Overview of Chess at BASIS- Episode Three of The BOG

Chess has become popular at Basis Tucson North due to its rise in popularity in recent years. The hosts explain the rules and pieces of chess, emphasizing the importance of the king and the powerful capabilities of the queen. They discuss the appeal of chess to Basis students, who value strategy and intellect. The hosts mention that chess has become more accessible through platforms like Chess.com, and they highlight popular YouTubers and chess players who have contributed to the game's popularity. They also touch on the controversy of cheating in chess and the practice required to become a skilled player. The hosts conclude by noting the infinite possibilities and creativity that chess offers, and they encourage listeners to explore the game. The next episode will be about Monopoly. Good afternoon, and these are your hosts, Therese Boon Yee and Anthony Akhtar, and today we're going to be talking about chess, another board game in our series, and it's an immense rise of popularity in recent years at Basis Tucson North. Okay, TJ, so to be honest, I don't know how to play chess. So if you don't mind, please explain the rules and the game pieces for me. Okay, so imagine an 8x8 grid, if I'm not mistaken. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. And so basically, at the second row of that 8x8 grid and the seventh row of that 8x8 grid, imagine a row of pawns, and these pawns can move two at first, but then they can only move one. So now I'm just going to be explaining how to play chess, literally. The knights, they move in an L shape. The rooks, they can move left or right. What are the rooks? The rooks are the pieces, they are in the corners of the board. There are four rooks in each of the corners. Okay. The king is right next to the rooks. There are also four knights, two on each side, and two bishops, which are next to the knights. Now the most important piece in chess is the king. The king is the piece that you strive to protect throughout the game, and if you are checkmated, which basically means the king cannot move anywhere and is under attack by another piece, then you lose. The goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent and to win the game. Now you might be thinking, I have not mentioned a very important piece. Well, you are correct. I have not mentioned the queen. Now the queen combines the roles of basically every single piece except for the knight. It can move diagonally like the bishop, it can move up and down and left and right like the rook, and on top of that, it has unlimited squares. So it is considered the most powerful piece. But we are not just going to be talking about how to play chess on a literal level. We are going to be talking about how popular it has become at BASIS recently and why that popularity is the case. Therese, do you have any reasons why you think that might be the case? Well, similar to what we have mentioned in previous episodes, I think that chess has become especially popular in BASIS because of final exam seasons and AP exam seasons, where most of the days you are not doing anything, it is just a free day or a study hall. So people are going to try to find something fun because they don't want to study. And I think that chess is appealing to them. And additionally, since chess is a very strategy-based game, that appeals to particularly BASIS students because of how much we value strategy and intellect. Would you agree TJ? I would say so. I think the fact that BASIS is a very nerdy school has allowed chess to become a very popular game and a very popular means of flexing your intellect and things like that. I remember starting to play chess around 2020, during the pandemic. And I remember actually playing chess during class sometimes, but we won't get into that. It was, I think, chess, it's very complicated, but on the onset, it's not that difficult to learn. And I think that's why a lot of people like to play chess. It's also a very famous game, and even outside of the confines of BASIS, it has become very popular. Yeah, I would agree with your statement that chess isn't that difficult, at least when learning the rules. It's not that complicated, it just requires a lot of practice. I think, I would say, and I think most people would agree, but I would say the most difficult part is just overall determining what to do, because you want to predict what your opponent will do, and you have to see which one is the most reasonable or viable solution. Sort of, I would say. I think that in that conversation, there comes in openings, and basically openings are just like a sequence of moves you've memorized to start a game. And openings can depend on whether you're playing black or white. Now, many people would say that white usually has advantage, because they dictate the momentum of the game. Their first move really dictates the trajectory of the game, and it gives an advantage to white. Now, while black may be able to analyze white's moves, it's still white that has the advantage, and so many openings are dependent on, what's it called, which color you're playing, because if you're playing, for example, white, you get to decide the momentum of the game, and the opening strategy you incorporate will probably reflect that fact. At any rate, I think what comes into the popularity of Chess At Basis 2.0 North comes in at the rising popularity of Chess.com. Chess.com, if you don't know, is a very popular medium of playing chess. You can play chess with your friends online. You can play against AIs and robots, which for most games may not seem interesting, but considering the fact that robots and AIs are actually better at chess than humans at this point, it's very interesting, and it's a very challenging thing to do, to play chess against AIs. Oh, my apologies, but I suppose that Chess.com got really popular, especially during the pandemic, when we couldn't visit anyone in person, and if you wanted to have entertainment, you would be playing online with your friends, and because there was already such a big appeal towards chess before the pandemic, having an online chess game really made it popular. Would you say so? I definitely agree with that. Additionally, when it comes to chess, you also have to learn about YouTubers who play chess and how they have helped popularize chess. There's Hikaru Nakamura, which I believe is one of the top ten chess players right now, one of the best American players, definitely, and he has a Twitch streaming channel as well as a YouTube channel, which is one of the biggest, and his channel has grown. It's like a positive feedback loop. His channel grows, which grows the popularity of chess, which also helps his channel grow, which is quite fascinating. Additionally, there's Gotham Chess, who is quite humorous, he's an international master, I forgot to mention this earlier, Hikaru Nakamura is a grandmaster, and he's very good at chess as well, and he has a very famous YouTube channel where he goes about incorporating chess strategies and things like that, which is all good fun. He especially is good at making chess commentary on current chess tournaments and things like that. Have you heard of any of these YouTubers? No I have not. After all, I am not that much interested or not well-versed in the chess world. I see. Well, if you're listening, you should probably check them out. They're quite good at what they do, and you should be, yeah, I think if you are interested in chess at all, you should definitely try to listen to their channels. Now, I haven't mentioned yet who was the formerly, he was the world chess champion up until like five minutes ago, so I'm hyperbolizing, but of course, I'm referring to Magnus Carlsen, who's considered one of the best chess players ever, he's a child chess prodigy who's been playing chess since forever, basically. He's very good, but he recently did not want to, what's it called, play to keep his title, and so now there's going to be a new world chess champion. Oh, really? When, so this was released five minutes ago? I was hyperbolizing. Oh, I see, I see. But, what's it called, it's been, he's been the chess champion for, I think, a bit more than a decade now, and so the fact that he's no longer the world chess champion has created quite the shock. He was recently actually in a controversy with Hans Lehmann, I believe, or Hans Lehmann, and he alleged that Hans Lehmann had cheated during one of their games. Now, you might be asking how you could possibly cheat at chess, but you actually can do it, and it mostly involves you receiving outside information or outside help while you're playing chess. How does that exactly happen, it, like how do you, why, why would the, why would someone be, why would someone know what the player is doing at the moment, if especially if they don't say anything? Well, especially at the lower levels, you might go to the bathroom and use your phone and play out the, play out the chess situation, but against an AI, there's been, you might receive like, what's it called, and if you're that good at chess, all you need is a vibration or just a little nudge in the right direction, and you'd be able to understand where your opponent was going and how to defeat them. Oh, oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense. And speaking about chess, chess, chess championships, or like chess prodigies, do you think that being a good chess player comes from being natural, or does it come with practice? What do you think? I think it definitely comes with practice. I think you can't really get good at anything without practice, but there are many people I've met personally that are very gifted at chess, and they've cultivated the skill. I've known people who started playing chess when they were like three, two years old, and they just cultivate the skill until they get better and better and better. Have you ever been in a chess competition? I have, and I think this adds on to my point. I actually draw it against this very, she was like five years old, she was like a child prodigy, well she was not a child prodigy, but she's probably way better now, but she was like five years old when I played her, and I think I was like 11, and we draw it against each other. Oh, interesting, interesting. And so ultimately, if you've been cultivating the skill for a while, you get better at it, and chess is no different. And so many people who are considered like world-renowned for their chess abilities have been practicing and formulating their chess skills basically since they were born. Okay, well thank you for telling me, for concisely explaining each piece of the chess game. Do you have anything else you would like to say? Yes, actually. I think that chess as a game, many people, for example, one of the limitations of chess is popularity, is that at a certain point, you feel as if you're just memorizing openings and mid-games in order to defeat your opponent, and it becomes a lot more memorization-based. And I think that's definitely become the case in recent years. But what cannot be said is that chess isn't a very creative medium, as it incites infinite possibilities and infinite manifestations of the game. And so that's actually the reason why robots are very good at chess, because they can imagine those infinite possibilities where a human brain can't possibly do so. So in sum, I would say that chess has always been a part of Basis's culture, and then I hope that our listeners understand what chess is, and why chess is popular at Basis's on North, and maybe they'll play chess in the future as well. That's all I wanted to say. Is there anything else you want to say? No, I don't have anything else to say. Well that'll be all from your host. This was episode three of The Bob, and we'll see you later, where we'll talk about Monopoly, how it's played, how you play with your family, and some famous stories, not famous, but rather some cool stories with your family playing Monopoly. Thank you. Thank you.