Check Mate

 

Chess has a ginormous monster, a legend called Magnus Carlsen and there is another legend who blew off his top cracking the game as if it were a war - none other than Bobby Fischer. Of course there others like the magical Mikhail Tal and the refined Capablanca - my daughter's favourites. These are people who were fighters; who made up their own moves, who explore and explode the board with their limitless calculations and strategies. 

Then there are the others, those who learn chess like it were a set of algorithms, patterns that are limited to their theoretical understanding of openings, middle game strategies and end game finishers and maybe a couple of gambits and traps they pull out once in a while like snipers. These are our 'memory boxes' created in the likes of factory-manufactured products going in and coming out of mushrooming chess academies. They go to tournaments with calculated moves and if the counter move is different, they panic and are lost. 

There are 960 ways in which a chess board can be arranged; still, in classical chess, often promoted by the Federation Internationale Des Echecs (FIDE) - the International Chess Federation, there is only one way, the right way of setting the board. With the chess board set in the 'right' way, there is a possibility of anywhere between 1327 (recorded openings) to 3000 possible openings - giving a fair chance to memorize and replicate openings and counter defence based on successful moves previously played. When the chess pieces are randomized and set in 960 possible ways, the number of possible openings can be multiplied 3000 times 960 that makes the game unmemorizable, unpredictable and exciting. For Fischer and other legends, this unpredictability is what makes the game fun to play instead of matching algorithms with the opponent that they feel makes the game mechanical, tiring and (yawnnn!) boring. This has led to a clash between the conservatives and the radicals and at times the classical chess conservatives taking up the challenge to fight the liberal radicals of freestyle chess over the board only to run screaming the other way in panic and horror when they realize that their memory boxes are unable to think beyond the boxes and squares they have been trained to play within. Needless to say, Fischer must be smiling with ease (at least) now. 

Chess apart, this also figuratively showcases our parenting styles. Hands down I would agree that today's parents are more involved, concerned and evolved in parenting than our predecessors. However, do they pick the box of conservative and traditional parenting methods, suggestions and ideologies or are they exploring possibilities rather differently(?) Are we trapped within our own acquired knowledge or do we challenge the norms and give unpredictability a chance(?) Our kids may be ready for the mundane with trackable answers from the reserves of encyclopaedias... yet, are they ready for the unpredictable and unpardoning challenges in the discourse of life(?) 

Like chess, only time will tell who wins, who loses, who resigns and who berserks at the end of the game when a thin line is drawn between a checkmate and a stalemate. It's your move now...