Our subject for today is a podcast. Well, not quite. It’s some kind of ad that, at the time of writing, appears as the official logo for the Dutch podcast De strateeg [the strategist] on their website. The podcast claims to deal with “worldwide trends and their impact on man, company, geopolitical relationships, and government”.1 Whether it does so — and whether it does so adequately — I cannot say, because I haven’t listened to a single episode. I can, however, say a thing or two about the position shows in the logo.
The choice of a chess position as the logo for a podcast called The strategist is understandable, but rather unoriginal. Why don’t they ever use a picture of abalone or zèrtz or something? Because that wouldn’t give me more fodder for my blog, I guess.
If that really is the reason — and what else could it be? — I appreciate the effort but would like to suggest showing the full board next time. Almost half the board is out of view! What’s that all about? In fact, I’m not even sure whether we’re looking at black’s queen’s side or white’s king’s side. We also don’t really know where white’s king was when it was still standing, but this seems like a, well, not a reasonable reconstruction per se, but it’s about the best one can do:2
It’s also utterly preposterous.3 First of all, why does black have two light-squared bishops? Did he really promote his pawn to a bishop with so many white pieces left on the board?4 What’s with the far advanced pawns on the king’s side?
Most importantly, why are all the pieces huddled together while avoiding the first rank and the h-file? This is all very irresponsible! You can’t just give us an almost symmetrical position!
Realism: 1/5 I mean, it’s not technically impossible but, man, I kind of wish it was.
Probable winner: White’s king is knocked over, which I guess means that he resigned. Possibly, he has even been mated if there’s a black rook on d8 or something, but if not he has to play Kd4 after which black could have his choice of pieces.
1. [Freely translated by your servant, who is wondering whether that string of words actually means something.] ↩
2. [You can plan your own strategies here.] ↩
3. [This is where I wish I had listened to some episodes and could have said “just like their policies”, but I can’t. Life’s hard like that.] ↩
4. [Incidentally, this is why I assumed that we’re not looking at black’s queen’s side. In that case, both black bishops would have to be promoted since the original light-squared bishop could then never have escaped from c8.] ↩