Chess Thoughts

I’m not particularly good at chess, although I’ve been playing it occasionally, to the point of joining chess clubs during my university years. The intense atmosphere that was sometimes present during chess games was thrilling. And I remember having fun moving oversized and glossy plastic pieces over cheap sheets of plastic that made up the chessboards.

Maneuvering the pieces requires a lot of care and attention on the player’s part. The idea is that you have to corral your pieces together so that they become a fully functional and working unit. But they could only move in certain directions and certain ways, so doing the above was like reading a roadmap at times. There were also arbitrary rules that one had to remember, such as when to castle, the en passant rule, and the stalemate rule.

The types of pieces on the chessboard were also important. You had knights that were shaped like horses. They moved in rather odd ways, but they were very powerful and could be unpredictable in their movements. Being short-ranged pieces, they could splinter the opposing army and provide critical reinforcements to your pieces.

There were also bishops that were donned with the headgear found on actual catholic bishops. As long-range pieces, they reinforced your army when you went in for a decisive attack. However, it is not easy to properly position these pieces and maximize their attacking potential.

And there were the rest of the pieces, with varying functionalities and purposes, such as the queen, the most powerful piece on the board, the rook that functions as a defensive resource, the pawns that represent the foot-soldiers, and the king that was the piece that had to be protected at all times.

The arrangements and configurations of the pieces were important, and people spent years playing games to fully utilize the resulting patterns. Sometimes, the formation of the pawns could make or break your game. At other times, knowing when to attack the opposing army could change the tide of the game, particularly when the opposing side’s king was vulnerable.

Like many large board games, this game comes in phases (the opening, middle, and endgame). A lot of memorization is needed to reach the higher heights of this game, especially nowadays, with games being deeply influenced by computer analysis. And to be a good player, being able to visualize and calculate with the pieces is also very necessary.

Sometimes, when looking at this game, I feel like I am looking at a snow globe. Within the globe is a liquid, and when shaken, small pieces of plastic float around, recreating the effect of a snowy day. The chess board is a little like that. It has sixty-four squares arranged into a grid. Given that this grid is limited in size— there are only so many squares to place your pieces on—the board reminds me of a snow globe ornament.

You could get lost playing games in that dimension, within this snow globe-like board, and with all of its idiosyncrasies. Thinking about this takes me back to the university chess clubs I went to, where I heard the clacking of chess pieces and played all those stimulating games.