“The traditional game of Chess is the version officially recognized”

  In retrospect, there can be no doubt that the traditional Chessboard has had a venerable career. One cannot fail to be impressed with the great diligence shown by the men and women in carrying through the scheme for the re-organization of traditional Chess during the Renaissance and its succeeding centuries. They obviously had a strong conviction of the value of these changes to work out and present the necessary information and methods and one can have nothing but praise for the way they tackled the job and presented their scheme.

  The work was impeccably carried through by those who followed them during the last five centuries and from this point of view a worthy entry in the pages of Chess history. As Charles Dickens would have said It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, all rolled into one.  Unfortunately, for the scheme to be a contribution of practical value to the future of Chess, deeper issues are raised, and it is in dealing with these or, rather, failing to deal with them that traditional Chess falls short of continuing success.

  Many have risen to personal glory on its 64 cells and anyone who wishes to begin playing Chess will find many books devoted to Level 1. Traditional Chess has been a system that has been used to determine the best Chess player in the world for many decades.  Being generous, it can perhaps best be seen as a mixture of the spirit of the UN and that of the most ruthless Darwinism a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered - too many flowers too little fruit. 

  Chess in its various forms (Chatrang, Chaturanga, Shatranj, Korean, Burmese, Chinese and Thai, etc.) has endeared itself to all those who have come in contact with it during the last forty centuries and it has succeeded in performing its task, the measure of which can be appreciated from the fact that the traditional game has survived for nearly 50 decades in its European version - as a monument and a remarkable tribute to the skill of the players who grace the pages of Chess history. It is an everlasting credit to the men/women who opened up new avenues of mental exploration.

  As we turn the page on the previous millennium of Chess history, mature players must bid farewell (au revoir) to traditional occidental Chess and press onwards to what lays ahead in futurity and the new levels described in this text. It is our good fortune that traditional Chess has been handed down - for it is on this very foundation that Chesmayne has been constructed. Chesmayne players have recognized the value of the new boards and notation - the larger the array, the more pieces and number of moves playable (not to mention blockers).

  The traditional game of Chess is the version officially recognized by the ruling body of traditional Chess and is played nationally and internationally by 100+ nations. FIDE or, the Federation Internationale des Eches motto is, Gens una sumus (we are the people).  A change of the sort which is advocated in this treatise is one which cannot really be half-adopted. The far-reaching changes are based on a solid foundation. Furthermore, as Chesmayne rapidly approaches the point of integration with wider fields i.e., computer programming, it should gain a wider common usage.

  The issues raised are quite extensive and I have attempted to justify the ideas in this wider context. The division of the board into blocks of cells is necessary for the new notation used to describe the moves of a Chess game. The Chesmayne symbols are the best available and all are readily accessible from a QWERTY keyboard. Pragmatic criteria (its ease of use, etc) are not the only ones by which such a system should be judged.

  It is to be hoped that time will justify the suggestions and as traditional Chess stands, whilst paying tribute to our predecessors in the field and their industry and grasp of the practical application of traditional Chess, one must set the occidental system aside and as is usual in such circumstances the work on traditional Chess up to the present time will carry its own intellectual reward for those engaged in its evolution.