 Hi, during these trying times of the pandemic, the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation Department realizes that choices can be limited in enhancing one's physical, social, and mental well-being. The Parks and Recreation staff have been involved in developing a number of videos in which citizens can participate in and enjoy in the privacy of their own home. These videos consist of arts and crafts, gardening, physical activity, and sports instruction, with many more to come as we work through this pandemic. Our videos will be available to you on a number of our social media outlets. We hope you enjoy, and thank you very much. Greetings! My name is Dr. Juman Mamaji Miller, and I am a program coordinator for the City of Columbia. And my name is Courtney, and I'm a park specialist at CACRAM-Bellfield Culture Arts Center. And today, we are representing CHES, yes, CHES is a game to teach you a skill of strategy. Yes, and specifically for today, we're going to look at life strategy. And we're only going to look at the basic rules, because CHES is as individual as a person. Okay. May I start off, Courtney, with a little history? Up here, we have what we know as the origination, or the origin of modern CHES, with the Moors of Northern Africa. And they played a lot back then. So, are we ready to explain these pieces, Courtney? Yes. Okay. How shall we start with? This piece right here, this is the pond. Pond represents town. Okay. And how many ponds do we have, Courtney? We have eight ponds, and the number eight represents months. Okay. Now, at this point, we are going to place our ponds, and as you see, we have a gruer size CHES board, in addition to a regular table CHES board. This was made by an art student at USC 20 years ago. So, this is one of our CHES artifacts for the rich program. And we're going to place our ponds now. If you notice, they go on the second row. The ponds go on the second row. They are the first line of defense. Oh my, and there are two sets of colors. We have light pieces and dark pieces. That's so you can tell the difference. Okay. Are we ready? The next piece we have is the rope. The rope represents the castle of the board. And I'd like to include with that, with the rope, is that I have a picture of huts or community. We're looking at some cultural artifacts here. So, the rope is our community, which is very important. And how many books are there? There are two. So, they're going to end up on the corner of the board. The rope, or the other term is the castle. The piece we have will be the knight. And the knight is the most powerful piece on the board. And the reason we say that the knight is the most powerful piece, because it has superpowers, we're going to talk about that shortly. The knight. And the reason I have a sarcophagus is because the translation of the word sarcophagus means one who protects the king. And the knight would always protect the king. So, we're going to talk about him later. Okay. All right. The next piece we have is the bishop piece. And the bishop represents spiritual. And this picture that we have here is called an ang. And an ang is an African spiritual symbol that represents man, woman, and child. We are now going to place the two bishops on the board. Our next piece will be the queen piece. The queen is the strongest piece on the board, and she represents education. And education is essential, because it gives us strength and gives us strength when we're all around for the strategy of life. We are now going to place the strongest piece, only one, the queen on the board. The last piece is the king, and the king represents your mind. And that's the purpose of this game, to capture the king. And if we talk about in life strategy, people are always trying to capture your mind. So, we want to have the strategy to have your mind or the king always in control. We are now going to place the king on the board, which is our last piece. Congratulations, you have set up a chess board. That's all there is to it. Now, part two of this is how we move the pieces. Remember, we said that chess is as individual as the person. And now we are going to demonstrate basic moves, what the superpowers are of the chess pieces. Courtney, once again, how many pawns are there? And the number eight means what? Money. So, these are our things that go back again to the Moors, that started what we consider modern chess from Northern Africa. Alright, first of all, I'm going to decide to move this coin. Miss Courtney, how many spaces can I move one? With the first move, you can move either one or two. And pawns always move in a straight line. So, we may move our pawn one or two. That's it. Like in life, like those straight, we have, you can't go back in time. So once you decide, once you make that choice, as we say up here, ultimately the only choice is the one that matters. Select your moves wisely. And I'll say that again. So, Miss Courtney, you want to move another one? Just decide so we can show whichever pawn you would like to move. Okay, let's see. I'm going to move this one, and Miss Courtney is going to move another one. Oh, what's going to happen? So, I'm going to move another one. Now, Miss Courtney, let's move and show what happens if they get next to each other their little tips. Oh, ding, ding, ding. Anytime two pawns or a pawn touches another piece on the tip. Like this. Anytime, and you can see this right here. That means that next piece over there can capture them. That's the word. Miss Courtney, if you would, we're going to let the black one capture that one. Wow, and that's it. That's capturing. That's the superpower that the pawns have. If they touch any piece, any piece on the tip, like this, that's a wrap. It's captured. And I want you to be aware of something. There's only one piece on the board that has superpowers that nobody can move. Can't make Miss Courtney. There's only one because this one can't go, and this one can't go, and even the queen or the king, nobody can move. But we're going to talk about the moves. So we're going to take up the pawns for now just so we can see the moves. All right. Miss Courtney, the rook. How does the rook move? The rook moves in a straight line. How far can they go, Miss Courtney? All the way across the board as long as nothing is in front of them. As long as nothing isn't right. So my rook, my castle, can go all the way over there and capture that one. But if there's something there, it can't do it. So it can move this way, that way, and long since in a straight line. Now, I'm going to skip over the knight for a second because that's a special one. I want to talk about the bishop, which is kind of like the rook, but it moves another way. How is that Miss Courtney? It moves diagonally. Can you demonstrate diagonal for everybody? Diagonal. And it keeps going. That's a diagonal instead of being the castle, which moves straight. Bishop is diagonal. The rook, the castle, is straight. Okay. Wow. Let's jump over here to the queen for a second. Let's not talk about the king just yet. The queen. And who is she again? The strongest person on the board. She's strong, the queen. She can move anywhere, anywhere on the board. One, two, anywhere. So our young women, you are the strongest piece on the board, the queen. I got to say that. Okay. Now, here we go. Please place our pawns back. These pieces in the back have superpowers. If you get your pawn on the other side, all the way to the other side of the board, you get any piece you want back. It's really cool. Just is an awesome game. And everybody stuck Miss Courtney. Who is the only piece on the board that can get over the pawns? The knight. The knight. Why is that? The knight. That's why it's the most powerful piece on the board. Because he can what? He can jump. Because the knight is the horse. So he can jump. One, two. And then he's got to come over one. So let's look at that again. Miss Courtney, would you like to demonstrate with yours too? Ready? And we go up. One, two. You can go left or right. It's an L-shaped move. He is the only one that can get past the line on the first move. I like working with the knight. I think that's what? Power, Miss Courtney? I think that's power to be the only one that can move. So again, the knight what? One, two, three. And he can do it anywhere. He can jump on whoever. Like a horse. Okay. So let's very quickly review. Can the knight also go up one and over two? Yes, it can. That's what the move we are looking at. So he can go up one and over two. Just as long as we have the L. That's important. So the knight helping Miss Courtney is powerful. And the queen is what? Strong. Okay. So each piece has its own skill and talent. So we are going to review. Is it okay? Miss Courtney, can you review for the pawns and tell the moves? The pawns, it has eight pieces. The number eight represents money. With the first move, you can either move up one or two in a straight line. Can they go backwards? No. Okay. All right. Can we start from the end with the two rooks? What can they do? Your rook. It goes in a straight line also. It can go all across the board as long as nothing is in front of it. Wonderful. And we'll get him. We're going to talk. And the knight, Miss Courtney. The knight is the most powerful piece on the board. He can jump over any piece. It makes the L shape. Okay. And the bishop. Your bishop moves just like your rook, but instead of going in a straight line, it goes in a diagonal line. Excellent. And our queen. Us, the queens. The most powerful piece on the board, and we can move wherever we want to go. All right. And finally, the king represents our what? Our mind. Our mind. And people are always trying to what capture what? The mind. The mind. We want to thank everybody for listening to chess fundamentals. I hope you understood a little bit more. And we're always available at City of Columbia Parks and Recreation and Bellfield Center for any additional information. Thank you very much. Thank you.