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On TOS, and TNG, we see the 3D chess board that Kirk and Spock like to play with, my question is, is there a real one for sale somewhere, and how do you play it(or is it just a set piece)?

Just to let you know, it's called Tri-dimensional Chess.

I think the Franklin Mint offered a board with rules, and I know that fans have devised their own rules.

According to a Trek TM I read, they said that Trek 3D chess had no
basis on the actual game, it was just made up. Can't recall the name of
it, it was a TOS TM, circa 1991.

There are rules for Tridimensional Chess which have been worked out by chess-playing Star Trek fans. One set of rules can be found at the 3D Schach site: http://www.3dschach.de/3dchess.html . Also, the 3D Chess Federation page http://www.3dchessfederation.com/index.htm offers links to Tridimensional Chess rules and variants.

Three dimensional chess games have been devised from the late 19th century; a development of the Age of Flight. I've played Chess3 in my time, which simply involves three standard boards stacked together for a total playing field of 196 squares.

Tridimensional chess was more of a prop than an actual game, and in the "games" played in any episode of TOS or TNG, the actors really do not move the pieces in accordance to any of the actual rules of movement in chess or to the coordinates of the board(s). To be certain, Wah Chang, TOS' genius propmeister, at least tried to devise a 3d chess gameboard which contained no more than 64 squares for plausibility's sake. And the various rules developed post-hoc for this configuration do work, and playable games are possible.

The problem is that the four moveable attack boards complicate the game of chess beyond any reasonable degree; a problem which many 3d variants of the ancient game share but the moveable boards take the cake in this regard. They've added a fifth-order of difficulty to what already existed simply if these mini-boards had been used exclusively as castling spaces, which would have been more logical. But as has been observed, the game was a prop instead of an actual, properly-devised game and rules-designers have had to make the best of it.

It seems like the third dimension would totally fuck up chess--it's the most carefully balanced game in the world, IMHO.

RedImperator wrote:It seems like the third dimension would totally fuck up chess--it's the most carefully balanced game in the world, IMHO.

It seems like the game is balanced because each player starts exactly with the same "forces." As opposed to balanced forces with different strengths and weaknesses.

neoolong wrote:

RedImperator wrote:It seems like the third dimension would totally fuck up chess--it's the most carefully balanced game in the world, IMHO.

It seems like the game is balanced because each player starts exactly with the same "forces." As opposed to balanced forces with different strengths and weaknesses.

It's not even really balanced then. With good players, the player with the black pieces will almost never win, unless the other player makes a serious error somewhere over the course of the match. Generally, the best he can hope for is a draw.

Master of Ossus wrote:

neoolong wrote:

RedImperator wrote:It seems like the third dimension would totally fuck up chess--it's the most carefully balanced game in the world, IMHO.

It seems like the game is balanced because each player starts exactly with the same "forces." As opposed to balanced forces with different strengths and weaknesses.

It's not even really balanced then. With good players, the player with the black pieces will almost never win, unless the other player makes a serious error somewhere over the course of the match. Generally, the best he can hope for is a draw.

Don't be too certain of that. Some grandmasters will prefer playing black as often as possible because of the advantages afforded by the Queen's side. Black is the perfect side for counterpunchers to play from.

still, 55% wins for white speaks for a rather significant advantage from the tempo gained by moving first.