Saudi Arabia bans chess... CHESS!!

Saudi Arabia has now banned chess. Considered a form of gambling by their most senior cleric, as well as a "“waste of time and money and a cause for animosity between players”. Wonder how many people will be stoned and/or beheaded for this? With their new Mad King at the helm, they're gonna become as big of a laughingstock as North Korea.

Wow...

Not cool bro, chess is a fun game.

Had something similar here with golf, but that was 500 years ago.

did someone beat him in chess?

@iloveatlus: That was literally my exact thoughts =p

he probably had a mean chess teacher growing up...

Maybe because they suck in a global scale of chess game.

yeah, well, it was an evil game. =P

You can't have that Queen moving all over the map if the King can only move one square.

Chess has not been "banned" there... yet. For now, it's just the opinion of the Grand Mufti. But since the Grand Mufti has so much power and influence in that country, it could eventually lead to a ban.

It would be ironic if they did ban it, because Arabia has been playing Chess for more than a thousand years, since long before Arabs introduced Chess to the West.

Wow... what a place to live.

Gee. I guess they'll have to chop me up into little bitty pieces and fed to the dogs....... But, I don't live there.

How incredibly dumb. Even more so when you consider the history the arabs have had with chess.

Well, I think technically playing chess was considered forbidden by some scholars in the past because it was associated with gambling. In recent years though different scholars have given different views on playing chess. Some deem it permissible now that it's no longer about gambling and is a mental activity and whatnot instead.

Not sure why that Mufti says it's forbidden though. And I couldn't care less since the ulama whose rulings I follow have all deemed it permissible.

Someone must have defeated King Abdullah at Chess. Well, whatever, I only just recently got into chess. YOU CANT STOP ME!

That's insulting to North Korea.

North Korea was the victim of some of the most heinous war crimes committed in the 20th century, having been subjected to a US bombing campaign that deliberately and methodically killed one third of the civilian population and that almost entirely destroyed the country's food-production capacity. North Korea has furthermore been subjected to decades of political and economic isolation, as punishment for daring to survive the Korean War.

Whatever eccentricities North Korea's leadership might exhibit must be judged only after due consideration of the attempted genocide that was inflicted on the nation by the United States of America.

Yet, in spite of the devastation of the Korean War and the privation of decades of economic isolation, North Korea has managed to build orbit-capable rockets and implement a successful nuclear weapons program.

By contrast, Saudi Arabia has been (and remains) the recipient of billions of dollars of US handouts annually. And in spite of all that US largesse, the country remains a backward, primitive, autocratic and theocratic state that is, by any objective measure, little better than ISIS.

The NATO-cherished, NATO-coddled kings and princes of Saudi Arabia aren't fit to kiss the boots of the Kim dynasty.

Make no mistake, these same 'ban everything' fascist exist in the US and Western Europe. Wasn't long ago and pinball was illegal in New York. Or how about poker, or fantasy sports, hand sanitizer, 16 oz soda, hover boards, drones, trans fat, fireworks, sodomy... Don't start picking up stones just yet, the western worlds banned list is just as endless with benign objects and activities. Like the Muslim world, there is even a group that wants to ban pet ownership within the US, different reasons obviously, but still psychotic reasoning.

Why is a thread about saudi Arabia turning into a America hating thread?

Nevermind, that Russian troll is here

Probably because it's just too damn easy. =p

Good thing my street fighter chess already arrived

LOL

Maybe trump wouldn't be such a bad idea...

Lol, Saudi Arabia.

But guys, isn't this the same country that bans women from driving? Just ban everything already.

'Bout time we ban Saudi Arabia.

Islam has a little problems with chess . In Iran altho it's not banned or anything and there are chess competitions in schools , but Ayatollahs always said they don't like chess .

Thanks Bobby!

Maybe the queen being so powerful in the game is a bit too feminist for them.

Actually, in the Middle Eastern version of chess, there is no queen. There's a king and a vizier.

Dumb country.

Might as well ban/censor Harry Potter movies then....

At first, I thought it said Saudi Arabia bans cheese and I was like WHAAAAAT??? Glad to see cheese is not banned.

Why am I not surprised the Middle East version of chess has no queen ?

Good move I say. I don't recall there being a study about how many are killed because of chess. It's smart to be on the safe side here. Good thinking Saudi Arabia.

"Waste of time and money" SAYS THE MAN WASTING TIME AND MONEY BANING CHESS!!!!!

Good to see there is at least one monarchy in the world still keeping it real.

I will to my lord be true and faithful and love all which he loves and shun all which he shuns... even chess.

-Saudi Oath of Fealty

lol
Nice

@seanh: No, trolls use it to hijack threads.

Sucks for the Saudis. Chess is a fun game.

Because king and queen are pretty much the same thing. A vizier is different. In Eastern culture a king or a queen should just kind of be there. But it is the vizier who is in real charge of the government and the army and so moves around the entire board quickly. That's also pretty much how the Islamic kingdoms worked.

Also, Western Chess is based on Middle-Eastern Chess, not the other way around. When the Arabs introduced Chess to Europe, the Europeans replaced the vizier with the queen, because the concept of a vizier or prime minister was alien to medieval Europe, which instead had a feudal society with kings and knights.

Middle-Eastern Chess represented how the vizier ruling from the shadows had more real power than the caliph/sultan figure-head, but this was lost in translation when Chess was localized for Europe.

Oh well. At least they still have Checkers to play.

Who on earth gambles money on a chess match?

"100 Dollars that the next move is white tower from H3 to D3!"

Lol indeed.

Case in point, I guess.

What you expected from bunch of Sand nomads whom are supporting terrorists world wide?