Stalemate

Yes, this refers to chess. I was a chess freak a lot many years back and retain the insanity a little, still. I'm not saying that I am good at it, but I love to play the game. Most often people watching my game get frustrated due to the slow pace of it. I hate the game of blitz not because I always lose, but it is an insult to chess when it is played rapidly. It can be likened to harsh, unthought, biased, angered decisions! Chess is a classic game that needs to be respected for its unimaginable possibilites in each and every step. The only way the purity and sanctity (literally) of the game can be maintained is by playing it slow, unless you really think fast, treating it as the very essence of your life. Think of each step as an important decision of your life, knowing quite well how a wrong move can change the entire scenario!

I don't follow any standard opening schemes or anything like that, nor do I know any standard defences, but I do get inspired by opponents moves at times and try to carry these into my game too, with less success though! Enough talk about me, back to the game...

Stalemate, as every chess player knows, is a situation where the game can't move further, because (the current player doesn't have her King under check and) any of the player's available moves would put the King under check. This results in a kind of a draw thats mostly frustrating for the opponent if she's leading! This topic stuck me from a puzzle: Knight's tour. The situation that one gets in while solving the said puzzle is similar to the title. I found it very difficult to finish it off once, that too with a pattern-help from someone else. (As a trivia, this colleague's resume was filtered by me and he got a slight advantage over others since he'd put *chess* under hobbies on his resume :)