How are prisoners playing chess in a prison where board games are banned?



The Netflix-delivered drama 'Queen's Gambit, ' which depicts a chess genius girl, has received high praise around the world, and it was reported that the chess boom is occurring in the United States due to the influence of the drama. On the other hand, it seems that board games are banned in American prisons due to the influence of the new coronavirus, and prisoners are making tearful efforts to play chess, real prisoners report.

When The Prison Banned Board Games, We Played Chess In Our Minds | The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/02/11/when-the-prison-banned-board-games-we-played-chess-in-our-minds

24-year-old Harlin Pierce, who is imprisoned in Jim Ferguson Prison, Texas, is a person who is also active in the prison, studying mathematics while serving and establishing a reading club. .. Such Pierce is an enthusiastic chess player, and he is aware that he is a strong player.

A prisoner named Wally, who is also in prison, often plays chess against Pierce. Wally is a chess enthusiast who has tattooed chess pieces on his fists and is a very talented player. It seems that Pierce has played against Wally many times, but Wally cannot always beat Pierce.

Although they were looking forward to playing chess every day, the pandemic of the new coronavirus changed their lives in prison. Prisoners were also required to stay socially distant, limiting their time in the common room and yard, and banning board games, including chess, Pierce said. As they spent more time in the cell and couldn't play chess with Wally face-to-face, they decided to think of a way to play chess while keeping a social distance.



Fortunately, Pierce and Wally's cell faces the same aisle, just one room in between, so they can hear each other. Therefore, they decided to bring a chess board and a top into the cell, and to play chess by communicating each other's hands with their voices.

The squares on the chess board correspond to the alphabets 'a to h' in the horizontal rows and the numbers '1 to 8' in the vertical columns, and the alphabets and numbers such as 'e4', 'c5', and 'f3'. You can specify the mass with the combination of. Therefore, you can play chess even if each player is in a cell by telling the procedure by specifying the name and square of the piece like 'Bishop c6' and moving the pieces according to each other's declaration. ..

Also, because the prison is noisy and the pronunciations of 'b', 'c', 'd', and 'e' are similar, the two are 'a = alligator', 'b = baseball', and 'c'. I decided to declare by replacing the confusing alphabet with words, such as = constellation, 'd = dinosaur,' 'e = elephant,' and 'g = golf ball.' ..

In this way, the two started playing chess by yelling 'Pawn, dinosaur 4!' 'Pawn, dinosaur 5!', And they were laughed at by other prisoners for a while. But more than being laughed at by other prisoners, Pierce said the method had the challenge of taking too long a game.



The next day, when the two were talking in the common room for a short time when the prisoners were allowed to contact each other, Pierce jokingly suggested, 'Why don't you play in your head?' Although Pierce wasn't serious, Wally took this idea seriously and decided to put into practice an attempt to actually play chess in his brain.

When I tried to play chess in the brain by telling the declaration of the procedure loudly as before, it turned out that both of them can reproduce the board surface in the brain without using the chess board and the top. Therefore, even if it was interrupted by the guard on the way, it seems that he was able to play the continuation of the game again when he met at the cafeteria.

As the two continued to play chess in their brains, the prisoners in the surrounding cell gradually became interested in this game, and prisoners who actually played chess using their voices began to appear. Pierce argues that this quirky intellectual game connects prisoners of diverse cultures and backgrounds, although it may be wishful thinking that a 'brain chest tournament' will be held in the near future. I will.

'Playing a victim in life is easy and allows your situation to determine your nature. But the difference between being happy and distraught in life is a matter of perspective. We. Each one has the ability to develop the perspectives they desire and apply them to our own experiences. We are forced to abandon our physical freedoms, but our spirits. You don't have to give up control, 'Pierce said.

Pierce, who wrote this article, was arrested for shooting and killing his father with a rifle in 2015 while he was in high school, and was sentenced to 33 years in prison and is in prison.

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in Game, Posted by log1h_ik