Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Chess and the End-Game


My son is a good chess player. Believe it or not, I taught him how to play about thirty years ago. It took him about a year until he then beat me, and I haven’t beat him since. I suppose that I could fabricate a reason as to why he consistently beats me, but the bottom line is that he is able to recognize patterns and he can plan ahead. 

Right now I am reading Range by David Epstein, and in chapter 1, he is talking about Susan Polgar, a champion chess player, who at a very early age was practicing the end-game and some opening-traps. I guess that this means that in chess neither the end of the game nor the beginning of game just happen . . . often there is a plan. Imagine that – a plan!

Which leads me to the gist of this piece. What is the plan for getting us out of this coronavirus lock-down, shut-down, isolation mess in which we are presently mired in. Someone recently told me that he thought Gov. Newsom was doing a good job with this virus situation here in California. When I politely  asked, “How does he plan to get us out of this lockdown?”, he merely shrugged his shoulders. At present I think that it is pretty reasonable to say that those who have come up with these continue-to-isolate and stay-at-home plans have never played serious chess, because I am not seeing an ‘end-game’ plan. For them, I have a few simple questions: When are we going to be able to walk in our neighborhood parks? When are surfers going to be able to go back in the ocean? (BTW, I have never seen a dedicated surfer within six feet of another surfer!) When am I going to be able to go outside without wearing a face-mask? – a mask that were told was of no benefit up to a few weeks ago. When am I actually going to be able to go to a restaurant or a movie, or to my gym? Church . . . when? I could go on and on, but you get the idea. 

Is there a plan? If so, what is the plan? Is there an end-game plan?

The one big obvious problem here is whenever someone, whoever that may be, decides to back off on these semi-totalitarian dictums, the number of cases is going to go up. You can take that to the bank! . . . err, the banks aren’t open, so maybe you can take it to the ATM . . . that is, if you wear gloves!

Be that as it may . . . The number of cases is going to go up! Then what?

The best analogy I can think of is the baseball player standing in the batter’s box and the pitch appears to be coming directly at him. Is it a curve? Will it go back to where it should go, over the plate. Does the batter have the kahunas to stand in there and wait for the ball to curve over the plate? Imagine that this batter is the person deciding what to do when the number of cases start to go back up. Will he stand firm or will he bail, and reinstate the stay-at-home, etcetera policies? In other words does he have and will he stick to an end-game strategy?

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