Calvinball!

In his comment to Mamacita's blog entry about him teaching his son Emmet to play chess, Papi Chulo writes:

I wouldn't say I taught him chess. I just clarified that whatever game it was he claimed to play and repeatedly defeat Miranda during game day at school was not chess. It was apparently Calvinball with chess pieces.

He has so far found chess to be excessively unfair in comparison to that game.

I had no idea what Calvinball was (although, knowing Emmet and other kids his age, I could guess), so I had to Google it. This page was the first one that popped up. There are a lot of rules to Calvinball, but the one that best captures its essence is Rule 1.2:

1.2 Any player may declare a new rule at any point in the game (Figure 1.2). The player may do this audibly or silently depending on what zone (Refer to Rule 1.5) the player is in.

Watching Emmet play Calvinball with chess pieces would have been amusing.