Person Information

I am a biologist by profession and therefore 'see' chess variants as biological species. At some point I realised that chess evolves in a way that is quite similar to biological species (although there are clear differences as well, of course). That led me to try and apply some of the techniques commonly used in reconstrucing evolution and speciation (phylogenetic techniques) to questions having to do with chess evolution. Ultimately, I hope to be able to contribute a new way of trying to get at the Holy Grail of chess history: the answer to where and when chess originated and what it looked like. Anyone interested? Check out www.cpb.bio.ic.ac.uk/staff/kraaijeveld/lexchess.html for more details.