Skip to main content

Life is like Chess

All images AI-generated


When Gukesh Dommaraju became the Chess Grandmaster at the age of 18, I was reminded of my personal passion for the game as a young boy. I learnt the game when I was ten years or so and I was so passionate about it that I picked up a book by none less than Bobby Fischer, the most famous chess champion of the time, to learn master strategies. I lacked the commitment of Gukesh, however, and hence didn’t become any champion. But I loved playing the game in those days. I loved the strategic moves it demands. The game is like life in many ways. I failed to learn the strategies of a successful life, however. That’s a different matter. You can be a loser in practical life in spite of knowing a lot of theoretic strategies.

As we are moving on to a New Year, I am tempted to make a comparison between chess and life, though I failed to convert the theories to practice. Never mind my personal failures. My life has reached its autumn, and so my successes and failures are immaterial. Let me at least offer suggestions to others now. 

Gukesh can foresee the opponent’s moves much ahead. Any chess champion can do that. If you know the game of chess, you also know that you need to anticipate the opponent’s strategy with a prophet’s foresight. Now, isn’t life quite similar? If you can set long-term plans, make calculated decisions, and adapt to challenges, you become a champion in life.

You need to adapt yourself all along the way. No matter how well you calculate your moves on the chessboard, your opponent’s moves can force you to alter your strategy. Life is just like that: it hurls on to your face unexpected events, opportunities, and obstacles. You need to adapt yourself and rethink your approach.

Each piece on the chessboard has unique strengths and limitations. Knowing how to use each piece effectively is very important. Even the tiny pawn, which we often sacrifice easily in the initial stages of the game, can become the most vital piece towards the end of the game. I remember how I used to be thrilled if I could put an end to the opponent’s moves with a pawn sitting next to the king. Of course, the pawn has to be backed by a more important piece. The pawn sitting on the leg of a knight was one of my favourite strategies. There’s some crookedness required in bringing the pawn to that position.

Once someone remarked watching my game about how I failed utterly in bringing that crookedness to life. I failed to understand people. People aren’t like chess pieces at all. Chess pieces follow definite rules. And people don’t. My failure owed itself to the lack of that understanding: that people don’t exist to serve my interests unlike the pieces on my chessboard.

Chess teaches us to sacrifice certain pieces in order to get on with the game successfully. Yes, such sacrifices are inevitable in life too. Time, comfort, resources, and many other things may have to be sacrificed in order to achieve our goals.

Each move on the chessboard has its consequences. Each move influences future possibilities. Isn’t life quite similar? You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.

While winning is the goal, the process of learning, playing and enjoying the game matters much in chess like in any other game. In life too, success is important, but the journey, relationships, and experiences are what make it meaningful.

The analogy can go on. But I don’t want to take it too far. For one thing, the chess pieces won’t ever act outside the established rules of the game. Can you imagine a bishop moving like a rook or vice versa? But in real life, not only bishops but even prime ministers or ascetic yogis can break rules in ways you won’t ever imagine. Learning the rules of human life isn’t at all like mastering the game of chess. Nevertheless, let me offer this lesson at the close of 2024.

Let me wish you grand successes in 2025.



Comments

  1. Hari OM
    ...Perhaps life is more like Carrom, where all unsuspecting, a piece can be kicked in a totally different course! ... or that it the top one percent who are able to play Chess, leaving the rest of us to deal with the thunder and clap of Carrom...Whatever, we have the advantage no game piece ever has; free will. In the end, what we get out of life is reflective of how much we put in and how well we can rearrange our expectations when hurdles come.

    May 2025 bring fewer hurdles, less curves, and smoother surfaces!!! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In a way, life is like carroms... No rules whatever! But free will makes the difference. Free will is limited too, however, like in the case of a slave in old America or a shudra in old India.

      Wish you too a smoother 2025.

      Delete
  2. I haven't played chess in years. It requires a certain kind of dedication that I don't have. Life, I suppose, is similar in that regard as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too lack that dedication and that's why I gave up the game too.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Parish Ghost

Illustration by Copilot Designer Fiction Father Joseph woke up hearing two sounds. One was his wall clock striking the midnight hour. The other was totally unfamiliar, esoteric. Like the faint sigh of someone too weary to knock at heaven’s door. Father Joseph thought it was the wind. Until the scent of jasmine, oddly out of season, began to haunt his bedroom in the presbytery which was just a few score metres from the parish cemetery. “Is someone there?” Father Joseph asked without getting up. He was more than a bit scared. He never liked this presbytery which was too close to the cemetery. But he had to endure it until his next transfer. “Yes, father,” an unearthly voice answered. From too close, not outside the room. “Pathrose.” “Pathrose who?” A family name was mentioned in answer. “But that family…” Father Joseph’s voice quivered, “no one of that family is alive as far as I know.” “You’re right,” Pathrose said. “We perished because we were too poor to survive what our...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...