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My guess would be to 'win a stake' means to win the cash value (if any) for 'winning a single game' against a given player, who then pays up on the spot. Also, if e.g. a player 'wins a double stake' by having the only king left on the board after taking all the other kings with his, all three of the other players at that point pay him twice the value of 'losing a single game' to him.
In the case that the players are not playing this [basic] 4 player Chaturanga variant for money, they could write down each time any of the players wins one or more stakes, so that at the end of the play of the variant, an overall winner (if any), plus 2nd and 3rd place finishers could be determined.
Pardon my ignorance, but what does it mean to "win a stake" in this game? Thanks.
The simplest proof that two-sided variants evolved from four-handed Chaturanga is to examine Pachisi, and evolution of pachisi board into the 8 x 8 board, and how its pieces (4 teams) became Chaturanga pawns. In answer to the question about strength of my Chaturanga.com software, answer is that is almost unbeatable at the higher/ slower levels. I have recently refined some of the endgame algorithms. Over 10 million variants are playable within the software! Book on Chaturanga out soon .... maybe 2013, and busy on Zenet project currently http://kemetic.org
I've created a 4-player Chaturanga variation (with two 6-side dice) which is simpler to play, and has proved to be a lot of fun for my wife (a non chess player) and my two young kids (7 & 5 years old). Partnership Chaturanga: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSpartnershipcha
If you downloaded my 4-handed Chaturanga then you should download it again because I have fixed a bug where one can never throw a double-three.
There is insufficient information to determine with _complete certainty_ where chess originated. But it is sufficiently clear that chaturanga is the most likely predcessor of chess. If the first description of chess is what you are looking for then you need not go further than the game of chaturanga (with dice) played between Duryodhana and Yudhishthira which is detailed in the Indian religious epic, Mahabharata. That description (and Mahabharata) is (conservatively) dated approx 1000 BC! One crucial thing is that Chaturang has many variants. Obviously, variants develop over a period of time, and of popular games only. Chess peices still bear a striking resemblance to the Chaturanga played in India, etc. Chaturanga must have had _some_ relation to the original chess, and may well be the original itself, Murray notwithstanding.
I strongly disagree with the anonymous reader who rated this page: 'poor'. Curiously, he is making History going the wrong way, against the time direction. Murray wrote in 1913 and his book is an impressive work, even today. If few points are now outdated, he can not be outdated neither by Forbes writing in 1860 nor Cox writing in 1801. The Cox-Forbes theory has never been confirmed and nodody gives credit to it in 2005 ! It is against all evidence, even though several mis-informed authors do continue to copy each other and repeat the mistake saying this game was the ancestor of Chess. But you can believe what you want, maybe Martians or Venusians did invent 4Handed Chaturanga and brought it to India, maybe Cullen was a Venusian too as I do not know any Cullen. I know a Stewart Culin, who was a great ethnologist in the begining of the XX c., who wrote a lot about games, but Chess was not his speciality at all. This page is Good. Jean-Louis Cazaux http://history.chess.free.fr/chaturanga.htm
Are there a ZRF on this game? Does anybody already tried out how strong plays software sold on http://www.chaturanga.com ? From screenshot is looks quite professionally made.
Rukh is Persian for chariot. See http://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/rook.html for full details of the Rook's names, many of which still mean chariot, and http://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/alfil.html for full details of the piece most widely known by names meaning Elephant. Chariots, elephants, cavalry, and infantry (the last two are the modern Knight and Pawn) made up the 'fourfold army' that was Chaturanga's literal meaning.
Gilman queries the link between 'rook' and 'elephant' as having erroneously derived from the 'elephant and castle' (though his explanation for the origin of this is highly questionable). I had always thought that the link was from the Hindi word for elephant, which I believe is 'Rukh'. If not, what is his explanation for use of the word 'rook'?
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Thanks for the response, that is kind of what I thought but wasn't sure.
Greg