On my way into central London on the tube yesterday I looked up at a tube map and the name; ‘King’s Cross’ (and St Pancras), a stop on the London underground line, somehow brought up memories of Chess! I suddenly started to think of all those famous games of Chess which involved exciting ‘King hunts’.
Anyway, I pulled out this game from my Chess base archive. Considering the current rivalry between the two featured players, I’m not too sure Topalov will even want to remember this game! Heh heh.
Okay, for the first round of the faceoff, I’ll simply try and establish the basic rules/patterns of play for these two games. For the purpose of this, I assume two player participation in a standard Poker game (Hold ‘em, Texas style).
Chess: Two players on opposite sides of a game board. The board is a 64 squared check pattern with alternate light and dark squares. Each side starts with 16 Chess pieces, all of which have standard predefined moves. The aim is to achieve victory by utilizing your army of pieces to either capture your opponents most valuable piece (the King) or to force your opponent to submit (resign) in the face of inevitable (demonstrable) defeat.
Poker: Two players on opposite sides of a table. An independent dealer of cards as the intermediary. The dealer deals two cards each (face down to avoid the other seeing the cards) to the two adversaries and the standoff begins. Basically, if the game reaches it’s conclusion/judging point, the dealer would have dealt five extra cards (open/face up) in the center of the table in a series of three moves called; ‘the flop’ (three cards face up), ‘the turn’ (one card) and ‘the river’ (final card). At the end of the day, the player who can match his initial two cards (hole cards) with the open five cards to make the best hand (of a possible predetermined winning combinations of ‘poker hands’) eg; ‘three of a kind’, ‘full house’, ’straight flush’ etc, wins.
Now this is a simplistic overview of the two games but the immediate contrast point I’d like to point out is the ‘luck factor’. In Poker, you are only as good as the cards you are dealt (in the final analysis) whilst in Chess, there is nothing hidden. You either know it or you don’t.
I guess the next step is to examine the various strategies involved in these two games and see if we can find any similarities and differences to compare.
Ok, it’s time to step into the ring once again. I must warn, this battle is going to be a brutal, no-holds barred event. I shall take on all those irrelevant and aimless games/sports/activities/whatever out there, comparing them with the No. 1 (Chess) and I’ll prove that there is absolutely no contest at all.
Nota Bien: these views are from my perspective and as such, I will wield the ‘infinity’ tool in order to end any discussions/debate/feedback I deem as irrelevant. Bottom line for gamers out there; “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”.
Poker is being picked as the starting point because, for the life of me, I cannot imagine why an ‘almost totally dependent’ on ‘luck of the draw’ game is getting so much international coverage in the media and is even being touted as a ‘thinking man’s game’! What bulls**t. If Poker, Sudoku, Crosswords etc etc are ‘thinking man’s games’, then what is Chess? An activity for ‘higher lifeforms’?
It’s strange how some lines just stick in some part of your head and refuse to go away. Whenever V.I.K.I. (the A.I. computer control program from ‘I, Robot’) comes up with the line; “my logic is undeniable”, I always get goosebumps. For those of you guys that aren’t familiar with the movie adaptation of Asimov’s classic SF tale, the main gist is about computers (humanoid robots) taking over the world and sectioning humans in order to ‘protect’ them from their innate destructive tendencies. Whatever.
Another line that refuses to go away (in my head) is the one from ‘T3; Rise of the Machines’ where the trio of John Connor, Katherine Brewster and the ‘good Terminator’ (heh heh ) are driving off into the desert and Connor asks the terminator how ‘Judgement day’ could still be impending considering that in the prequel, his action mum (Sarah Connor) had managed to destroy the tools for creating the future (!). You’ve got to love movie plots Anyway, the Terminator replies; “nobody can stop Judgement day, we can only postpone it”. Powerful words.
Yeah, they’re just movies. But… what if? Nuff said.
You know, I just realized 2008 is the tenth year anniversary for several milestones in my ‘life in Chess’.
‘98 was the year I picked up my Olympiad Gold, achieved my International Master of Chess title and also threw away the chance to qualify for the ‘99 world Chess Championship event in Las Vegas! Ah well…
The ‘path to Olympic Gold’ final chapter will be up shortly but I guess I’ll indulge in some nostalgia by putting up three games from the ‘98 Zonal qualifier in Tanta, Egypt. The first two are really good games (in my humble opinion, of course ) and the third is the one that cost me (literally!) the chance to go to Vegas. Who knows, maybe I’d have won the world championship that year.
To me, this choice is an interesting trilemma (my own word) and it’s a direct follow up to the earlier post about ‘the man behind the mask’.
I will assume that Scylla is ‘the rock’; Charybdis is ‘the whirlpool’ (a hard place), and ‘the Void’ is emptiness, or in this case ‘the Fence’ (a refusal to take a side). In this three way scenario, with the extra thought that for all of us; ‘iacta alea est‘ (earlier post) then the identity of ‘them’ or ‘they’ becomes all the more important.
This verse from Lauryn Hill might explain what I’m trying to say: “I get mad frustrated when I rhyme/thinking of all the kids that try to do this/for all the wrong reasons/…”.
I feel the world needs ‘heroes and villains’, ‘chaos and order’, opposites, to exist. So assuming there is a general standard for ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, the choice of direction we take might be better digested if we knew who the ‘they’ are that exist on the opposite sides of the board.
There, I’ve done my ‘royal ramble’ for the month. Nuff said.
This is a question I’ve increasingly found myself asking nowadays. ‘They’. ‘Them’. These are figures of speech that are commonly used in everyday parlance but have you ever stopped to think about the deeper meaning of these simple words?
You want to perform a seemingly routine task in today’s technological world (eg, using an access card of sorts, or maybe just getting on a flight to hop across continents) and sometimes the question is asked; who is/are responsible for coordinating all these activities in this scientific marvel of a 21st century? Yes, as individuals we all play our parts, but obviously a mass of uncoordinated activity worldwide is negative/insufficient to the survival of the whole.
That’s when people answer questions about ‘who?’ and ‘how?’ with statements like; “oh, I’m sure they’ve worked it out”; “they’ve foolproof backup plans”; “they have some software that can solve that problem”.
Seems to me that trying to determine who the elusive ‘they’ and ‘them’ are would be like ‘waiting for Godot’. Ah well…, life goes on.
The final round game was quite interesting for several reasons. A few days ago I put up a post about ‘the elephant…’, anyway; the game was particularly important to me because of an incident from 7 (!) years ago. I lost by a walk-over default at a tournament in 2001 to my last round opponent and I saw this game as an opportunity to play the game that never took place! Talk about the memory of ‘an elephant’, I’m sure my opponent had completely forgotten about that game! Needless to say, I approached the game with a certain amount of determination and vigour which was rewarded by victory (7 years after ) and like I said earlier, enough prize winnings for a few pints at my local pub
The second and third round games were not really events, a ‘lucky’ win (sort of…) in the second game and a draw in the third (interesting game somewhat, but drawn).
The event was a five round weekender, that’s basically three games on Saturday and two on Sunday so to be in with a chance of winning a major share of the spoils from the event a score of 3.5/4 going into the final (5th) round game was more or less a must. The fourth game was quite interesting, filled with all sorts of central tension involving pieces and pawns but I eventually came out on top. Here’s the game.
I remember the conversation from several years ago, when I was still learning about the subtle intricacies of Chess; a young female Chess trainee asked a friend of mine:
“these Chess moves you’ve taught us, Pawn and Knight captures are called ‘forks’; do Bishops ‘fork’ also“?
to which he replied:
“well, I don’t think they (Bishops) ‘fork’; aren’t they supposed to be ‘holy men’…”?
Oh, and the one from the Turin Olympiad about the guy who was so confident about the ‘power’ of his central ‘Pawn thrusts’ that he started to sing: (to the tune of ‘the whisper song’ by the Ying Yang twins) “wait ’til you see my D… pawn/wait ’til you see my D…Pawn/…”
Anyway, the Terminator replies; “nobody can stop Judgement day, we can only postpone it”. Powerful words.