THIS IS A STORY of so-called good and pretend evil.
You don’t have to be a chess-player to study the picture and know it’s a battleground. You know by the nature of human beings that our games require winners and losers, the victors and the defeated. So many of our sports are meant to be showcases of skill, tests to display the beauty of superior skill. They do this, yet almost always there’s a final scene, half triumph half disaster.
Knowing this we can see that the game above was not going well for White. Look at the row of its captured pieces, lifted off the board, at the far side of the photograph. For proof, instead of holding its own, White has taken only three of the opponent’s pieces, and is being ravaged on this side of the board by Black, who has swept down to dominate the game.
And yet, when we look way in the corner at the far right side of the board, we see that White has pulled off a miracle. His Queen’s flown to storm the very bedchamber of Black’s King, who cannot escape, and the game is over. Victory goes to battered White.
