Your move

I have a modest competitive streak, which, together with my black and white view of events and my passive-aggressive tendencies give chess a certain appeal, at least to those trying to keep me away from polite society.

So when I was stranded in the pouring rain with ‘David’ the chirpy Battambang tuk-tuk driver, I was delighted when he pulled out a simply-carved but unmistakably chess-like game.

But Khmer chess, I was soon to learn, is subtly different from the game as I know it.

Thankfully the pieces are the same, if a little hard to distinguish at first. However the pawns line up not on the second and seventh ranks but one further forward, the third and sixth. Interesting! Also, there is no ‘queen on its own colour’ rule – in fact the board was just squares, with no black or white– and my king was positioned to face his queen and vice versa.

So far so similar. Rooks, knights, kings and queens all moved as normal too, as did pawns (though as they started further up the board they lost their initial two steps option).

However bishops – usually twin powerhouses zooming the board or bearing down on the enemy – were restricted to moving one square at a time, diagonally and also forwards and backwards (but not sideways). Perhaps this gives them some power I didn’t appreciate, but to me they were sad, emasculated versions of their usual proud selves – give me a knight any day!

Another difference was castling – this didn’t exist in the khmer version, but to get your king to the safety of a corner he was allowed to move like a knight for his first move – weird, but it kind of has the same result.

And so we got underway, and whilst I struggled to grapple with the unfamiliar shapes and moves, the general strategy of developing pieces whilst safeguarding the king still held.

We soon had an audience of course – what activity I do here doesn’t? – though the most active member was a serious little future grandmaster who busied himself storing all the captured pieces. I liked to think I could give him a few strategic tips. Pushing forward on my queen’s side I engineered a clever exchange to give me a passed pawn – and to put the wind up those Cambodian upstarts!

Ah! One problem – I was still working on the assumption that my pawn could be queened on reaching the eighth rank. Not so fast! A pawn, explained David patiently, is not queened but rather flipped over, at which point it can move one square on any diagonal. So the reward for my strategic brilliance was just another kind of weakly shuffling bishop!

This also meant that it was really hard to press home an advantage, and despite going into the endgame two pawns up –a decisive lead in our game – here we ended in stalemate. Or should I say, and honourable draw.

It was certainly the best mental workout I’ve had for ages, and David seemed to enjoy it too. Maybe it was the effort of making up all those new rules to confuse the foreigner!

Your move.