Recently a video about a new game called Quantum Chess became popular. It shows Paul Rudd (Ant Man) and Stephen Hawking (Physics Guy), with Keanu Reeves as the narrator (forever lost in the matrix). The game is a variation of chess that allows its players to use the principles of the weird world of quantum mechanics in order to play a game of chess. However, as a physics major and a casual player of chess (aka: I suck but enjoy the game), I feel I need to mention a few things that could make this game far nerdier and much more confusing and maybe fun. Here is the video before we get started.
The game is available on Steam for $10
Superposition and Uncertainty
I do have to mention some of the aspects the game has added to the original game of chess that were pretty cool and quite accurately depicted. This being the use of superposition. Not only does it provide the capability of a particle (chess piece) to exist in more than one place at once, it allows a player to use that very uncertainty as a source of strategy. In Quantum Mechanics one can collapse the wave function in order to determine the position of said particle (chess piece) and here too one can do that.
Entanglement Is Not Tunneling
One thing the game did not get right however was that near the end Rudd said he used entanglement to go through the King and win the game. This is not true, quantum entanglement, by definition, is simply a connection between a pair of quantum particles that allows the energy applied to one to be manifested in the other, it's pretty weird when one thinks about it. Tunneling however is the process in which an alpha particle uses to escape its nucleus by becoming so excited that it can more through the nucleus and escape it, as if the nucleus was not there. So Rudd actually used tunneling to get this done, or another variation of uncertainty, teleportation or heck maybe a singularity with a wormhole could also be used. Lets make this game as confusing as possible.
Conservation of Energy
One addition I think would be cool, and be an interesting take on strategy is if they used conservation of energy. Now there are two ways of doing this. One would be to use a form of mana like in other video games. Where each quantum move uses a certain amount of mana (energy). Or we could use a stricter definition in a more closed system and have the pieces themselves be the source of energy (using the renown E=mc^2 conclusion). Basically in order to perform a quantum move you must sacrifice a pawn, or if out of pawns, a bishop or knight. This would create more strategy and make a more interesting game.
True Entanglement
If true quantum entanglement was used in this game, and energy became a thing, one could use the energy to create a collision or slip a queen into two bishops that are now entangled. Once entangled, the move of one bishop creates a mirror image move of the other bishop in the pair. This allows you to basically move two pieces at once in chess, which would be so cool, and annoying to other players. I think this use of entanglement is much more interesting.
