Kings and Pawns | Introduction
Audio Podcast
Transcript
Welcome to a new episode form The Insatiable Writer Podcast.
Today’s episode is the beginning of a long series of episodes I will share with
you from a creative nonfiction book I am writing, and this book is called Kings
and Pawns. This first episode in the series will be the introduction of the
book, which I hope you like enough to stick around for the next episodes coming
your way in this series. And Now without further ado, let’s jump right in the
world of Kings and Pawns.
Napoleon Bonaparte said once, “In this life we are either
kings or pawns, emperors or fools.” Really? Does that really have to be the
case or the only two options we have. Can’t we be kings at times and pawns at
other times? Can’t we be both and even more? What about queens, knights,
bishops or rooks, can’t we be those, too? In Kings and Pawns, we can be all of
that and more.
Kings and Pawns is not a chess book you’ve been waiting for
to read before you take on the world champion. Neither is it a book that will
help you calculate moves better, see and solve tactics faster, and master the
opening, middle or endgame. It is not a history book to celebrate the
achievements of chess world champions or commiserate the downfall of great
players. This is not the chess book you’ve been waiting for.
Believe me when I tell you that it is not about chess, but
it is full of it at the same time. It is not about champions, but it is full of
champions. It is not about the game, but it is everything that has to do with
playing it every day. This book is about you whether you are a chess player or
not. Then you may wonder why you should read a book that is somewhat about
chess when you are not interested in chess or if you do not know how to play
the game. When you read this book, you will know that you have been playing for
much longer than you think, and a lot of the rules and tactics of chess are
hardwired into your life.
But then why chess, why not Monopoly or Risk or any other
game. Well, the answer for that is as simple as control. You do not control
everything that is happening in other games; you leave too much to be decided
by luck, but with chess, you are in control. You take credit for you wins and
take responsibility for your losses and learn from them to become a better
player. Isn’t that what life is all about— a sense of achievement we seek and a
learning process we all have to go through.
Kings and Pawns is a book that will take you in a journey
through the different aspects of the game, not to teach you how to play the
game on an 8 by 8 board but in your own life no matter what it is that you do
in life. Chess is full of rules, strategies, and tactics with different phases
of the game which demand playing differently, and the psychological aspects of
the game is sometimes as important as how good you play the game itself.
Sometimes, how well you read your opponents is the difference between winning
and losing. In King and Pawns, we will talk about that in the context of the
experiences of our two heroes, who we will call James and Donna, as I am not
allowed to mention their real names in the book, but what really matters is not
their names and who they are but their stories and what they did. We will
follow their stories throughout the book as we talk about the different aspects
of chess and how they relate to their life and to our life as well. We will
find out how they took the journey from being mere pawns with their fates
decided for them to becoming players who took control of all the pieces on the
board and became even more important than the king and queen on the board.
There will be parts in the book where I will encourage you
to play the board game of chess because this will marry very well with the
concepts and ideas we will discover together that will help us take a step
forward in our lives.
Kings and Pawns will start with talking about the rules and
pieces of chess. Then we will move on to talk about the basic concepts every
player needs to know. From there, we will move on to talk about more advanced
concepts, tactics and strategies you need to win, and finally, we will talk
about some immortal games and champions and learn from that as well. All of
that will go hand in hand with the journey of our real heroes, James and Donna.
At this point, you might be confused. Is this book about
chess or life, or both? Well, all you have to do is to go through the first
chapter and you will know what this book is really about. And one last question
might be lurking somewhere in your mind; isn’t chess a game where one player
wins, and another loses. Isn’t life about creating opportunities for everyone
to win? Well, the short answer for that is that you always win in chess whether
you win or lose and that what life is all about. You never lose unless you
decide to lose. You never lose; you learn. However, we will talk a lot about
that in Kings and Pawns, so I will leave that for later.
Buckle up, for we have an exciting journey ahead where we
will learn a lot from chess and the journey of James and Donna, and hopefully
use some ideas from this book to make our lives better.
That was all for the introduction of Kings and Pawns. I hope
that got you interested, and I can promise you that you will find ideas and
stories in this series that are relevant to you. Things you can use in your own
lives, and by the end of this series, I guarantee you that you will even love
to play the game itself in case you are not a chess player already.
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