5 ms·
> Filmmakers’ most common blunder may be the sideways board. On a correctly placed chessboard, the square in either player’s bottom right corner will be light-c
by Cpoll 8y ago
> Filmmakers’ most common blunder may be the sideways board. On a correctly placed chessboard, the square in either player’s bottom right corner will be light-colored
This is the only one I wouldn't consider a gaffe. Plenty of casual chess players don't know this either. It flips the board layout (queens on the wrong side), and would probably feel wrong to a more experienced player, but it doesn't actually affect the game.
- bscphil 8y agoThis is most definitely wrong, and I think any but the most beginning player would notice. It doesn't affect the theory of the game, of course, but there are good reasons to be consistent about this. It flips the meaning of "light square bishop", for instance.
- Cpoll 8y agoI think it depends on how you learned to play. Personal anecdote: I learned the game from another casual player, and played a few hundred hours without learning any openings (but developing my own crude ones) or even knowing 'en passant.' Only when I actually started studying theory did I learn the orientation rule and understand why that sort of consistency is important. Now a flipped board sticks out like a sore thumb.
- ourmandave 8y agoBack in junior high I remember watching two kids playing an end game and their kings were right next to each other. They'd only heard that "a king can't take a king.", but didn't know why.
- gizmo686 8y agoNot chess, but Go has a similar situation. Most boards aren't actually square boards, but slightly rectangular (eg. each cell is a rectangle). Before anyone told me that, I would sometimes sit down at a board and get the sense that something looked wrong; but I could never put my finger on what it was. I suspect that chess might have a similar situation, where someone who has played enough, even if they were never consiously aware of the convention, would get an off fealing if it were set up wrong. (Although, in the case of chess, it is truly a convention. With Go there is an objective sense in which one orientation is better than the other).
- ourmandave 8y agoI always remember it by "Queen starts on her color."