CHESS.

LIFE.

CHESS.

LIFE.

  There are a lot of similarities between chess and life. Chess was invented in India around the 8th century. It was then played all over the world.

STARTING THE GAME

   Chess is started with a person moving the first piece such as a pawn or a knight. The player is likely to have a plan on how to move his first piece, but they always need another plan because usually the first plan won’t work out.

   Life is like the first move of a chess game, having a plan that starts out but usually ending up with a different plan. People change their plans throughout their life time like deciding to go to school or not go to school. Plans will change with every move made; it’s just the reality of life.

PAWN

     A pawn is a piece that people don’t consider as a piece essential to winning, but a good chess player understands the value of a pawn. With every chess game, there are sixteen pawns on the board. A pawn might not be useful at the beginning of the game but when the pawn makes it to the other side, it can be exchanged for whatever a player wants. This makes it extremely valuable.

   You would think that pawns are useless because they are the easiest to capture and the hardest to use to take another piece but it’s more likely for you to win a chess game if you have more pawns at the end of the game.

   Most of the people in the world are like the most common piece on the chess board pawns in a big game of chess. If you have a simple life, graduate high school, go to college, get a normal job, get married, have a family, and pay taxes to be a normal citizen of a country, and are able to enlist you are a pawn because if the government tells you to do something you have to do it with questions asked.

   Abraham Lincoln was like a pawn. Lincoln was born in poverty in 1809 and lived in a wood cabin for most of his childhood life. Lincoln was self-educated which would allow him to become a lawyer. 

   After becoming a lawyer, Lincoln entered into politics which then lead him to become the 16th president. Lincoln believed that slavery should be illegal which then started the American Civil war. After four bloody years of fighting, the Union finally defeated the confederates. 

   By defeating the confederates, Lincoln finally made slavery illegal in the United States. After running for office for a second term; Lincoln won by a landslide. One night Lincoln and his wife went to a play where John Booth assassinated Lincoln so Lincoln never did find his second term in office.

ROOK  

   The rook is a very essential piece to checkmate the king. The rook might not be as useful in the beginning but will make the game easier to win sooner. The rook is worth about 5 pawns in the game and in general, rooks are stronger than knights and bishops.

   George Washington is one example of a person that is a rook; Washington influenced the whole world and took down the king of Britain.  

   Washington was an American soldier and the first president of the United States Of America. By being the general in the Revolutionary war and a big key to ending the war, making the British king surrender.

   Washington was like a rook. He had a big role to play because he needed to know how to succeed in defeating the British king. 

   A rook’s main job is to defeat the king, they don’t need to start the game they just need to finish the game. A general doesn’t need to know why he is going to war; his job is to win the war. There are many more examples of people in history being a rook.

KNIGHT

   A knight is a very important piece for taking out other pieces and a very powerful piece as well. The queen is one of the most powerful pieces in the game because she has the power to move like both the rook and bishop. 

   Even with that unique ability to move like a rook and bishop, the queen may not move like the knight which makes the knight very special in its own way.

   There are many examples of people being knights such as people in the FBI. They find threats to America and stop them. The American people don’t know everything that the FBI does but they do know that their job is to protect them.

   An FBI agent goes undercover to find out who is threatening America and when he or she finds out who they are, they arrest him or her to save the threat from America. 

   The knight moves this way, they move without being noticed, and when they move you notice what the outcome becomes. The knight is indeed a very important piece because it is the only piece that is different from any other piece on the board. Because of its unique movement, sometimes it surprises an opponent, seeing to come from nowhere

BISHOP

   A piece that might not be as straight forward as most people think it is. Bishops are the pieces that move diagonally which means they aren’t straight shooters but they can go further than most pieces. 

   Somebody that would be a bishop in the real world would be Elon Musk. Musk is an entrepreneur and has a Bachelor of Science degree in economics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics. Musk was born into a very wealthy family but when his parents divorced, Musk’s dad was very abusive to him.

   Musk hasn’t always had a straight view of his future even with being born into a wealthy family and with all of his college degrees. When Musk was a kid he was bullied by other kids and was once hospitalized when a gang of kids threw him down a flight of stairs.

   Musk is like the bishop; he didn’t have a straight path to his future but he made a big move to get him where he is today. There are, of course, people in the world not as famous as Musk who still make big moves without knowing what their future holds.

QUEEN

   The second most important piece in the game is the queen making the king the most important piece in the game. The queen is one of the most powerful pieces in the whole chess game because it has the ability to move like a rook or a bishop. Without the queen you have a very small chance of winning the chess game. 

   A person in the world that would be like a queen would be Vladimir Putin. In Putin’s early life he went to school and studied law until he finished in 1975. Putin was in the Russian military in 1975 for 15 years before becoming a politician. Putin has become the most powerful person in Russia and he is also the most powerful person in Europe.

   By working for the Russian military then becoming a politician, Putin has made big moves that lead him to become who he is today. Putin has served 4 terms as the president of Russia even though they only allow 2 terms in Russia.

   If you ask a Russian citizen why Putin is still in office they would say, “Because he is a strong leader”. The Russians like strong people in their government. 

   Queens are the pieces players love the most because of how powerful they are. If one player takes his opponent’s queen and still has his queen, he doesn’t have to worry as much because he knows he’s probably going to win. The queen and Putin have a lot in common, they are both very powerful and everybody loves them.

KING

  The most important piece of the game, but also the most useless is the king. The king could be considered a powerful piece because of how valuable it is, but the king can only move one square away from himself.

   The reason why the king could be considered the most powerful is that a chess player would sacrifice every other piece to defend this one piece. 

   People in the world that could be considered to be a king are people like the President of the United States Of America. The king could also be the governor of your state. It doesn’t have to be a leader, it could also be a business owner.

   Kings are people in the world that are leaders and have people that are very loyal to them. You could become a king by just running for office and getting elected or creating your own business.

END OF THE GAME

   At the end of the game, one player makes the last move of cornering the opponent’s king, called checkmate. The whole point of a chess game is to make the best move so you will win. By making move after move the player that made the best moves will win and the player that lost will learn from his mistakes or will lose again.

   Life is like a chess game; people make mistakes and they learn from those mistakes. When people make good moves they are happier than people who make bad moves. 

   By the end of people’s lives, they can look back and see their mistakes, and successes. They can also see if they learned from their mistakes and started winning or if they kept making the same mistake over and lose. 

CHESS.

LIFE.

CHESS.

LIFE.