Chess King Quotes

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

Now that number was gone, covered up by the jet-black image of a chess piece. Neil's knowledge of chess was hazy at best, but he knew for sure that wasn't a king. "You did it," Neil said, too stunned to manage anything else. "Let Riko be King," Kevin said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the thoroughly sloshed. "Most coveted, most protected. He'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me?" Kevin gestured again, meaning to indicate himself but too drunk to get his hand higher than his waist. "I'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board." "Queen," Andrew said somewhere behind Neil.

Those who don’t play chess think the king is the strongest piece because the game ends when he dies, but they don’t stop to think that if the queen dies first, the king doesn’t have a chance to survive.

He hated games they made the world look too simple. Chess, in particular, had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the king lounged about doing nothing. If only the pawns would've united ... the whole board could've been a republic in about a dozen moves.

Life is more than just chess. Though king dies, life goes on.

It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.

When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right

Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.

He raises an eyebrow. “You play chess.” “How do you know that?” “Those who don’t play think that the king is the most important piece because the game is over when he dies. They don’t know that the king is useless without his queen.

It is the mark of a fine chess player to tip over his own king when he sees that defeat is inevitable, no matter how many moves remain in the game.

Pawns are such fascinating pieces, too...So small, almost insignificant, and yet--they can depose kings. Don't you find that interesting?

Remy you're my king." I hug him hard. "There's no chess game for me without you.

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

Those who don’t play chess think the king is the strongest piece, because the game ends when he dies, but they don’t stop to think that if the queen dies first, the king doesn’t have a chance to survive.

Like looking down on a lubricious chess set, isn't it? The king moves in tiny steps, with no direction, like a drunkard trying to avoid the archer's bolt. The others work their strategies and wait for the old man to fall. He has no power, yet all power moves in his orbit and to his mad whim. Do you know there's no fool piece on the chessboard, Kent?" "Methinks the fool is the player, the mind above the moves.

I think about a deserted chessboard. Only the white king on it, standing on the home square. Alone, untethered, safe from threats. Free to roam.

The king was a strong piece, of course. The most important chess piece and the most vulnerable to attack. But the queen...the queen was the most powerful chess piece. More powerful than the king. And the queen could move any way she wanted...

Beer bottles, whiskey bottles, brown glass, green. They fell to the lawn and I'd feel serene. Adam was king to my stilted queen.

Who the hell let you animals into my office? I'll have you know I was playing a VERY unimportant game of chess right now with a man that kept saying "King me.

When you ask what are electrons and protons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave, how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to the game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what chessman is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessman has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game os chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen.

Chess is all about maintaining coherent strategies. It’s about not giving up when the enemy destroys one plan but to immediately come up with the next. A game isn’t won and lost at the point when the king is finally cornered. The game's sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all. When his soldiers are all scattered, they have no common cause, and they move one piece at a time, that’s when you’ve lost.

Relationships are chess for women," he said. "They can see the whole board, plan way ahead. They're the queens, after all. We're the kings, limited to one square in any direction, on defense for the whole fucking game.

And so the argument was begun, progressing more in the silences than in the speeches, like a chess game played by mail.

You must not have played chess in a while. The king is the weakest piece in the game.” He gave Justin a level look. “The queen’s the strongest.

Don't fight over dead Kings and Queens. The Kings never fought for you.

Celebrating the Queen! Chess tells you that the king can't do anything alone 8 March International Women's Day शतरंज बताती है राजा अकेला कुछ नहीं कर सकता है

symphaths treated everything like a chess match—right down to the moment they captured your king, turned your queen into a whore, and burned down your castles.

Once the game is over,’ ” he says, “ ‘the king and the pawn go back in the same box.’ ” “In life and death we are equal.

Some guys live in worlds where pawns stay pawns. I'm one move from king.

We call Chess the game of Kings, because through chess, we learn how to rule kings

In chess, without the king, the other pieces would all be "dead", so their existance is supported by the king, but they need to serve the king with their capacity for action in order to have a good game.

I think it was a game to both of you, a real life chess game. Every move you made he countered. In order to get his king, you sacrificed your queen, a bold move. One I believe will work. But at what cost?

You need to realise something if you are ever to succeed at chess,’ she said, as if Nora had nothing bigger to think about. ‘And the thing you need to realise is this: the game is never over until it is over. It isn’t over if there is a single pawn still on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game. And even if you were a pawn – maybe we all are – then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn’t. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.' Mrs. Elm

You might not see it now, but you are stronger than you can ever imagine. You cannot become comfortable in your pain. You have to let the pain that you feel turn you into a rose without thorns. There are sixteen pieces on the chess board. The king is the most important piece, but the difference is that the queen is the most powerful piece! You are a queen, you can maneuver around your opponents; they do not have the power over your life, your mind or soul. You might think you’ve been a prisoner, but that is your past’ Look in the now and work your way to how you want your future to be. Exercise your thoughts into a pattern of letting go, and think positively about more of what you want than what you do not want. Queen! You are a queen! As a matter of fact, you are the queen! Act as if you know it! You are powerful, determined, strong, and you can make the biggest and most extravagant move and put it into action. Lights, camera, strike a pose and own it! It is yours to own!

Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks round, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves.

On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end...

The rules of chess were very simple: while it was true that the king was the most important piece in the game, he was also the weakest. The queen was the most powerful, and you best not forget that if you wanted to get ahead in life.

The stupid, useless, good-for-nothing king. Can barely move one square, scurries into hiding behind the rook, and he's so, so easy to corner. A fraction of the queen's power, that's what he has. He is nothing, absolutely nothing, without his kingdom.

One day, he said that what you had to do in any adversarial situation was to kill the king, as in chess. I said people didn't have kings any more. He said he meant the centre of power, but today it wouldn't be a single person, it would be the technological connections.

Sometimes we play Chess in the game of Life..Never sacrifice your QUEEN or KING...

Another time, he was playing [chess] with his equal, the Duchess of Bourbon, who made a move that inadvertently exposed her king. Ignoring the rules of the game, he promptly captured it. "Ah," said the duchess, "we do not take Kings so." Replied Franklin in a famous quip: "We do in America.

We are merely a pawn in a chess game played by the nations of the world. Should we not be a bigger, more important piece in the game? Are we not all capable of playing the part of the king or queen?

Life is short, precious, and should not be wasted. Everyone has a chance at it. We’re equals after all. There are no pawns, no kings, and no queens. We’re all humans and we all have the same value.

The game is never over until it is over. It isn't over if there is a single pawn left on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game.

I play chess on my iPhone, and indulge in a fond fantasy that my opponent isn't a mind of digital code but Dad: It's Dad's attacks I repel; Dad's defenses I dismantle; Dad's king scurrying around the board to prolong the inevitable.

How gorgeous this chess set is.' Each piece was a delicate marble fantasy of medieval warfare. The paint had long ago worn off, except for faint touches of red, in the fury of the king's eyes, on the queen's lower lip, in the bishop's robe.

Remy took a chair across from Jerado. A chess board and pieces sat in between them. “Are you sure you remember the moves?” Jerado looked forward to recouping his card game losses. “Y ..es. I . . . I practiced the moves in my office. I . . . I also read a scroll on playing the game.” “Then you won’t object to betting on the outcome of the game?” “N . . . o. H . . . ow much?” “Let’s bet a modest sum. Say, twenty-five silver?” Jerado pushed a stack of silver pennies into the middle. “A . . . ll right.” Remy pushed a similar stack forward. “I’’ll let you have the first move,” Jerado said. Remy moved a pawn forward to start the game. Five moves later, Remy said, “C . . . heckmate,” and scooped up the silver coins. Jerado sat stunned for a few moments. “Rematch.” After Remy won four more games — the last for seven gold pennies — Jerado said through clenched teeth, “That’s enough for tonight, Remy. I’m tired.

A deep laugh stirred in his chest, and his thumb brushed over the backs of her fingers before he withdrew his hand. She felt the rasp of a callus on his thumb, the sensation not unlike the tingling scrape of a cat’s tongue. Bemused by her own response to him, Annabelle looked down at the chess piece in her hand. “That is the queen—the most powerful piece on the board. She can move in any direction, and go as far as she wishes.” There was nothing overtly suggestive in his manner of speaking …but when he spoke softly, as he was doing at that moment, there was a husky depth in his voice that made her toes curl inside her slippers. “More powerful than the king?” she asked. “Yes. The king can only move one square at a time. But the king is the most important piece.” “Why is he more important than the queen if he’s not the most powerful?” “Because once he is captured, the game is over.

This was my dad, for gosh sakes! After not seeing him for two years, I had finally found him-in another dimension playing chess with a ghost! How was I supposed to calm down?

Fighting was chess, anticipating the move of one's opponent and countering it before one got hit.

In a game of chess, it is expedient to sacrifice your queen to capture your opponent's king.

The queen is the most powerful piece,' he hissed. 'Don't let the powns bring you down.' I wanted to ask him if he was my king. Because I knew how to play chess very well.

We call chess the game of kings because, through chess, we learn how to rule kings.

I prefer that I stay a free person to do what I want to do within the moral values than like the Chess-King escapes every time, from the Check-Mate to protect just himself using the cost of others.

O famous Moon, shine on me. A ray of your light would turn my world into a rosegarden. Now I will move in silence, Like a chess piece, Watching as my whole life revolves around the position of my King.

Tis useful nonetheless, now and then, to regard Politics here, as the greater American Question in Miniature,— in the way that Chess represents war,— with Governor Penn a game-piece in the form of the King.

What’s football?” he asked. “It’s chess. Tackle chess. And what’s the quarterback? He’s the king. Take him out, you win the game. So that was our philosophy. We’re going to hit that quarterback ten times. We do that, he’s gone. I hit him late? Fine. Penalize me. But it’s like in those courtroom movies, when the lawyer says the wrong thing and the judge tells the jury to disregard it, but you can’t unhear and the quarterback can’t be unhit.

Because it was chess now, and in chess you never lived in the move you were about to make, or even the next one. Three moves ahead, that was the rule. And three alternates to each of those, depending on what your opponent did.

In honor of – Every thought, Every wish, Every dream That keeps us sane In the madness of this reality That makes us seek The other, The different, The better – the magic…. So we don’t lose our ever-loving minds. “Chess is a fairytale….” – Savielly Tartakower

How can we tell whether the rules which we "guess" at are really right if we cannot analyze the game very well? There are, roughly speaking, three ways. First, there may be situations where nature has arranged, or we arrange nature, to be simple and to have so few parts that we can predict exactly what will happen, and thus we can check how our rules work. (In one corner of the board there may be only a few chess pieces at work, and that we can figure out exactly.) A second good way to check rules is in terms of less specific rules derived from them. For example, the rule on the move of a bishop on a chessboard is that it moves only on the diagonal. One can deduce, no matter how many moves may be made, that a certain bishop will always be on a red square. So, without being able to follow the details, we can always check our idea about the bishop's motion by finding out whether it is always on a red square. Of course it will be, for a long time, until all of a sudden we find that it is on a black square (what happened of course, is that in the meantime it was captured, another pawn crossed for queening, and it turned into a bishop on a black square). That is the way it is in physics. For a long time we will have a rule that works excellently in an over-all way, even when we cannot follow the details, and then some time we may discover a new rule. From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are of course in the new places, the places where the rules do not work—not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules. The third way to tell whether our ideas are right is relatively crude but prob-ably the most powerful of them all. That is, by rough approximation. While we may not be able to tell why Alekhine moves this particular piece, perhaps we can roughly understand that he is gathering his pieces around the king to protect it, more or less, since that is the sensible thing to do in the circumstances. In the same way, we can often understand nature, more or less, without being able to see what every little piece is doing, in terms of our understanding of the game.

You gave me a choice the day you left, to play coward or be king.” He releases me, pulling a chess piece from his pocket and places it in my palm. “And you were right, you’ve always had the heart of a queen, but you have to know, earning your love will be the only thing that will make me a king.

It's usually the father who teaches the child his first moves in the game. And the dream of any son who plays chess is to beat his father. To kill the king. Besides, it soon becomes evident in chess that the father, or the king, is the weakest piece on the board. He's under continual act, in constant need of protection, of such tactics as castling, and he can only move one square at a time. Paradoxically, the king is also indispensable. The king gives the game its name, since the word 'chess' derives from the Persian word shah meaning king, and is pretty much the same in most languages.

Some philosophical research projects — or problematics, to speak with the more literary types — are rather like working out the truths of chess. A set of mutually agreed-upon rules are presupposed — and seldom discussed — and the implications of those rules are worked out, articulated, debated, refined. So far, so good. Chess is a deep and important human artifact, about which much of value has been written. But some philosophical research projects are more like working out the truths of chmess. Chmess is just like chess except that the king can move two squares in any direction, not one. I just invented it. … There are just as many a priori truths of chmess as there are of chess (an infinity), and they are just as hard to discover. And that means that if people actually did get involved in investigating the truths of chmess, they would make mistakes, which would need to be corrected, and this opens up a whole new field of a priori investigation, the higher-order truths of chmess … Now none of this is child’s play. In fact, one might be able to demonstrate considerable brilliance in the group activity of working out the higher-order truths of chmess. Here is where psychologist Donald Hebb’s dictum comes in handy: If it isn’t worth doing, it isn’t worth doing well.

For the first few moves, you were planning ahead, I could see that. You actually had a strategy then. But as soon as I broke that down, you gave up, you began playing one move at a time. Don’t you remember what I always used to tell you? Chess is all about maintaining coherent strategies. It’s about not giving up when the enemy destroys one plan, but to immediately come up with the next. A game isn’t won and lost at the point when the king is finally cornered. The game’s sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all. When his soldiers are all scattered, they have no common cause, and they move one piece at a time, that’s when you’ve lost.

You need to realise something if you are ever to succeed at chess,’ she said, as if Nora had nothing bigger to think about. ‘And the thing you need to realise is this: the game is never over until it is over. It isn’t over if there is a single pawn still on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game. And even if you were a pawn – maybe we all are – then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn’t. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.

The absence of authority in the face of obscene criminality prompts delusions, peddled by propagandists and true believers alike, that noble actors are fighting the good fight but Must Keep Silent for Reasons You Will Understand in Time. In order for this delusion to hold, the sound of their silence must drown out the evidence heard with your own ears. They are dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, the cult of the savior state bleats, they are playing 3-D chess, they are reeling in the big fish, they are aiming for the king so they best not miss, they can’t show their cards without ruining their hand, they’re getting all their ducks in a row, the dam is breaking, the storm is here, they’ve got this, be patient, be quiet, relax, trust the plan.

The queen is the most powerful piece,' he hissed. 'Don't let the pawns bring you down.' I wanted to ask him if he was my king. Because I knew how to play chess very well. But the answer was crystal clear to me. Roman 'Bane' Protsenko was my knight. The piece of the chess that needed to be moved sooner than the pawns, the bishops, and the queens. The piece that could have saved me.

The pieces are connected to each other and the King and they are in this dynamic rhythm amongst themselves and with the opponent’s pieces, wherein lies their purpose. Each move is an attempt to change that balance and to establish a new, more favorable balance and that is why in chess (and in life) we are most vulnerable when we are most aggressive—the aggressive move essentially causes us to lose balance.

And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new; mechanical in structure, yet made effective only by the imagination; limited to a geometrically fixed space, yet with unlimited combinations; constantly developing, yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere; mathematics calculating nothing; art without works of art; architecture without substance – but nonetheless shown to be more durable in its entity and existence than all books and works of art; the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, although no one knows what god brought it down to earth to vanquish boredom, sharpen the senses and stretch the mind. Where does it begin and where does it end? Every child can learn its basic rules, every bungler can try his luck at it, yet within that immutable little square it is able to bring forth a particular species of masters who cannot be compared to anyone else, people with a gift solely designed for chess, geniuses in their specific field who unite vision, patience and technique in just the same proportions as do mathematicians, poets, musicians, but in different stratifications and combinations. In the old days of the enthusiasm for physiognomy, a physician like Gall might perhaps have dissected a chess champion’s brain to find out whether some particular twist or turn in the grey matter, a kind of chess muscle or chess bump, is more developed in such chess geniuses than in the skulls of other mortals. And how intrigued such a physiognomist would have been by the case of Czentovic, where that specific genius appeared in a setting of absolute intellectual lethargy, like a single vein of gold in a hundredweight of dull stone. In principle, I had always realized that such a unique, brilliant game must create its own matadors, but how difficult and indeed impossible it is to imagine the life of an intellectually active human being whose world is reduced entirely to the narrow one-way traffic between black and white, who seeks the triumphs of his life in the mere movement to and fro, forward and back of thirty-two chessmen, someone to whom a new opening, moving knight rather than pawn, is a great deed, and his little corner of immortality is tucked away in a book about chess – a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract, let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

They played chess and Frank won. John laughed. How stupid, he said. What do you mean? Games don’t mean anything. Are you sure? Sometimes life seems like a kind of game to me. John shook his head. In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing. You could put your bishop out there to mate the other guy’s king, and he could lean down and whisper in your bishop’s ear, and suddenly it’s playing for him, and moving like a rook. And you’re fucked.

The combinatorial explosion was first recognized with the legend that the inventor of chess demanded as payment one grain of rice for the first square of the board, and twice as much for the (i + 1)st square than the ith square. The king was astonished to learn he had to cough up 6412'=265-1=36,893,488,147,419,103,231 grains of rice. In beheading the inventor, the wise king first established pruning as a technique for dealing with the combinatorial explosion.

The prohibition on promoting a pawn to a queen while the original queen was still on the board was an attempt to preserve the uniqueness of the king’s wife, his only permissible conjugal mate according to Christian doctrine. The Arabic game did not have to face that problem because a Muslim ruler could theoretically have as many viziers as he wanted. The idea of multiple queens on the chessboard proved so anxiety-making for Europeans that it remained a subject of contention for centuries to come.

[Kidman] made life a fascinating game of chess. The board was Australia; the pieces were station managers, land, drovers, stockmen, bore contractors, tank-sinkers, water conservers, money, energy, thought, organization, markets, transport, distances, stock routes, water, grass, cattle, sheep, horses and camels. His opponent was drought, now slowly allying itself with erosion. It was a wonderful fight, lasting sixty-five years. Eventually the man won all along the line, though still fighting at the end.

The Offing - And if the sky itself, no matter its hue, were to fracture... What then? Would I then know freedom's name? In my wake lies the shore—a past where I had been happy—refusing to yield to the tide. Before me, upon the horizon, is the sun... hesitant... inert... A new day cannot rise if its ancestor does not fall. Am I but a pawn in this game? I cannot command the sun to set, nor will the moon to take its place and wash the shore away. That power belongs to kings. To drown in the offing. Such sovereign beauty. Such exquisite pain.

The Montreux Palace Hotel was built in an age when it was thought that things would last. It is on the very shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva, its balconies and iron railings look across the water, its yellow-ocher awnings are a touch of color in the winter light. It is like a great sanitarium or museum. There are Bechstein pianos in the public rooms, a private silver collection, a Salon de Bridge. This is the hotel where the novelist Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and his wife, Véra, live. They have been here for 14 years. One imagines his large and brooding reflection in the polished glass of bookcases near the reception desk where there are bound volumes of the Illustrated London News from the year 1849 to 1887, copies of Great Expectations, The Chess Games of Greco and a book called Things Past, by the Duchess of Sermoneta. Though old, the hotel is marvelously kept up and, in certain portions, even modernized. Its business now is mainly conventions and, in the summer, tours, but there is still a thin migration of old clients, ancient couples and remnants of families who ask for certain rooms when they come and sometimes certain maids. For Nabokov, a man who rode as a child on the great European express trains, who had private tutors, estates, and inherited millions which disappeared in the Russian revolution, this is a return to his sources. It is a place to retire to, with Visconti's Mahler and the long-dead figures of La Belle Epoque, Edward VII, d'Annunzio, the munitions kings, where all stroll by the lake and play miniature golf, home at last.

If one reads attentively, Wittgenstein writes as much in one of the rare pas- sages in which he makes use (in English) of the term “to constitute” with respect to the rules of chess: What idea do we have of the king of chess, and what is its relation to the rules of chess? . . . Do these rules follow from the idea? No, the rules are not something contained in the idea and got by analyzing it. They constitute it. . . . The rules constitute the “freedom” of the pieces. (Wittgenstein 5, p. 86) Rules are not separable into something like an idea or a concept of the king (the king is the piece that is moved according to this or that rule): they are immanent to the movements of the king; they express the autoconstitution process of their game. In the autoconstitution of a form of life what is in question is its freedom.

Chess I In their solemn corner, the players move The slow pieces. The board detains them Until the dawn in its severe world In which two colors hate each other. Within the forms irradiate magic Strictness: Homeric rook, swift Knight, armed queen, hintermost king, Oblique bishop and aggressor pawns. Once the players have finally left, Once time has devoured them, Surely the ritual will not have ended. In the orient this very war flared up Whose amphitheater today is the earth entire. Like the other, this game is infinite. II Weakling king, slanting bishop, relentless Queen, direct rook and cunning pawn Seek and wage their armed battle Across the black and white of the field. They know not that the players' notorious Hand governs their destiny, They know not that a rigor adamantine Subjects their will and rules their day. The player also is a prisoner (The saying is Omar's) of another board Of black nights and of white days. God moves the player, and he, the piece. Which god behind God begets the plot Of dust and time and dream and agonies?

When discussing the topic of substance abuse with kids, I explain that doing drugs in order to be high and happy means that people try to support being by doing. However, being is “bigger” than doing. I validate that people who use substances know on some level that they need to take care of their being but they have the order reversed because doing can never support being simply because the “smaller” thing can never support the “bigger” thing. It is as absurd as trying to support silence by increasing the noise. The right order of things is that being supports doing and doing needs to serve being. In chess, without the King, the other pieces would all be “dead”, so their existence is supported by the King, but they need to serve the King with their capacity for action in order to have a good game. But how do we begin to honor being if we are emotionally distressed or chemically dependent? We need to accept whatever facet of being we are going through—if we are sad, we need to experience our sadness and not run from it; if we are angry, we need to go through it without acting heedlessly; if we are scared, we have to pay attention to our fear and the reasons for it. Everything we go through is a message of being, and we need to decipher the message rather than run from it. I need to stress here the importance of learning to endure distress and let our emotions run their course without making a bad situation worse. The addicted brain needs to endure strong cravings for several years until the chemically reinforced neural pathways gradually subside in the absence of continued reinforcement. Here the words of the great poet and spiritual teacher Rumi come to mind: “Of all the cures God has provided, patience is the best.

In looking for a vocabulary for this quest for authenticity, I found psychoanalysts more helpful than lawyers. The object-relations theorist D. W. Winnicott makes a distinction between a True Self and a False Self that usefully tracks the distinction between the uncovered and covered selves. The True Self is the self that gives an individual the feeling of being real, which is “more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself, and to relate to objects as oneself, and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation.” The True Self is associated with human spontaneity and authenticity: “Only the True Self can be creative and only the True Self can feel real.” The False Self, in contrast, gives an individual a sense of being unreal, a sense of futility. It mediates the relationship between the True Self and the world. What I love about Winnicott is that he does not demonize the False Self. To the contrary, Winnicott believes the False Self protects the True Self: “The False Self has one positive and very important function: to hide the True Self, which it does by compliance with environmental demands.” Like a king castling behind a rook in chess, the more valuable but less powerful piece retreats behind the less valuable but more powerful one. Because the relationship between the True Self and the False Self is symbiotic, Winnicott believes both selves will exist even in the healthy individual. Nonetheless, Winnicott defines health according to the degree of ascendancy the True Self gains over the False one. At the negative extreme, the False Self completely obscures the True Self, perhaps even from the individual herself. In a less extreme case, the False Self permits the True Self “a secret life.” The individual approaches health only when the False Self has “as its main concern a search for conditions which will make it possible for the True Self to come into its own.” Finally, in the healthy individual, the False Self is reduced to a “polite and mannered social attitude,” a tool available to the fully realized True Self.

Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it. The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books. Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked. Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.

Let Anyone be the King, Make that person realise You're playing The Chess.

The king of chess YouTubers? One fairly average Croatian player named Antonio Radic, otherwise known by his screen name, agadmator. He has 407,000 subscribers. Not views. Subscribers.

You need to realise something if you are ever to succeed at chess,’ she said, as if Nora had nothing bigger to think about. ‘And the thing you need to realise is this: the game is never over until it is over. It isn’t over if there is a single pawn still on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game. And even if you were a pawn – maybe we all are – then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn’t. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to

Hanging pieces are like low-hanging fruit, tempting and easy to pick.

This isn't chess," he said oddly. "In my world, the King always protects his Queen.

I love [chess]. Apart from anything else, it is agreeable to my sentiments as a citizen of a republic, since it always ends with the discomfiture of a king.

There is profound meaning in the game of chess. The board itself is life and death, painted as such in black and white. The pieces are those that make a life fundamentally healthy. The pawns are attributes we gather with nourishment and significance. The knight is our ability to be mobile and travel in whatever form it takes. The rook or castle is a place we can call home and protect ourselves from the elements. The bishop is that of our community and our belonging. The king is our mortal body; without it, we can no longer play the game. The queen is the spirit of the body - what drives our imagination, urges, a life force. A captured queen removes energy from the game, and the player may become complacent. A crowning reminder of the game is that the spirit can be possessed again through our attributes.

chess.’ ‘How so?’ John picked up a pawn. ‘I’m one of these, trying to cross the board—only my board is the ocean—and I’m trying to protect myself from being taken out of the game.’ ‘I see what you mean.’ Jed’s thoughts drifted to John Billington. ‘And I’m in danger of becoming a king in checkmate.

Life is like a game of chess. Either be a KING or used as a pawn

You show your vulnerability; you become vulnerable. You show your weaknesses; you become weak. You tell your secret; you become exposed. In the game of chess, guard your king while you still can. Else... CHECKMATE✅

Those who don't play chess think the king is the strongest piece, because the game ends when he dies, but they don't stop to think that if the queen dies first, the king doesn't have a chance to survive.

I’ve been playing chess since I was four years old. I’m not tired of it yet.” “So I’m a game to you?” It’s not an accusation; it’s a clarification. “No, not a game. You’re the one.” “Which one?” “The only one in the world.” He slips his fingers down my shin and brushes lightly across the top of my foot, the merest dusting of a touch, as if I’m dangerously delicate, liable to crumble with any pressure at all. “Everyone else is a piece. A pawn, a knight, a king. Not you.” I snort softly. “Let me guess. I’m the queen?” “Nope. You’re the one on the other side of the board.” And then his eyes take on a wicked glint.

He’d set up his board on a chair next to his bed, and the last thing he did before going to sleep and the first thing he did upon awakening was to look at positions or openings. So many peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, bowls of cereal, and plates of spaghetti were consumed while Bobby was replaying and analyzing games that the crumbs and leavings of his food became encrusted in the crenellated battlements of his rooks, the crosses of his kings, the crowns of his queens, and the creases in the miters of his bishops. And the residue of food was never washed off. Years later, when a chess collector finally took possession of the littered set and cleaned it up, Bobby’s reaction was typically indignant: “You’ve ruined it!

This was but a game of chess. A game of wills and control and power. And King Gelum may have been the king but kings were the weakest piece on the board. Nothing more than a figurehead. One that craved power,

Two chess pieces—the king and queen—stood together, the king slightly taller and positioned behind the queen enough to highlight her prominence. A thorny vine of roses in full bloom dramatically circled the two, uniting and protecting. And the final touch, a perfect rendition of her engagement ring dangling from one of the vines.

You play chess. Surely you know the many uses of a pawn.” I flinch because I know exactly what I am to him. It’s my role in this game: to fall when the time is right, to protect the king until I’ve run out of time. To sacrifice myself at the perfect turn.

Their frats were even named after chess pieces: Kings for the Italian faction, Knights for the Russians, Castle house for the Irish, and Bishops for the cartel families, although I’d heard everyone called them the Saints.

Zee had only grinned at me when I was valuable to her. I'd go on to tangle with other bosses and authority figures, and that dynamic never changed. Affection never outlasted need. This was the first lesson the city taught me the hard way. The vast majority of us are merely pawns in someone else's game. Don't get defensive over this point. Embrace it. Once you do, you can begin to manipulate the board. Positioned correctly, pawns can checkmate kings.

That’s chess!” snapped Ron. “You’ve got to make some sacrifices! I’ll make my move and she’ll take me — that leaves you free to checkmate the king, Harry!