A Peculiar Game of Chess

I received a nice crystal glass chess set for Christmas a little over a month ago, and I wish to show you an extremely peculiar arrangement of chess pieces, which happened by circumstance to end up organized in this special array, the 2^nd match I had ever played on this set. The chess pieces look as if they were arranged purposefully in such a manner, but I shall emphasize that the pieces ended up like this as a result of the vast complexity of chess and the myriad of endless permutations and possibilities for the pieces to be positioned. With the game’s constant “back-and-forth” maneuvering, occurring as a result of the interplay between each opponent’s respective offensive/defensive strategies, we (meaning my opponent and me) suddenly found ourselves at this resulting point in the match, to our amazement. The arrangement of pieces on each side was so unique that I absolutely had to document the occurrence by taking a snapshot of it.

But first, a side note on our modalities of chess play, this after having played chess against my boy Josh many, many times for well over a decade: Josh is very aggressive with using his queen to attack early on in the game, while I usually do not bring my queen out of hiding until the middle of the match, so let’s just say our queens were both eliminated very early on in this match via “equivalent exchange” LOL. Josh’s prized pieces are his 2 knights, so I almost always attempt to capture them early on in the game by setting up extremely elaborate traps, even at the expense of losing a seemingly “higher” ranked piece such as a rook or bishop. He is extremely adept at using the knight’s unusual “L-based” moving ability, as well as its capacity to jump over other pieces, using the two knights in conjunction with each other to setup traps and to cause inevitably forced capture of his opponent’s pieces. I, on the other hand, am not particularly skilled at using my knights, so I tend to use the horizontal/diagonal moving capabilities of my rooks/bishops, respectively, in concert, to attack my opponent.

Here is a "top-down" view of the arrangement of chess pieces as it appears about one half-hour into the match, and subsequently, a rotated "top-down" picture of the match as seen from my point-of-view. I have also included a picture with labeling of the pieces for ease of identification. I controlled the frosted pieces, while Josh controlled the clear glass chess pieces (you can click on each picture to get a larger view for better clarity):

The only pieces of mine which had been captured up until this point were 2 of my pawns, 1 bishop, and my queen, while I had captured 1 of Josh’s bishop, 1 knight, and his queen. So at this point in the match, you could say we were about even, as either opponent did not have any significant advantage in positioning or manpower over the other.

A few notes on the peculiarities of this match, starting with the arrangement of my pieces:

1. Note the arrangement of 5/6 of my pawns in the 4^th rank, creating a horizontal barrier to the advancement of Josh’s pieces. The barrier is relatively strong, but in retrospect probably not effective enough since I had previously described that Josh likes to use his horses, so he could easily penetrate the barrier by jumping over my pawns. As well, the weakness of such an arrangement is that I have no means of capturing pieces with pawns diagonally if the front-line of this barrier were to be breached (in other words, the pawns have no protection---note how Josh did this very well by placing his pawns in a diagonal array).

2. The position of one of my rooks behind the front-line of pawns. If any piece attempts to penetrate the barrier, my rook is waiting to pounce without any impediments located across the 3^rd rank.

3. One of my knights is in position to strike at the hole I left in my pawn-barrier, while still protecting the king. Movement of the knight allows my bishop to strike diagonally towards Josh’s left corner, although he has fortified his bishop well with a triangular arrangement of pawns, as I shall describe shortly. As well, my other knight is also within striking distance of Josh’s bishop-complex, although, again, his bishop is well protected.

4. My king and other rook had not been moved up to this point in the match, so I can still perform a “castle-kingside” move and bring my other rook out of hiding, waiting to attack up and down files (instead of ranks) if ever my pawn-barrier is again breached.

A few notes on Josh’s arrangement of pieces:

1. Josh also has a barrier of pawns along his 2^nd rank, with an “arm” of pawns coming off in a diagonal fashion, allowing protection of the leading pawns as I described above.

2. The amazing fortification of Josh’s bishop with the triangular array of pawns he has placed around it. At first I didn’t understand this move, as Josh is not very adept at using his bishops as much as his knights, although looking back, this makes sense now since although the bishop was protected well, it falls in-line with his style of play of not using his bishops much, as the bishop was relatively trapped in the back.

3. The positioning of Josh’s remaining knight, illustrating the fact that Josh loves to use his knights!! As you can see, it is the only piece he has up to this point which is actually active. Not exaggerating, he must move his knight literally twice as much as all other pieces combined.

4. Josh had also not moved his king or either of his rooks up to this point in the match, so he could still perform a “castle-kingside” move as well.

SO HOW IN THE WORLD DID THE MATCH GET LIKE THIS?!? Honestly, WE HAVE NO CLUE!! We were playing the best we knew how and simply ended up at this point in the match.

I do not recall whose turn it was next, however, as the match continued, my pawn barrier was slowly dismantled by me and chipped away at by Josh. With relatively few pieces remaining on either side, I ended up being able to get one of my pawns to Josh's 1st rank and that pawn was subsequently made into a queen. After this, I inevitably ended up checkmating Josh's king, although not without a few mistakes along the way, almost resulting in my loss and/or a stalemate (I absolutely SUCK at the end-game of chess, for some reason it is very difficult for me to realize the shortest amount of moves in order to checkmate my opponent and win the game, so a lot of times I accidently force a stalemate).

Via this example, I simply wanted to illustrate how intriguing chess can be, and in all the chess matches I have played in my life, I had never seen or played a match quite like this one!!