CHATUR END POST

May 09, 2008
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CHESS CONT...

Chess is a mini-scale model of the battlefield/war situation
but some thinkers have gone as far as comparing it to Life itself
& they have good reasons. Not only does the one-on-one
confrontation between two adversaries/contending beings represent a
basic social relation between two persons but some finer points or
elements of the game itself have their corresponding items in Life/the World:
time (tempo), space (territory), hierarchy of roles/functions, etc
[People normally think that one should always be DOING SOMETHING...
Chess ZUGZWANG teachess us that there are occasions where NON-ACTION
is critical (NOT INaction... NONaction or SILENCE, NON-MOVEMENT, PAUSE...]
One cannot make "PASS" in Chess...
And in Life everybody is checkmated!
[Dr. Emanuel Lasker: "In LIfe, we are all duffers."]
Some chess writers speak about power, love, justice,
truth, etc in chess...

STRATEGY refers to general considerations, overall plans...
For ex.: Checkmating the King is the ultimate goal, the fundamental strategic objective
of the game.
100 Peso Question:
Can one become an excellent player, even a supergrandmaster, without
knowing how to checkmate with knight & bishop???
Can one be a good tactician & not even have any definite strategy when playing???
TACTICS refers to the more detailed execution of a plan or circumstances of the game
Example:
CAMPAIGN: KATIPUNAN VS. SPANISH FORCES
STRATEGY: CAPTURE MANILA
TACTICS: SKIRMISH IN TONDO, DIVERSIONARY AMBUSCADES IN NOVALICHES
BUT MAIN FORCE COMES VIA MORONG/SAN JUAN TO OVERRUN INTRAMUROS...
Strategy is about plans, Tactics is about action.
Strategy is brain work by generals, Tactics is bloody work by foot-soldiers.
Strategy is normally fixed, Tactics changes event from moment to moment
MY (JAMAAL'S) BASIC AXIOM/FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE IN WAR, BATTLE, COMPETITION, ETC
==========================================================
NO AMOUNT OF TACTICAL VICTORY CAN CORRECT A WRONG STRATEGY
==========================================================
In a sense one can win all the battles and lose the war!
PRECISELY what has been happening to the MUSLIMS ever since
World War I: THEY HAVE EITHER NO (NONE/NIL) OR THE WRONG STRATEGY!!!

I have not "made any money" from my "chess wisdom" but I really believe
that I could have been a GOOD chess coach or even teacher...
MY TWO REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS: NIMZOVICH's MY SYSTEM & FISCHERS'S MY 60 MEMORABLE GAMES
BUT to be READ only AFTER two years of intensive club chess-playing...
ALSO another ADVICE: LEARN FIRST to play RAPID chess...
ALL EXCELLENT CHESS MASTERS ARE FAST PLAYERS...
I am a NOTORIOUSLY SLOW PLAYER (HAR HAR!) & therefore NOT a GOOD player...
In fact, I DO NOT WANT TO MAKE A MOVE EVEN AS WHITE! HAR!
Kung may "PASS" nga sa chess eh mag-pa-PASS aku eh!!!
It's not so much due to proscrastination but more the symptom of INDECISIVENESS (miseducated on/by HAMLET Prince of Denmark??!!...)
A Mid-East friend told me once that I had WEAK WILL (= ABULIA)!
There's method in my madness:
My reasoning is: No Move=>No Action;No Action=>No Trouble;No Trouble=>NO KARMA!!!
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DIGRESS:[I lost my "positional sense" & "chess intuition" (skills or natural ability I slowly developed or accumulated thru reading & playing) when I got interested in yoga/meditation.
Before, whenever I looked at the chessboard, it looked "MEANINGful" - the men moved in my imagination. But after the thinking shift, all these "MEANING" vanished. The chessboard now looked barren/unmoving - ala existential desert scene or landscape!
It seems the shift to right brain/hemisphere thinking & one year of misguided vegetarianism
(no milk or lentils/beans for protein!) destroyed a big part of my brain cells.
Analytical & Sequential thinking - math (numerical calculation), chess, computer programming, logic are LEFT controlled whereas artistic imagination, space visualization (?) are RIGHT...
(This was the time when Korchnoi came to RP & played Karpov in Baguio(?). Korchnoi had an Ananda Marga mentor.)
Just like Arab ISLAAM, Indian HINDUISM available outside its place of origin apparently
is not really its genuine/true form- it's the watered-down or even WRONG version!!!]
ISLAAM, HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, JAINISM, SIKHISM, CONFUCIANISM, SHINTOISM, TAOISM, ETC
- all presented to the ignorant masses by their ENEMIES!!!

It's my fault: I first saw chess players as stationary/non-moving persons/apparently doing nothing & completely misinterpreted this scene & this misconception was deeply-imbedded in my memory! [Cf. GBShaw's negative comment on chess & chessplayers]
Anyway, to continue to what I could have been...
But, of course, how can one teach another how to master chess if one is not himself a chess master? Yet I believe I grasp the fundamental principles/techniques for training a child to make QUICK progress. Chess-playing ability is NOT the same as ability in teaching chess.
An academic political scientist is not necessarily a politician. Teaching involves different skills, aptitudes or talents... One may be a chess grandmaster & yet make a poor chess teacher.
And in school, I had countless "laude teachers" who were no-good at teaching!!!
Our collegiate chess group once had an avid newbie who was a BATIL/BAD player
& yet he was a highly-organized, methodical/systematic presenter &
very good at explaining things in graded steps so he was assigned to take a role as lecturer.
He knew much chess theory but he could not apply it in actual play.
In chess, it is not the ACQUISITION but the APPLICATION of theory/know-how/knowledge
that REALLY MATTERS. In the end it is ACTUAL PLAYING that decides.
Again, nevertheless, it is not simply just a question of winning.
If one asks: what makes a good chess player? then the answer is so simple: One who beats anybody and everybody is the CHESS CHAMP. Just like when Fischer was asked if he was
a chess genius & he replied that if he won against Spassky(?) then he was one.
Again things seem easy when said/talked about.
One may have beaten all opponents (100 persons) but if they are all PATZERS/BATILS...
One may have lost all 10 games one ever played. But if these are 40+ movers against the likes of
Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tal & Fischer...!
So, it is not really true that it is only the end result that matters!
So chess, like Life, is not really THAT SIMPLE...
[In a sense, really good players are immensely PRACTICAL people.
I believe a REAL CHESS WIZARD will mate you in one-half move if ever there is such a possibility!]

CHESS & LIFE... One models the other... Which is which?
Chess is like Life... but Life is also like Chess:
Life is a GAME... PLAY it (-the EXISTENTIAL reply to THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF PHILO...)
... The most important thing in Life is not the triumph but the struggle...
It is not the travel destination but the trip/journey that is really the point...

LASTLY, as in Math & Music, there are chess "IDIOT SAVANTS"... (I do not admire these.)
Fischer's life's "endgame" pronouncements clearly show he was not one... At least I LEARNED this...
And that's why I "idolized" Dr. Emanuel Lasker - a mathematician, philosopher & world chess champion...
I doubt if there will be another one like him... He was a Jew... Was he a ZIONIST???...

Have so many many more chess IDEAS... BRILLIANT & stupid...
MAYBE shall create brief articles or a separate blog on my "chess wisdom"...

NEXT: EAST ASIAN/JAP GO (CHIN:WEICHI/KOR:BADUK) & NUSANTARAN G.G./GAME OF THE GENERALS(SALPAKAN)
INDO-ARYANS: CHESS
EAST ASIANS: GO
NUSANTARANS: SALPAKAN

TMNP [MR_ABULIA)