Neil Mix

If you ever take the time to read through grandmaster chess games, you’ll find that once a player obtains a substantial material advantage (takes a rook, bishop, or knight, for example) the other player resigns immediately. While most inexperienced players in this position choose to fight it out, grandmasters know that once there’s a disparity in power, the game is over. Why is this?

To find out, look forward to the endgame. At the start of a game, the loss of a bishop doesn’t represent an overwhelming power differential between players. In the endgame, a bishop advantage is overwhelming.

Let’s give each piece a value representing the destructive power it wields on the board: pawn: 1, knight: 3, bishop: 4, rook: 6, queen: 10, king: 2. Starting a game by removing one player’s bishop yields difference of 4 in power, with a power ratio of 42/46, a difference of about 9.5%. Now let’s say we continue the game exchanging pieces equally between players, down to a king and a pawn for each side, plus the bishop advantage one player started with. The difference in power is still 4, but the ratio is now 3/7, or 230%.

So as the number of pieces on the board decreases, the disparity in power between players grows. Thus if you obtain a power advantage early in a game, your best strategy for the rest of the game is not to play to win, but to tie. In other words, make sure that every piece you lose is matched by an equal loss by your opponent. Taking this to its logical conclusion, you can seek out equal exchanges. Put your pieces on suicide missions, trading pawn for pawn, rook for rook, etc. Such exchanges are pointless tactically, but strategically valuable. Each exchange brings you closer to the endgame where your power differential is overwhelming.

When you employ this “equal exchange” strategy, your opponent’s job is immensely more difficult. Not only must your opponent find a way to win a piece from you (just to break even) while defending against attacks enhanced by your power advantage, but your opponent must also dodge any attempts at self-sacrificing equal exchanges. It’s too much to defend against.

The equal exchange strategy isn’t sexy or exciting. It’s a grind-it-out, lengthy process (especially when your opponent is unaware of what you’re doing). But it works every time, and it’s easy to do.

So why is this post titled Chess and Politics? Because you can draw a direct analogy to the current Democratic presidential primary between Clinton and Obama. The pundits were looking to see if Obama would strike a knockout blow last Tuesday with the Texas and Ohio primaries. He did, but the pundits don’t realize it yet. It’ll take a few weeks to sink in. Here’s why:

1. Texas and Ohio were the only states remaining big enough to provide a significant shift in the difference between delegate counts.
2. The total shift resulting from those primaries was less than 10 delegates.
3. The Democratic party’s super delegates won’t go against the will of the voters. Not this year, not this election.

All this sets up the equal exchange strategy for Obama. All he needs to do is make sure pieces are removed from the board nearly equally for each player the remaining primaries. Each time this happens, Obama’s power relative to Clinton grows.

Obama’s no longer playing to win, he’s playing to tie. And that is much easier to do. Of course anything can happen in politics (which is what the Clinton camp is depending on at this point). But I think it’s fair to say that if Obama isn’t able to get the nomination with his current advantage, then he probably wouldn’t make a good presidential candidate.