I am fond of games, as those who know me well are well aware of. One of my favorite music videos from the 1980’s is the song “One Night In Bangkok,” from the singer Murray Head, which was from the musical Chess written by the guys from ABBA. Now, I have already commented at length about my love of chess [1], and I do not feel it necessary to do so again. However, I will note that while I have seen Thai people play quite a few games, especially card games, I have never seen a Thai person play chess, not once.

I have, however, often seen my students here at Legacy play checkers, and I have seen checkerboards elsewhere in Thailand, even at random restaurants (which means it probably is a habit of a fairly substantial population of Thai people). As opposed to chess, checkers is a far more straightforward game, with much less complexity. Nonetheless, Thai checkers presents one challenge that a Westerner like myself is not used to in playing the game, a difference that appears to have interesting relevance in the case of Thailand.

In the West, if you play checkers and move a piece to the opposite side, it becomes a “king.” In the West, at least as I have played the game, this means merely that the king can go on either side, with the same sort of one square on a diagonal at a time pace. The game is much slower that way, and having a king, while an advantage, is not overwhelming. This is not the case when playing Thai checkers. In contrast to the “constitutional” monarch that the Western checkers king is, the Thai king is an absolute monarch, brooking no criticism and destroying all comers by behaving like a chess bishop, prowling the diagonals of the checker board with ruthless brutality, combining the power of church and state, as it were, into a frightening checker piece slaying machine.

As an observer of quite a few Thai checkers games, I have come to the conclusion that the first person who gets a king in such a game has a huge advantage, and that there aren’t a lot of ways that someone can effectively deal with the threat without having a king of his own. The change in ruthlessness once one side or the other possesses a king in Thai checkers is remarkable, and pretty shocking. I was left as intrigued as always (and as dangerously so) about how the subtle changes in game rules reflect different cultural assumptions and political worldviews. Truly, this is a rich seam of research, if it can be conducted safely.

So, I am left once again pondering the relationship between games and the societies that host them. It is clear that the ruler of a Thai checkerboard is far more fearsome than the ruler of a Western one. Perhaps that is a lesson we would all be wise to consider, rather than assuming that the attitudes of people to leadership are the same all around the world. I can speak from experience that this is not the case at all, despite the fact that my own worldview is typically (perhaps even stereotypically) Western in approach. But I prefer chess to checkers anyway, and any day.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/a-game-of-chess/