change others will follow. I make my variants mostly for fun but in the context of this discussion. Others, too.

And the information goes both ways. An accidental change today is virtually impossible, but good changes catch on quite quickly :)!

Also I like Shako, too :)!

@ Jarid:

The alfil+ferz compound piece (Ferfil or Modern Elephant) has a feature that is at least somewhat interesting, perhaps, namely that part of it's move capability is to leap, which can show to advantage in many positions before a wide open endgame might arise, where it often could indeed effectively be an inferior bishop (though even from diagonally adjacent to its king, it can leap over said king, which might make a difference occasionally).

Earlier in this thread, I think, I posted that I thought a Next Chess (if a feasible one is even possible that meets nearly all arguably desirable criteria that chess does) would take at least 100 years before replacing chess in popularity, due to need at that time, and so inventing or agreeing on the best Next Chess candidate(s) would be a generational project that we wouldn't see come to fruition in our lifetimes. To be fair to the idea of faster change though, top level chess led the way in switching tournament chess generally to play using digital clocks (also with faster time controls becoming the standard), and the related ending of adjourning games before playing them to completion. The latter may have also had to do with strong computer engines (or endgame tablebases), but I'm not sure. Those engines are also helping to exhaust chess opening theory at an accelerating rate (however note exhausted 8x8 Checkers still lives on competitively, perhaps in rather pale fashion though). A problem for a Next Chess is, will its correctly interesting opening possibilities be anywhere near as rich as for chess itself, even if there are more pieces and squares in such a game (such as even for my massive 10x10, 60 piece units Sac Chess game, with its compound pieces theme, which may not be ideal for young children, at least).

@ Aurelian:

I did not read your post if it ended up being lost or deleted, but my guess would be that CVP editorial policy might go against any posts that have too little percentage of content related to the subject of a thread, namely whatever it is supposed to have to do with chess variants (such as their future). Also, any extra level of passion or controversy a given poster might happen to convey might prove unwelcome to an editor, though again I did not see your missing post.

@Kevin It seems it was not deleted but somehow, I was not carefull and I had not posted it :)! I'll come back soon :)!

Fergus has informed me that there was no comment between Kevin's and the one I asked if my comment was deleted, from the comment indexing, so my bad, I'm sorry :(! A bit later I'll come back to you Kevin :)!

Test

It seems I blew it up again. So a third time. I stiil have not uncovered what I've done wrong but I had done it twice :(!

If you type up a long message, you should always save the text to the clipboard before moving off the screen so you don't lose it if something goes wrong.  And that applies to practically all websites, not just ours.  That has saved me from losing work on many occasions.

@Kevin

So, I am answering to your comment on the 18th :)! The one that starts with : " My rather restrictive set of criteria".

I don't thing that a small randomization to the initial state is a bad thing. 960 has it and it is the most played GM variant although admittedly because it is as close as you could get to orthodox. I would not even call it a chess variant even. It gives the chance for more openings. If the game ever becomes studied enough I'd recommend that in tournament play that initial states that produce the most opening should become more used by changing the probability distribution of that state.

I see no point in holding to the concept of physical boards. They can be used by collector or in some other vintage manner, but nothing more, as far as I can see.

100% machine is not cyborgs as far as I can see but robots, in the industrial robots sens. Cyborgs are basically augmented humans. They are meant to preserve the human and improve on the sapiens.

Omniscience cannot be claimed by any sane person for them or anything else. That is quite easy to argue on the lines of "How do you know that you know everything?". Immortality is rather impossible the same way. How can you guard yourself with certainty from accidents. That second thing is probably more difficult and maybe not entirely provable as knowing future techs is impossible. But you can make a very good argument along these lines too. Also androids are in no way mythical. They are as airplanes to queen Vitoria's contemporaries. Icarus would be something mythical.

Also I know what I did wrong now, I ha pressed person tag instead of submit twice. No worry guys, just me being silly :)!

I see no point in holding to the concept of physical boards. They can be used by collector or in some other vintage manner, but nothing more, as far as I can see.

I can only say that the vast majority of chess players would disagree with you.  We like moving physical pieces with our hands.  We like sitting face-to-face with our opponent.

I mostly read books on a Kindle because it is small and light.  I can hold it with one hand when riding the metro and I have to stand.  I can have a ton of books with me very conveniently.  But I still prefer the act of reading an actual book.  Then again, I'm admittendly old-fashioned.