Answers.Body: <p>A lot of online sources and videos online were from 2018-2021, as it was very popular then, so it is very tricky to find anything</p>
  <p>Some say hand and brain chess was inspired in really fun videos from Eric Hansen, Daniel Rensch and Anna Rudolf, but this it isn't that old <a href="https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/play-hand-and-brain-chess-online-http-handandbrainchess-com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, so I conclude that Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog is probably the earliest mention of Hand and Brain chess.</p>
  <p>I have searched for the exact phrase &quot;hand and brain chess&quot; and &quot;hand and brain&quot;, but all 3950 of the results on google were quite recent, oldest found is the below link (2016)</p>
  <p>(Still looking at the moment)</p>
  <p><a href="https://matthewsadler.me.uk/attack/hand-and-brain/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Feb 2016 mentioning of Hand and Brain chess</a></p>
  <p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/nophmr/the_origins_of_hand_brain_chess/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Reddit question of the origins</a></p>
  <p>There <em>is</em> a possibility that Hand and brain chess is somehow related to <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_chess" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Team chess</a>, where the control over pieces on the board are shared among the teammates who are not allowed to communicate with each other during the play other than via valid moves.</p>
  <p>Another possibilty, but unlikely, is <a href="https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/smess.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Smess chess</a>, where arrows on the board indicate where pieces should move. (This variant uses fairy pieces and a 8x7 board)</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T01:39:21.037Z
Answers.Text: I'm not asking for a listing of all the mentions you can find online of Hand & Brain. I'm asking about the **origins** of the variant. It's obvious from Kosteniuk's blog that the variant was established by 2013 when she refers to it, likely well before, for the reasons I already explained in my post (clearly both the name and exact practice, which she refers to as a casual consensus, were well-established by the time of writing). For an example of what proper historical descriptions of the origins of variants look like, have a read through Pritchard's Classified Encyclopedia (free online).
Answers.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T01:58:02.303Z
Answers.Text: @DialFrost Also, people downvote for many reasons. Maybe [Tim Post lost his keys again](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/288240/1088098). So, you shouldn't ask why someone downvote your question/answer.
Answers.UserDisplayName: TheFakeGrandmaster
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T03:30:13.340Z
Answers.Text: @MobeusZoom i modified my answer but Ill try to find more accurate origins (there is a high possibility that it cannot be found)
Answers.UserDisplayName: DialFrost
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T17:57:20.543Z
Answers.Text: @letmewinpls45 Just because people downvote randomly doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out for it. I don't really see why it should be acceptable (the justification for not making people explain their every vote on SE is that it's time-consuming, not that it's ok to not have a justification). I *never* downvote without good reason and was already typing mine when they asked for it.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
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Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-22T02:52:54.053Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2022-04-23T04:01:45.503Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2022-04-23T04:01:45.503Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: DialFrost
Answers.Body: <p>Looks like the idea is from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_chess" rel="nofollow noreferrer">dice chess.</a></p>
  <p>There are a lot of variations to this like using a 6-sided dice where pawn=1, knight=2, bishop=3, rook=4, queen=5, king=6. Or a 10-sided dice as in the <a href="https://www.chessvariants.com/dice.dir/chessizer.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">chess equalizer.</a> It can be using a single die or 2 dice where if the result is 1 or 6 the player can play either a pawn or a king.</p>
  <p>In <code>Hand and Brain</code> the brain is another player but in dice chess the brain is the rolling of a die or dice.</p>
  <p>Here are some links of <a href="https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?type=Any&amp;category=Dice&amp;orderby=LinkText&amp;displayauthor=1&amp;displayinventor=1&amp;usethisheading=Chess+With+Dice" rel="nofollow noreferrer">chess with dice</a> from chessvariant.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-22T04:26:59.343Z
Answers.Text: How does this answer the question **What are the origins of Hand & Brain chess?**?  Looks like doesn't mean it is. What proofs do you have?
Answers.UserDisplayName: Abhyuday Vaish
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-22T05:02:13.817Z
Answers.Text: `Hand and Brain` is a new variant whereas `Dice chess` is older than it. The idea in `Hand and Brain` can be found in `Dice chess`.
Answers.UserDisplayName: ferdy
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Answers.Text: @ferdy There is no evidence that the (very abstract and somewhat tenuous) connection you draw between the ideas in Dice Chess and Hand & Brain inspired or gave rise to Hand & Brain; indeed it seems unlikely. (But in any case, it is substantive evidence we are looking for.)
Answers.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
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Answers.Text: Dice chess has already existed before it, that is an evidence that `Hand and Brain` is a derivation from dice. If the inventor/discoverer of the `Hand and Brain` did not know about Dice Chess then fine. But the fact is the idea was already there. You mention origins in the subject, have a look on the meaning of origin at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/origin and https://www.dictionary.com/browse/origin
Answers.UserDisplayName: ferdy
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T17:54:06.427Z
Answers.Text: @ferdy You could equally claim that 'Go has already existed before it, that is an evidence that Hand and Brain is a derivation from Go'. Suggesting that Dice Chess is so similar to Hand & Brain that we can confidently say the latter idea came from the former is laughable. In any case, the idea of 'one player picks pieces, the other one moves them' (a die is *not* a player: it is a move-by-nature) is what we want to know the origin of, as well as when it was first called 'Hand & Brain' etc. See Pritchard for what historical description of chess variant origins looks like
Answers.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-24T16:32:16.713Z
Answers.Text: mahabharat is inspiration
Answers.UserDisplayName: ShadYantra
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Answers.CreationDate: 2022-04-21T23:16:58.107Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2022-04-21T23:16:58.107Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: ferdy
Body: <p>I was recently leafing through Pritchard's <em>Encyclopedia of Chess Variants</em> when I noticed that the variant Hand and Brain which has recently become popular, in which one player states the piece to the moved ('Brain') and his partner then decides the move with that piece ('Hand'), is missing.</p>
  <p>It would be in Chapter 34 of the 2007 edition following Tandem/Alternation Chess, since Hand &amp; Brain is the only other variant which uses 1 standard board, standard pieces, and standard rules, but permits team play.</p>
  <p><strong>What are the origins of Hand &amp; Brain chess?</strong> I'm interested to know what the earliest recorded mentions of the variant are by this name and also by any older historical name.</p>
  <p>N.B. The earliest mention I can find is on Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog dating to February 2013: <a href="http://www.chessblog.com/2013/02/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.chessblog.com/2013/02/</a>. The name and rules already seem to tie up exactly with the variant we recognize today, suggesting that the variant was at least somewhat known by then.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-05-09T07:10:43.753Z
Comments.Text: Just an anecdotal data point without hard references, but I have definitely played it in college before 2010...
Comments.UserDisplayName: Federico Poloni
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-05-31T21:42:39.523Z
Comments.Text: It's not too complicated of a variant so it's perfectly possible that it appeared in several places independently
Comments.UserDisplayName: David
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-04-21T18:30:25.993Z
Comments.Text: I cn address about inspiration but people from perian Euro Chess community will start thrashing me..
Comments.UserDisplayName: ShadYantra
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T01:41:07.960Z
Comments.Text: This question (most probably) cannot be answered
Comments.UserDisplayName: DialFrost
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T01:46:10.017Z
Comments.Text: @DialFrost Presumably you'd say the same about Tandem Chess, but Pritchard was able to identify its history back to an 1875 journal. There's no reason to believe it's impossible to do similar for Hand & Brain
Comments.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T01:53:04.783Z
Comments.Text: Tandem chess is different, it is way more popular than hand&brain chess, plus hand and brain chess does not even show up in wikipedia
Comments.UserDisplayName: DialFrost
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-04-23T02:14:07.053Z
Comments.Text: By Tandem Chess I refer not to Bughouse but to Tandem/Alternation chess, which again I mentioned in my first post, where the players take turns moving (on the same board). Pritchard identified the origins of this variant. This is not mentioned on Wikipedia and I don't know that it is more popular than Hand & Brain.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-04-30T15:38:44.763Z
Comments.Text: @RauanSagit It's a shame no-one has been able to answer properly in spite of your large bounties. I'll keep searching and maybe useful info will turn up at some point. It could be worth reaching out to a chess historian (unfortunately Pritchard himself has passed away) or to one of these GMs mentioned in these references (Alexandra Kosteniuk, Simon Williams, ...). Sometimes part of the search has to be done by word-of-mouth
Comments.UserDisplayName: Mobeus Zoom
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-07-01T13:03:19.060Z
Comments.Text: @MobeusZoom Interesting variant. I had a similar idea, but for [human chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chess). The purpose was to make a chess-themed fun-event. Apart from people who stand as pieces, white and black have two councellors who decides which of their pieces move at their turn. The move itself is decided by the "piece".
Comments.UserDisplayName: Cyriac Antony
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-07-01T13:50:22.430Z
Comments.Text: Has anyone contacted Alexandra Kosteniuk regarding this? Evenif she doesn't know, she could point to a person who is more familiar with it.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Cyriac Antony
Tags: <history><chess-variants>
Title: What are the origins of Hand & Brain chess?
ThreadText: # What are the origins of Hand & Brain chess?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2021-05-09)
  
  I was recently leafing through Pritchard's *Encyclopedia of Chess Variants* when I noticed that the variant Hand and Brain which has recently become popular, in which one player states the piece to the moved ('Brain') and his partner then decides the move with that piece ('Hand'), is missing.
  
  It would be in Chapter 34 of the 2007 edition following Tandem/Alternation Chess, since Hand & Brain is the only other variant which uses 1 standard board, standard pieces, and standard rules, but permits team play.
  
  **What are the origins of Hand & Brain chess?** I'm interested to know what the earliest recorded mentions of the variant are by this name and also by any older historical name.
  
  N.B. The earliest mention I can find is on Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog dating to February 2013: <http://www.chessblog.com/2013/02/>. The name and rules already seem to tie up exactly with the variant we recognize today, suggesting that the variant was at least somewhat known by then.
  
  **Tags:** history, chess-variants
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Just an anecdotal data point without hard references, but I have definitely played it in college before 2010...  
  > **username_2**: It's not too complicated of a variant so it's perfectly possible that it appeared in several places independently  
  > **username_3**: I cn address about inspiration but people from perian Euro Chess community will start thrashing me..  
  > **username_4**: This question (most probably) cannot be answered  
  > **username_0**: @username_4 Presumably you'd say the same about Tandem Chess, but Pritchard was able to identify its history back to an 1875 journal. There's no reason to believe it's impossible to do similar for Hand & Brain  
  > **username_4**: Tandem chess is different, it is way more popular than hand&brain chess, plus hand and brain chess does not even show up in wikipedia  
  > **username_0**: By Tandem Chess I refer not to Bughouse but to Tandem/Alternation chess, which again I mentioned in my first post, where the players take turns moving (on the same board). Pritchard identified the origins of this variant. This is not mentioned on Wikipedia and I don't know that it is more popular than Hand & Brain.  
  > **username_0**: @RauanSagit It's a shame no-one has been able to answer properly in spite of your large bounties. I'll keep searching and maybe useful info will turn up at some point. It could be worth reaching out to a chess historian (unfortunately Pritchard himself has passed away) or to one of these GMs mentioned in these references (Alexandra Kosteniuk, Simon Williams, ...). Sometimes part of the search has to be done by word-of-mouth  
  > **username_5**: @MobeusZoom Interesting variant. I had a similar idea, but for [human chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chess). The purpose was to make a chess-themed fun-event. Apart from people who stand as pieces, white and black have two councellors who decides which of their pieces move at their turn. The move itself is decided by the "piece".  
  > **username_5**: Has anyone contacted Alexandra Kosteniuk regarding this? Evenif she doesn't know, she could point to a person who is more familiar with it.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 2 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2022-04-22. Score: 1
  
  A lot of online sources and videos online were from 2018-2021, as it was very popular then, so it is very tricky to find anything
  
  Some say hand and brain chess was inspired in really fun videos from Eric Hansen, Daniel Rensch and Anna Rudolf, but this it isn't that old [here](https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/play-hand-and-brain-chess-online-http-handandbrainchess-com), so I conclude that Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog is probably the earliest mention of Hand and Brain chess.
  
  I have searched for the exact phrase "hand and brain chess" and "hand and brain", but all 3950 of the results on google were quite recent, oldest found is the below link (2016)
  
  (Still looking at the moment)
  
  [Feb 2016 mentioning of Hand and Brain chess](https://matthewsadler.me.uk/attack/hand-and-brain/)
  
  [Reddit question of the origins](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/nophmr/the_origins_of_hand_brain_chess/)
  
  There *is* a possibility that Hand and brain chess is somehow related to [Team chess](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_chess), where the control over pieces on the board are shared among the teammates who are not allowed to communicate with each other during the play other than via valid moves.
  
  Another possibilty, but unlikely, is [Smess chess](https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/smess.html), where arrows on the board indicate where pieces should move. (This variant uses fairy pieces and a 8x7 board)
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: I'm not asking for a listing of all the mentions you can find online of Hand & Brain. I'm asking about the **origins** of the variant. It's obvious from Kosteniuk's blog that the variant was established by 2013 when she refers to it, likely well before, for the reasons I already explained in my post (clearly both the name and exact practice, which she refers to as a casual consensus, were well-established by the time of writing). For an example of what proper historical descriptions of the origins of variants look like, have a read through Pritchard's Classified Encyclopedia (free online).  
  > **username_6**: @username_4 Also, people downvote for many reasons. Maybe [Tim Post lost his keys again](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/288240/1088098). So, you shouldn't ask why someone downvote your question/answer.  
  > **username_4**: @MobeusZoom i modified my answer but Ill try to find more accurate origins (there is a high possibility that it cannot be found)  
  > **username_0**: @letmewinpls45 Just because people downvote randomly doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out for it. I don't really see why it should be acceptable (the justification for not making people explain their every vote on SE is that it's time-consuming, not that it's ok to not have a justification). I *never* downvote without good reason and was already typing mine when they asked for it.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_7 on 2022-04-21. Score: -1
  
  Looks like the idea is from [dice chess.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_chess)
  
  There are a lot of variations to this like using a 6-sided dice where pawn=1, knight=2, bishop=3, rook=4, queen=5, king=6. Or a 10-sided dice as in the [chess equalizer.](https://www.chessvariants.com/dice.dir/chessizer.html) It can be using a single die or 2 dice where if the result is 1 or 6 the player can play either a pawn or a king.
  
  In `Hand and Brain` the brain is another player but in dice chess the brain is the rolling of a die or dice.
  
  Here are some links of [chess with dice](https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?type=Any&category=Dice&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Chess+With+Dice) from chessvariant.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_8**: How does this answer the question **What are the origins of Hand & Brain chess?**?  Looks like doesn't mean it is. What proofs do you have?  
  > **username_7**: `Hand and Brain` is a new variant whereas `Dice chess` is older than it. The idea in `Hand and Brain` can be found in `Dice chess`.  
  > **username_0**: @username_7 There is no evidence that the (very abstract and somewhat tenuous) connection you draw between the ideas in Dice Chess and Hand & Brain inspired or gave rise to Hand & Brain; indeed it seems unlikely. (But in any case, it is substantive evidence we are looking for.)  
  > **username_7**: Dice chess has already existed before it, that is an evidence that `Hand and Brain` is a derivation from dice. If the inventor/discoverer of the `Hand and Brain` did not know about Dice Chess then fine. But the fact is the idea was already there. You mention origins in the subject, have a look on the meaning of origin at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/origin and https://www.dictionary.com/browse/origin  
  > **username_0**: @username_7 You could equally claim that 'Go has already existed before it, that is an evidence that Hand and Brain is a derivation from Go'. Suggesting that Dice Chess is so similar to Hand & Brain that we can confidently say the latter idea came from the former is laughable. In any case, the idea of 'one player picks pieces, the other one moves them' (a die is *not* a player: it is a move-by-nature) is what we want to know the origin of, as well as when it was first called 'Hand & Brain' etc. See Pritchard for what historical description of chess variant origins looks like  
  > **username_3**: mahabharat is inspiration  
  
  ---
  
  