Zugzwuang

(This is an outline only, someday I will write more along this line, your comments are welcome at this point)

This term is used to describe a position over a chess board where a player is forced to make an undesirable move (since its his/her turn). If it was not his/her turn then the player might escape the situation "by not moving at all". If there was an option that a player need not move or give up his/her turn then also the situation is saved.

But the tragedy of zugzwuang is that one must move, one can't sit idle and just escape the situation. Its a bit tragic since its normally good to move.

We face similar situation in life too, probably not using the term. A situation where you must make a decision and you don't want to! You want to enjoy the present time, being in an unclear and ambigous state!
Any decision will be harmful for the person, I mean the person may think that way. We never know the outcome of an event in real life. (There may not be any outcome of different type of any event in real life, because: "we who were living are now dying, with a little patience", but that's a different subject of discussion).

(Keeping it in abstract terms makes it easy to understand, once we start giving concrete examples stuff may get confusing....I will try concrete examples in second phase of this writing...it gets confusing not because I have any doubt on readers ability of understanding, but because when one compares two events there are not only similarities that exist; there are so many different ways to look at events similar in nature).

It may appear to some that their whole life is in zugzwuang; those people like to stay where they are, they don't want to make new moves, just enjoy the current time. But that's just a feeling of zugzwuang, may not be reality. In reality they will eventually move and might enjoy moving in a direction; but the feeling exists!

May be zugzwuang exists in human life all the time in a form of abstract feeling like this!

Transition in life and chess (ver2)

A game of life and chess can be divided mainly in three parts: Opening, Middle and Ending. The transition among these phases can also be considered like separate phases, but we will just treat that as transition since that's the subject of discussion here.

Opening, middle and Ending just matches exactly with our life as childhood, middle age and old age.

Opening:

Opening needs lots of learning, reading books, developing lots of knowledge how people around us have played the game of life and chess. More you know stronger you are! Its all about very strong preparation. If you are not well prepared and even if you understand the concepts very well you may not get all the advantages you deserve.

Middle game:

Its less about preparation, its less about knowledge...Its more about execution, calculation, strategy, transition, ....Here the real fun begins! Even a well prepared can be outplayed here.

End game:
Interesting similarities are end game depends on the knowledge base and not much movement..Since movements are very restricted due to lack of activities over the board..Most of the cases with very few pieces, most of the friends and enemies are killed.

Transition:
Transition needs to be handled very carefully. Transition is the point where one forgets what was planned in the previous phase, also forgets why (s)he has planned this transition. This is typical of ameture players who study enough book materials but can't handle the complexity of middle game. And can't connect the theory with the practical life.

Transition keeps us in a confusing state of mind since so many different things happen during transition. We observe so many different possibilities what we haven't prepared for. Many of us jump into such dervied possibilities and do completely unplanned things. This is amazing! This happens so many times in life. However, Grand Masters normally have clear enough vision not to change basic plan so drastically as we do in real life during transition.

Its difficult to understand how Grand Masters handle transition in real life...I need to look for more details here!

Isolated pawn as strength

In another blog I wrote about weaknesses of isolated pawn over the chessboard and life. But weakness is not the only outcome of isolated pawn, it can be used as a weapon, as a strength in a given position by stronger forces.

There is a difference though. In this case, isolated pawn is used mostly to sacrifice itself and opening up opportunities for bigger forces, for the overall game. Disappearance of isolated pawn makes the position more interesting for the player and (s)he just looks for those opportunities.
However, disappearance may not be the only strength in this situation. There is always the threat that an isolated pawn may be pushed for sacrifice, thus opening up new opportunities for the player. Understanding this concept over the chess board and doing it is not an easy task, only very advanced players can do it with very careful and accurate play.

(non-chess players can skip this portion: If you are a serious chess player look for an example in Sicilian defense-C3 variation, also called Alapin's variation; that C3 pawn becomes isolated in many combinations; still this pawn can be used as a strength in this particular position).

Exactly the same way an isolated pawn in real life can make very big changes in overall system; though they still remain isolated. Its the effect due to their presence counts here. Not all isolated pawn have the same effect, only some: exactly the same way over the chess board. It depends on the position, it depends on the pawn, it depends on the dynamics of the board and life.

This concept is very confusing in life and not yet clearly explained..I hope to do so someday....

Drafts under preparation

These are the drafts under preparation, if you have any similar ideas you may like to share send me an email (check my profile) or post comments or ......thanx!

1. Falsification of own theories :
-Falsification is a scientific tool mostly used in mathematics to derive at a conclusion. In normal lilfe, we don't use it that much: this search is based on where and how we use it. who are those people?
-Based on the idea that Grand Masters falsify their own theories
-Falsification of own theories is based on logic from pure mathematics
-Falsification rarely used by people in real life: in search of the places where its used...

2. Chess is a perfect example of leading an aimless life
3. Philosophy of En Passant in real life
4. What's promotion in life? like pawns?
5. is checkmate like death?
.....

Double isolated pawn (version 5)

There is a poem by Tagore where he said: "a couple in love is more lonely than a single"....I can't recollect the exact poem or writing but Tagore truly wrote something very similar to that.

I have also read it elsewhere similar ideas....a smooth writer said very similar stuff...Probably in some movies...

Double isolated pawns are like that...They are very weak as a combined force compared to a single isolated pawn..Specially the pawn behind, that's really weak. There isn't much use of the pawn behind..Relatively speaking, it probably doesn't matter for the pawn infront whether the pawn behind exists or not, doesn't have much sense of its presence! Similar is the feeling for pawn behind, may be worse feeling. Pawn infront is a bottleneck for him/her since its not possible to move at all if he/she doesn't move!

However, the most important point here to understand why is a couple in love so lonely? Are they lonely because they will be more complete staying alone? Because they are trying to fix each other's loneliness what they can't fix? This way they are making themselves more lonely?

Another possibility is that their detachment from the rest of the universe (due to their deep love, of course) make them more isolated compare to others not in that situation. This definitely makes sense to me!

I don't remember the exact logic of Tagore (or the the European writer), but that's what come to my mind right now!

But as a combined force the system looks to them as a weak combination. That's so similar to the look of the poet Tagore..Exactly the same way he looked at a couple in love! Did he know about this double isolated pawn concept? I guess no! I doubt that he had that much time to play chess. I heard from another poet (Byron) that: "Life is too short for chess", I guess Tagore might have similar views on chess too, no clue though!

Interesting is that one can get the same feeling and derive the same concept in so many different ways without knowing each others understanding!

Maskless ruthless chess: Hypocrite Life (version2)

Here my objective is to draw similarities between important concepts played over a chess board and life, however there are fundamental differences between these two: mainly, these differences created by our modern civilization, in a different civilization we could have behaved differently. Or, at least, we can think of a new civilization where its exactly like playing games over a chess board.

Let's just watch some very important differences, we might go into details later on:

1. Nobel Prize in human civilization (literature): A writer writes great things about human life, shows the greatness of humanity, writes in a nice language (of course, I don't have a doubt on that) and wins a Nobel Prize. This has a noble cause. It advances society, inspires humanity for a good cause.

However, it doesn't question about very basics: do we really have potential? Are we all not going to die one day with our beloved planet (whatever we try)? Are we all not basically very greedy? Are we all not born because of someone else's mistakes? That there is no fundamental difference between a beast and a human? But we all have the superiority complex and consider ourselves the king of this planet...

We don't seem like all that bad since we use lots of masks..
Human has to be hypocrite since they want to be happy. All human philosophy, literature, poetry etc. Designed to make human happy. Human appreciates such work of happiness and reward those people who bring happiness in their lives. But truth may not bring happiness all the time. Truth hurts, the real truth may not make human happy. So we pretend to be truthful knowing that we are not. We project ourselves who believe in truth, but all we want to be is happy; this contradiction makes us hypocrite.

But a game of chess is maskless. Here we all know how we survive, how we get killed, no one is so great. A sacrifice is made to win something else, may be someother time. It all depends on calculation, strategy and positional maneuvers! Its merciless!

Stale Mate

(This is just a draft, waiting for your comments...)

Your opponent can't move any of the pieces and you don't have a check on opponents king either, and its your opponents turn to move: this situation is called stale mate.

This is a very peculiar situation in chess board. It may happen that you have lots of forces, excellent position, everything to win the game; still you can't win the game. The game ends in a draw.

You can call that opponent is "stale mated" but its not same as "mate"; you haven't won over the opponent though you might have outplayed the opponent in every aspect of the game.

Its not necessary that you are the stronger force and you really have outplayed opponent in the game, but normally that's the case when stale mate happens.

In real life, stale mate normally happens more often than chess. You may outperform someone in a competition, or in a debate about something you think very important to win, or .....

But at the end of it, at the end of having outplayed your opponent in real life, you may find that you really haven't won the game! If you have this feeling, then its stale mate. Stale mate happens in real life, just check yourself, be honest with yourself and ask the question after winning an argument: "Have I really won?"