Wizard chess

As they say, life and chess have a lot of similarities. The main point is that chess can be applied in understanding life complexities. With this point of view, I would like to share an article that came out in the Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Although written by a very young lady, the article provides interesting ideas to ponder on. Please read . . .


Youngblood
"Wizard chess"
By Miraflor CastorPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 01:54:00 05/17/2008


If you’re familiar with Harry Potter, you would know wizard chess. It is actually the plain old chess game, with a twist: The pieces are destroyed once they’re “eaten” by the opponent.

I cannot help but compare wizard chess with today’s politics. Of course, politics requires a lot of strategy like chess. If you don’t strategize, you’ll definitely lose. Politicians think hard before making any move, that’s how it is supposed to be. They think hard how to project themselves in front of people. Say, the looks—should it be “pangmasa” like Erap (Joseph Estrada) and the Guy (Ramon Magsaysay). And there are lots of decisions that have to be made, all about strategy.

One wrong move and you could be checkmated by the opponent, and that’s what every player is waiting for, the other side’s wrong move.

Now, let’s take President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as an example. To be sure, the opposition has been waiting for her to make a wrong move. Let’s admit it, she’s been making a series of wrong moves these past years: Jose Pidal, “Hello, Garci,” Macapagal “Highway” robbery, and the ZTE national broadband network (NBN) deal, to name a few. Now, it appears that she’s prone to always put herself in trouble; this is what we call bad strategy on her part.

On the other hand, every time it looks like the opposition has the upper hand, the President seems to always counter with a Plan B, which enables her to stay in her position—and this has been so for quite a time.

In every set, the players must sacrifice some pieces—the rook so that they can check the opponent’s king, or the bishop so they can get into a position where they can eat the opposing queen. In politics, you’ll have to sacrifice the privacy you yearn for, the friend who doesn’t believe what you believe, the ordinary life you once have, and if worst comes to worst, your dignity and morality.

In chess, sometimes, you have to sacrifice one, two or all eight pawns so that a higher official can penetrate the opponents’ territory. That is very risky, but players do that just the same. In politics, the pawns may be the people rallying in the streets, the village council captains, campaign supporters, and so on. But there are times that higher officials—like the rook, bishop or the knight in chess—will also have to be sacrificed. Like the President did with Virgilio Garcillano, or Jose de Venecia, or Benjamin Abalos. Who knows what the next move is? We might yet be shocked by how this set ends.

The opposition also has made some sacrifices, and a recent major one is the ZTE-NBN deal whistleblower Jun Lozada. The opposition has put Lozada on the front line, a bait in this game. The other side has an option: to destroy Lozada, the opposition loses a knight but gains the upper hand in the game; or to keep on defending, putting up one defense after another until her other officials get to penetrate the opposition’s defenses for a checkmate.

In wizard chess, the contending players destroy each other’s pieces in a very brutal way. That is what makes it so much like today’s politics. Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and Jonas Burgos and other many activists are still missing, even as some have been found again—but dead. Many other political murders and disappearances have not really made it to the public consciousness.
In wizard chess, once a piece is destroyed, it is irretrievable. That’s worse than the “touch move” rule in chess. All that the players can do is to go on with the game, think a little more ahead than their opponent and strategize even more.

Now comes the exciting part, the twist. It is not the king that we need to trap or to checkmate, it is the queen. It is hard to trap the king because, although he only moves one square or tile at a time, he is surrounded by all the other pieces in the game. But even harder is to catch the queen because she literally has all the moves of the game. And so it is easy for her to escape the opponent’s traps. So it is difficult to checkmate her. And this makes the game a lot more challenging.

In the game of contemporary politics, many doubt if the opposition can win the set currently in play. The game has been playing for eight long years. The king is not really doing much but he is contributing his share of bad moves. But then again, who knows what is in the administration’s mind? Remember, the administration always has a Plan B.

Many pieces have been sacrificed, many bad moves have been made and the set is drawing to an end. Only few pieces are on the chessboard and both contestants are playing cautiously not to lose.

Sadly, there are no “16 moves” rule in this game, so no player can force a draw. It’s a win-or-lose game. It dictates that the game can end only when a winner emerges and the loser falls. So it must be that after blood has been shed and all strategies have been played, the queen either is off her throne (checkmated) or remains standing (winner).

Either way, a new set of wizard chess begins.

(Miraflor Castor, 18, is a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Development Communication, Batch 2007, University of the Philippines, Los Baños.)