Inverse Golf

Inverse Golf (Golf+)
Andre Willers
12 Feb 2011

Synopsis :
The hole falls over the club and ball .
An ancient American game (circa 1050-1350 AD)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunkey

Discussion
See also http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Cahokia,Amazonia and the Black Death"

Chunkey is an exact inverse of golf , but seems to have been just as addictive .
An entire civilization was built around it .
Call it golf+

The Chunkey Game (Golf+) :
A circular ring (the hole) is rolled down a fairway . The club with attached balls (leather stubs in the case of Chunkey) is pushed , shoved or thrown after it .
Scoring is by which stub (ball) on the club is encircled by the ring when the ring finally falls over.
Minor points for closest .
Does this sound familiar ?

How on earth did this happen ?

Contamination does not seem likely at all . The inverse rules could not develop in isolation . You either have Golf or you have Chunkey .The only common element is a fairway .

Cahokia Centers (called cities) :
These can then be seen more as golf-clubs . Open to various degrees to various classes. Fair enough . But why is the game so addictive ?

Why does an inverse golf formed of over a thousand years ago have the same effect as golf ?
What other games like this are there ?

Addiction is not possible without some form of endorphin release . Endorphin happens in conflict situations . Solitary conflict can only happen against a memory system . Ie a handicap .

One can then predict that Chunkey had a handicap system . This also means that it was like poker: a combined skill and chance game , with skill predominating .
From general considerations , I would estimate that skill is 2/3 and chance 1/3 . This is sufficient to stimulate maximum endorphin release . See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "NewTools" Nov 2008 .

An inversion of the game would not change the handicap system . Hence both Golf and Chunkey are addictive .

But Chunkey(golf+) is more addictive .
In golf , the hole is static , the club and ball under player's control .
In Chunkey , the hole is dynamic , and the club-ball tied .

But a rotating ring has more degrees of freedom than a rotating ball .
(falling over the "ball" , instead of ball falling into a hole)
This gives the player the illusion of more control .

Much more addictive , especially playing against a handicap . Ie solitary games .
We can deduce that Cahokia plazas were usually filled with solitary players trying to better their handicap .

Commercial considerations .
The Chunkey fairway can be much shorter than the Golf fairway (probably why that form evolved in a irrigation farm area . Space was at a premium . )
The same today .
Any Putt-putt course or bowling course can be converted to a Chunkey course . Being more addictive than golf , it should be popular as golf+ .

Green , too .

And the Golf Pro's ?
They would be the first to be hooked .
Chunkey (call it golf+) would be an expansion , not competition . Most people cannot afford the pleasures of golf addiction . But they can with golf+ .

As they say in Hawaii
A haole in one .

Andre

Ps :
You can systematically invert the rules of other addictive games and see if there are endorphin releases invariant to the rule-inversions .
Soccer gives some fascinating results .

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