Pawn brokers
Aditya Rishi

The first chess book in English was also the first printed book of any type in English. William Caxton's Game and Playe of the Chesse was published in 1474, but it really wasn't about the game of chess; rather, it used chess as a metophor for how to live a good life.

TWO pawns, one black and one white, appear on the board. Words from Fischer appear letter by letter in the window: "You may move the pawns in turn to the neighbouring empty squares of the chessboard using vertical and horizontal moves. Arrange the moves, so that, every possible position of the two pawns will appear on the chessboard only once." When two pawns battle, there can be only one king. Spassky plays the entire game in his mind and, when checkmated, resigns without making a single move on the board.

Boris Spassky was so sure that Fischer could not give such a problem that he overlooked that his finding was correct, that the problem could not be solved. Pressure tactics had worked against him once again.

Assume that we can arrange the pieces, so that, every possible position of the two pawns appears on the chessboard exactly once. Consider any square that is blank at the beginning and at the end of the moves. This way, there are exactly 63 special positions when the white pawn is placed on this square and the black one is placed on some other square. Also, all special positions split into pairs: when the white pawn moves to this square (a special position) and after the next move of the black pawn (also a special position). All such pairs are different, since we assumed that every possible position appears only once. However, 63 is odd, which is a contradiction, so, the two pawns can in no way be arranged the way Bobby Fischer wants.

Many years ago, with Bobby Fischer on their first board, the American players at an international team competition had high hopes, but their clash with the Soviets ended unhappily. Boris Spassky enhanced his already formidable reputation for brilliant sacrificial play, which made Fischer develop a life-long hatred for him.

The pawn is the lowest member of the army, but, if it can climb all the way to the far edge of the board, it may be promoted to any higher rank except the king. Anyone can work hard and get the highest rank, which is what we can learn from a pawn. French composer and chess player Philidor, in his book, 'Analyse du Jeu des Echecs (Analysis of Chess)', says: "Pawns are the soul of chess" and has an opening named after him called Philidor's Defence. In his humorous chess dictionary, American master Eliiot Hearst defined the term pawn-grabber: defensive genius.

Chess wasn't a standardised competition sport until the arrival of Howard Staunton. Howard, born in 1810, learned how to play chess at the late age of 26. He was a person of average intelligence and if he could learn the game that well, there is no reason why you can't. In Castiglione's 'Book of the Courtier', published in 1527, the game was described as addictively time-consuming. One of its passages says: "...anyone who wishes to become an outstanding player must give to it as much time and study as he would to learning some noble science or performing well something of importance. Write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in.