A game of kings and bored undergrads

The tension in the air is palpable. In a show of royal charity, or perhaps a patience alien to us commons, the queen waits, her alert gaze focused on her adversary. Her finely chiselled features appear unperturbed, yet the trained observer might notice a tiny wrinkle on her forehead, the only outward sign that the battle of wits she is now engaged in will decide the fate of a kingdom.

Judging from the strain visible on his normally serene face, her foe is equally absorbed in his thoughts. Years of strategic military experience fail him now as he searches desperately for a way to remain unconquered. His choices are limited, he realises. They boil down to two avenues - both of escape. The possibility of resistance has long since disappeared from his mind. If he can evade capture for long enough, he may yet survive to fight again.

In a higher dimension, two bespectacled youths, considerably less royal in appearance, survey the situation from a different angle. The tension is still perceptible, but it seems to have a different source here - the overpowering tedium of the endgame.

"Would you move the damn piece already?", grumbles one of them, his fingers clutching the ever-present guitar, seeming as though they'd like to strangle the opponent.

"I'm thinking. There's a way out of this. I can feel it", I answer, staring at the chess-board without enthusiasm.

"You've got all of two possible moves. It's checkmate either way, dude. Just give it up and we can all go do something fun"

I sigh. Logic has emerged victorious.

"I resign", I announce, causing a minor tremor as the chessmen are swept off the board unceremoniously and into the bag that serves as their temporary home.

It is at this moment that inspiration strikes - a way to make the game of chess accessible to those with active social lives. My idea brings scepticism at first, but after a few rapid-fire matches, we know that it's a winner - and thus, the game of 'Chooker' is born.


Chooker is a variant of chess that can be played with any normal chess-set (good luck if it's magnetic, though). If you're wondering about the name, 'Chooker' is 'Chess + Snooker', and I suppose that's it in a nutshell. It's played by flicking chess-pieces against each other using only your index finger and thumb. It's turn-based, just like chess and promises to use a minimum of your brain's capacity. We haven't codified the rules of the game yet, but here's the basic gist:

1. You can choose any of your own pieces as a 'cue-piece' to flick or strike against your opponent's pieces.
   
   
2. Any of the pieces that have fallen due to the impact of a player's strike (even the player's own pieces) must be removed from the board. These pieces are considered to have been captured. The only exception to this rule is the cue-piece, which need be removed only if the impact has thrown it outside the board. If the cue-piece has fallen inside the board, it may be placed upright again, on one of the squares that it has fallen in.
   
   
3. White plays first.
   
   
4. The game ends when all of a player's pieces (not just the king) have been struck off the board, and the other player is declared the winner.
   
   
5. The points gained by the winner correspond to which of his pieces are still on the board at the end of the game. A pawn gets you 1 point, a bishop or knight gets you 3, a rook gets you 5, a queen is 7 and the king is worth 10 points. So if you have a pawn and a queen left at the end of the game, you get a total of 8 points.
   
   
6. In the case of a tie (that is, if the last strike removes all of the pieces from the board), then a 'chook-out', similar to a penalty shoot-out, is used to decide the winner. The chook-out works like this: Each player places a pawn on his side of the board, and the other player tries to strike the other pawn off using his. The best of five tries is taken, after which the game goes to 'sudden death' mode.

Chooker turned out to be a grand success in the weeks that followed. We organised an all-hostel tournament complete with league matches and a knockout round - the entire tourney lasted around an hour. Well, I won the inaugural Chooker Hostel Cup, but I put it down to luck - not to mention an abundance of free time on my hands :P

(Credits: Incidentally, the 'other' player is Ashwin Aryan, my friend at college - a bad-ass guitarist and vocalist, and co-inventor of Chooker)