Chess is imposing to the uninitiated. Most casual fans could spend their entire lives studying a library’s worth of chess theory, only to still be routinely humiliated by competitive players. Simply getting started is difficult, too. The basic rules require a decent amount of time to memorize before anyone can make their first moves, a hurdle that has stopped plenty of people from ever trying the game.
But what if there was a way to quickly improve your abilities without spending hours hunched over the board? If the mental strain that comes with learning chess isn’t enough, will some actual, physical pain do the trick? That’s what YouTuber Fletcher Heisler, aka Everything Is Hacked, wondered before embarking on the monthsong, tortuous journey of designing, building, and playing a custom chess set capable of delivering a Taser-like shock whenever it detects an error. As recently highlighted by Hackaday, the results are as fascinating as they are sometimes difficult to watch.
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