All Chess Pieces Matter

elautor (39)in #life • 7 years ago

After not playing for almost 5 years, I played chess with my homie last night after we recorded a podcast:

Chess, if you are not aware, has much philosophy that can be applied to our daily lives.

Actually, while we were playing I dug out a book on this very concept:

For example, sometimes in Life we need to focus only one piece/part of the board:

But other times, we need to able to see all the pieces/the whole board:

The balance of these two extremes, is how I try to live my life i.e. be able to focus specifically on tasks and also be able to look broadly at the landscape.

Chess is also about perspective and angles. Sometimes the best strategy requires being able to look (literally and figuratively) from different vantage points. Bird's Eye View is not always the best view. Sometimes you need to be on the ground level:

One of the most important lessons Chess teaches me is that all the pieces matter. Maybe not at every moment in the game, but there are times where strategically a Pawn can help you more than a Queen. In the first game we played last night, I was able to get a Pawn to the other side and get my Queen back, which changed the game in my favor. Only fools believe Pawns have no value.

Personally, my two favorite pieces are Pawns and Knights. Pawns because they are the underdogs in Chess and Knights because they move "weird" aka an L pattern (which no other piece can imitate). Also horses are the cool.