Joshua Gayou - Commune - Book One

Billy also had a good collection of board games, which we used to play often in the evenings. We would spread the game of the night out on the low coffee table between the couches and chairs in the house’s main front room. There were plenty of the standard games that everyone in the world knows like Monopoly, Sorry, The Game of Life, and even Battleship but he also had some games that I never heard of like Stratego, Risk, Forbidden Island, and more. He also had a chess set, to Jake’s delight, which would sometimes be set up on the table so he could teach Elizabeth to play. To my surprise, she was eager to learn. The game might as well have been Greek Calculus to me, so I had a hard time following some of the concepts he went over with her. Even so, after a few nights of listening to him go over the rules of the game, I found myself picking up more than I intended.

I recall the first evening he just focused on how each piece moved. Some of them were simple, like the bishops and rooks but others seemed like a pain, like the knights. When I said as much to him, he said, “Knights are horribly undervalued in this game. The nature of their movement makes it harder for your opponent to anticipate your intention; I’ve won several games because the person I played against made a simple blunder—they basically forgot that my knight was covering a key square. I’d personally take two knights over a queen in any game, really.”

“Get out of here,” said Billy from his chair, looking at Jake around the edge of his book. “Over a queen?”

“Sure,” said Jake.

“Think I want to play you some time. Might be an easy win.”

Jake sat back and smiled. “I’d like that.”

On the following evening, Jake discussed how there were essentially three phases to any real game of chess: an opening, middle, and end game. “The opening is where the players position their pieces, planning their attacks and defenses. The middle game is where all the plans you set up in the opening are executed, which typically results in a bunch of pieces getting captured on both sides. The end game is where you have a reduced number of pieces, sometimes only a couple, and someone is actively pursuing a mating move.”

On the third evening of play, Jake focused on the opening phase of the game and how Lizzy could get herself into the best position of strength to maximize her chances of beating her opponent. “See these four squares?” he asked while pointing at the exact center of the board. “This is the most important area during the opening phase. You want absolute control of this terrain by the time the middle game phase begins. The ability to gain superiority over these four squares can often times determine who will maintain an advantage throughout the game.”

“So if I do it right, I’ll win?” asked Elizabeth.

“Oh, no, it’s not guaranteed,” said Jake. “It only helps. Situations always change. Your ability to win is defined by your ability to adapt to the board as it changes. Control of the center early on is just a way to put the odds in your favor.”

“So how do I get control?”

“Basically,” Jake answered, “you try to cover as many center squares as you can with as many pieces as you can and then, at some point, you decide which single square you’re going to target. That square will be occupied by your opponent, and you’ll attack it. You need to have enough pieces targeting that square so that when you and your opponent are done fighting over that square, you’ll come out with more pieces left than him.”

Every evening they played, he covered a new key concept with her and then they would play through a game exercising what they had discussed. He never played to win during these games. He spent most of his time asking her why she made such and such a move, not telling her that the move was right or wrong but just asking her to explain the reasoning behind it. In the process of doing so, she would soon discover whether the move she had made was wise; if it was not, he allowed her to take it back and try another direction. Through this process, I began to understand what an outstanding teacher Jake could be and wondered, not for the first or last time, if teaching had been some aspect of his previous life in any capacity.

Billy and I both also began to learn how devious Jake could be.

After several nights of Jake working through the basics with Elizabeth, Billy finally challenged him to a game. To my surprise, Lizzy happily set the board up for them and then moved to the side to watch them play (I thought she would be annoyed at having her game preempted, but she seemed more eager to watch the two men play a game).

“White or black?” Billy asked. Jake responded by picking up a pawn from each side of the board. He put his hands behind his back, and we heard the sound of the plastic pieces clicking around in his hands. He then put both hands out in front of Billy, both of them closed into fists around the pieces. “Pick one,” he offered.

Billy tapped a hand, which Jake rolled over and opened, revealing a white pawn. Both pieces were replaced on the board, and Jake said, “After you.”

The next series of moves were slightly disconcerting to watch. Billy started by moving one of his center pawns two spaces out into the middle of the board, which Jake met instantly by moving out his opposing pawn. Billy pushed another pawn next to his initial piece, this time only one square forward. As soon as his hand came off the second pawn, Jake had a knight moved out from the rear and placed down in front. As they went another five or six moves into the game, Billy’s choices came slower and slower, requiring more consideration as the board developed. In contrast, Jake countered instantaneously each time, his hand already hovering over his selected piece and waiting for Billy to release his own (I noticed Jake would never touch one of his pieces until Billy had let go of his).

It wasn’t very long before the board resembled the last possible second before a major car wreck. I had at least learned the basics of the game over the last few nights just being in the same room and listening to Jake teach Lizzy; I could see how much tension was built up on the center of that board. Every piece was threatening an opposing piece or protecting one of its own. The only thing I can bring to mind that really describes what the board looked like was the closing scene in Reservoir Dogs where the characters all held guns on each other in that giant Mexican Standoff. I didn’t see how it could get any worse—neither one of them could move another piece outside of pushing a random pawn out along the edges of the board. Evidently, Billy agreed and pulled the trigger.

An exchange of six moves followed quickly, each of them resulting in a capture for the other side. They happened so fast that I couldn’t keep up with which pieces were being taken and had to bring myself up to speed by looking at them lined up along the sides of the board. I could see that Jake had captured two pawns and one bishop while Billy had two pawns and one knight.

The center of the board was now a shambles as far as I could tell. The balanced aggression that had existed only a moment ago was now obliterated with only a few survivors left out in the center. This fact seemed to deter Jake and Billy not at all; they began to bring out more pieces in a second wave to the first skirmish. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to know who was ahead at the time, but if I remember correctly now, a bishop and knight are considered equal in value so they would have been at a draw by this point. This slowly began to change as Billy pressed his advantage.

He proceeded to cut down pawns while Jake seemed only to divide his responses by either running away or attempting to block Billy’s advance. Jake pulled a bizarre move that I had never seen where his king and rook suddenly swapped places; Elizabeth spoke up at this, wanting to know what just happened. Billy assured her that the move was perfectly legal and referred to as “castling.”