Friday, January 5, 2024
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My grandfather, Charlie Goddard was teaching me the games Backgammon and Chess when I a young boy. Sitting on the divan using the middle cushion as a table to place the Backgammon board and later the Chess board. Sitting as still as a hyper active child can listening to my grandpa Charlie explain the rules of Backgammon to me. I had full understanding of how the game was played by the end of the game. We played a second game, in which I lost but did better then my first game. Grandpa Charlie wasn't just give me a win. I had to earn it.
He puts that game up and opened up the Chess board and set up the game pieces. As he was setting up the game pieces he showed me each piece and told me the titles of them all. He also explained how each piece moves. Pawns can move one or two spaces forward on their first move. They can only move two spaces forward on the their first turn. He showed the rook, the knight, the bishop, the queen, and the king. I told him that this really different than Checkers, because there are pieces that are in the water. (I called the red squares in Checkers water and the black ones rocks or land) I asked him why each piece had different ways of moving. He had an answer for everyone. Now, if he was telling me facts or making it up I don't know. All I knew his explanations made sense. For example the rook moves left and right and up and down because they are kind of like siege towers that can move in those directions easily. The knights move two forward and one diagonal because he rides a horse and can move like that. Also he jump over pieces in the forward spaces but has to land on a diagonal space left or right. Reason for the jump rule is due to horses can jump over fences. The bishop can only move diagonally and each bishop has his own color space he can move on. So one will always move diagonally on black and the other always white. They move in a diagonal because people don't walk a straight path no matter how Godly we think we are. The queen can move in direction as there isn't an obstacle in her way. She move that many places in any direction is because she will do anything for her husband the king. The can move in direction without an obstacle in his way, but one square. The objective of the game is to put the king checkmate. Checkmate is where no matter where the king goes he will be captured in the next move. When a player moves apiece to put the king in a position where he or another piece has to move to protect the king from a checkmate. The player that puts a king in check must say check. A king in check has a way out.
I said "okay I think I got the rules. If I have any questions I will ask you grandpa." My first game he beat in like 7 or 10 moves. So, I asked for a rematch. We played a second game and this time he had me in checkmate in 15 to 18 moves. I asked him for another rematch and I wanted to go first. He turned the board 180 degrees around and said "okay you go first this game." "Why did you turn the board around grandpa?" I asked shockingly. He replied, "traditionally white goes first." I said, "why, are they racist?" He laughed at my misunderstanding and said "no white represents the side of good and black represents the side of evil." Made sense to me. I moved first and this game was the longest and shocked grandpa when I took one of his knights. I never beat him in a game of Chess, but that is okay I don't need to beat him. At the time I didn't know he was a Chess Master. I told grandpa that I was getting bored with the games. Not because I didn't like them, but because I was hyper active and my mind and body was telling me to do something more active.
Both granny and grandpa were surprised that I managed to pay attention for that long. The only thing is now I don't have any one to play Backgammon or Chess with me.
