The Zen of Checkers

Checkers was for many years known as “draughts”, and was played actively and daily by Roman soldiers, of course for money, and the practice has continued right up to the present day, as you’ll see around any cracker barrel or its equivalent, in any small town, anywhere on the planet and beyond.

Roman soldiers had little to do other than road-building, and eagerly sought exciting ways to pass the little leisure time they had to themselves, and every game they played involved money, even hopscotch, where the purse was placed on the chalked or stick-inscribed game layout.

Chess was played by the sons of rulers, to teach elements of strategy and defense, and Tic-Tac-Toe was a murderous game where you could lose your shirt quicker than a five-card stud player can lose theirs.

Many games are considered stress-busters, and backgammon is probably the best-known relaxation board game ever invented, although kalah and checkers might be just as popular.

In the days of no radio, no tv, no computers, no online shopping and gaming and chatting, there was only board gaming, which includes cards, dice — anything you can play on a tabletop or in the center of a circle of squatting people.

Often, the pieces will be food, each piece consumed as it is taken. This can be a total bludgeon if the pieces are booze-laden truffles or hash brownies.

Strip Checkers is played by removing one article of clothing at a time per each piece taken by your opponent, socks, shoes, gloves, anything in pairs counting as “one article”, so you might as well just wear one of them and take them off first.

Cruel Cock fights, dog fights and frog-jumping contests were popular back in ancient and medieval times, and although most of those events are outlawed in civilized countries, they do continue to dominate the darker side, and abound in every corner of the world.

Human fighting is very much still a part of your various world-cultures, but seldom is the loser slain at the end by the victor, but the Romans did little else, and there are a large number of blood-sport arenas throughout the ancient empire’s land holdings.

Don’t think that it was just the West that invented games, no indeed, nor the New World inhabitants. Every human has to stop and take a break when the darkness gets too dark to see even a blur of motion.

In short, dawn to sundown, humans are active, and that’s all there ought to be about that story, but people tend to remain awake during the dark hours, and that means trouble, and that starts with “t” and “t” rhymes with “p”, and that stands for “pool”.

Yes, pool and billiards are designed with the same goal in mind, to take up some slack in the time-frame with a bit of mindless tedium, punctuated by the occasional side-bet.

Take away the gambling, and you have the perfect stress-buster in ANY kind of game. Gambling adds stress, which obliviates the good effects of gaming of any kind.

Checkers, unlike chess, has only one possible moving action and one possible “taking” action, that of jumping over an opposing piece.

In chess, there are several different characters, each with its own peculiar way of moving and taking prisoners. In the game of chess, the pieces remain with the set, while in the ancient style of playing checkers and tic-tac-toe, the pieces were food or money, so when you lost a piece, you lost actual food or money, and had to keep feeding the game with more coins as you lost.

In the case of sports card flipping, you’d try to keep your more valuable cards until things got desperate and you were down to your last few cards, but showing those high value cards would get you into a game, for sure, while low value cards did nothing for your social standing.

The pieces in the earliest board and dirt games were not permanent parts of the game, and could be lost. In the old days, you re-created the game out of pocket change every time you opened a game.

So what IS the Zen of Checkers???

You sit.

In French, this is called a “seance”, a sitting. Keep it simple, disregard all the romantic claptrap about it, and you’re sitting very still, your breathing soft and regular, your emotional state calm, your mental state level and silent, your spiritual state uplifted and soaring.

Your opponent makes a move, and in a flash of perceptual inspiration, you observe a cunning and clever opportunity to slam-dunk the game right at the outset.

You make your move and you wait.

Your opponent does nothing like what you expected. Suddenly, every single one of your pieces has been jumped and taken, and you’ve lost the game almost as soon as you started.

Zen is indifferent to the common practice of the untrained Zen Gamer.

The Zen of Checkers does not rely on the specific game, but on the nature of the game, and the realization of the goal, the visualization of perfection and personal diffusion into the One. For this purpose, checkers is ideally suitable.

Chess is too intellectual to really qualify as a Zen game, although I’m going to get letters on that one, I can lay odds, but I have proofs galore.

The Japanese Zen game of “Go” is, of course, the world-leader in Zen table games, but I would like to proffer a serious alternative to those who can’t afford to spend every waking moment in pursuit of the subtleties of the game.

In short, if you showed up at a Go Club in Japan, you might have a chance against the janitor of the local Yeshiva, but at the club, you wouldn’t be able to last a single minute.

Checkers, on the other hand, can be played by the dumbest creatures you ever saw in your life, and they somehow manage to get through the game without dumping the board or giving up in despair because the problem is too intellectually challenging.

Same with Tic-Tac-Toe and Hopscotch, they don’t require a lot of gray matter to play them. A game of Go or Chess takes a Rocket Scientist to make a real game of it, but checkers, like I said, can be played by a couple of hamsters and they’ll do just fine.

Backgammon is very scientific, very tricky, very very complicated in its most sophisticated and elaborate gambling form, and you would do well to avoid the whole matter right from the very start, unless you’re prepared to give up a large portion of your time and attention to its mastery. Like chess, it has many avenues and complexities.

So does the game of Checkers, but nobody seems to notice. Like chess, you have to think several moves ahead, see the opponent’s probable actions and predict the outcome.

If you’re wrong, you lose nothing but a little face, in the modern world.

It’s not just Zen that should interest you about Checkers. Properly played, with the right pieces on the right board, your Zen Checker Set could well be a StarGate or Time Tunnel, and it’s really easy to make them work in this way with a few simple steps, keeping in mind that anything once in contact with a thing will tend to remain in contact — First Law of Magic, and not coincidentally the First Law of Quantum.

Keep in mind that the board has 64 possible squares of space into which you can move and in which pieces can be taken. There are 16 pieces on each side for a total server capacity of 32 “players” or pieces, or entire units of military forces, each side under the direction of the White God or the Black God, which are, of course, you and a friend.

Note that I said “White God” and “Black God”. If I had red and blue foam pads instead of white and black, or in addition to the white and black, I’d be eager to use them. Red and Blue are the classical team colors going back to the days of “Remember When???”.

Also note that it’s not the traditional version of the War in Heaven between Celestial and Infernal Angels, although that’s not a bad scenario. Think more along the lines of friends with a common aim — to pass some time quietly and in contemplation. That means the game can’t consume your total attention. It’s a way of getting there, not the destination itself.

Checkers can be mind-numbing, which automatically allows you total freedom to in-dwell with deep consciousness while actively playing an admittedly very slow game which will be even slower if you’re doing it right.

Want to raise the Work Odds? No problem, just add your standard chess timer with a maximum of whatever number of seconds you select, or use the old-fashioned salt or sand hourglass, available at any well-stocked pantry shop. The time-limit will add some stress, but it will keep the attention rooted pretty well.

Add money or food or some reward for winning, and the attention will be even more easily attracted to the game, albeit for an entirely wrong reason, unless you’re unattached to the objects of exchange — meaning the pieces.

Even deeper levels can be achieved by using inductions and active quantum mechanics in the form of CQR amulet, activated SuperBeacon and Matrix and of course, your captured atmosphere in the Dome or Double Domes that you’ve learned how to charge up and activate. If you haven’t yet gotten the instructions for the domes, they’re in several blogs that you should have no trouble finding if you are any checker player worth your salt.

Salt, by the way, was an item of commerce — it was money in some parts of the ancient world, and your fortune could dribble away in a heavy downpour, so always keep your camels covered. Never ride ’em hard and put ’em away wet. If you never heard the expression, you never rode a horse that wasn’t a stable plug.

Although you are playing with delicate objects, they are protected in the coin-safe acrylic capsules. Imagine what would happen to them if you handled them directly.

As in all games, there are two distinct Methods of Play. Counting the cards, or Instinctive Playing.

By-the-numbers will probably win the game, but lose the purpose — self-perfection. Instinctive play is best, even if you happen to lose. In 4.5 billion years when the sun goes nova, nobody will care, nor do they now.

Remember that the Time Tunnel checker sets can only go back as far as their own time periods, and only to the place from whence they came. Some coins are expensive and some are almost impossible to obtain, but I include whatever I am able to find for you.

I have made a few Zen Checker Sets and Time Tunnel Checker Sets over the past several decades, and I’ll be posting the basic ones on my website, TheChessmaster.com, and you might find some or all of them of personal interest.

ROMAN CHECKER SET — $275 — You can get a much higher quality of Roman coins, but they will cost extra, up to several thousand dollars, if you insist, depending on quality and scarcity of the coins, but this is all by your choice. At the basic starter price of $275, you get a complete set of 32 pieces of Guaranteed Authentic Roman Bronze Coins dated about 2,000 years ago up to the reign of Constantine, more or less. You also get a beautiful stained & polished modern cherry hardwood chess board to match your checker pieces. You can also use these amazing checker pieces for Backgammon and Tic-Tac-Toe, and those boards are available at a slight extra cost, or you can order the combination set.
MACABEES vs. ROMANS — $800 — From the Holyland, you get 16 Roman bronze coins for one side, and 16 First-Century Jewish Widow’s Mites for the opposing team, just like it was in the good old days when men were men and sheep were nervous. All the coins are around 2,000 years old, and of course come with a COA Certificate of Authenticity. What a great gift for Chanukah, which celebrates the event. A beautiful cherry hardwood board to match your pieces is included.
ANCIENT JEWISH COINS CHECKER SET — $3,500 — A beautiful and impressive collection of important Jewish coinage throughout the history of the Jewish people. Guarantee: nobody else will have one. These are nightmarishly difficult to assemble, because most of the better coinage is too thick for the mountings. Allow 2-4 weeks for Giuseppe and me to find your coins, then a couple days to prepare them into mountings. A special board is included to match the size of your set. These are LARGE pieces that work only with a larger checkerboard.
AESCLEPIUS THE HEALER CHECKER SET — $3500 — This is a very unusual checker set made from very rare and important Archaic & Hellenic Greek bronze coins. Some of the coins are worth the price of the whole thing, but I decided to not attribute them and sell them separately, so you get the best there is for an average price — not a bad deal. These coins are very active psychically, and will prod your ancient memories constantly. Don’t go there, if you don’t want this effect, meaning get something a little less powerful, perhaps. This is a terrific way to maintain a great ancient Greek collection of wondrous and stunningly beautiful coins dated 3,000 years, and includes the great locations of the ancient Greek world. Includes cherry hardwood board.
WAR IN HEAVEN CHECKER SET — $275 — Celestial Angels vs. Infernal Angels in this Eternal War, where each game indicates a battle waged in the murky avenues of time and space, revealing the real reason for the Creation. To have a game, of course, and my thanks to you for participating willingly and whole-heartedly. These angels are hand-inscribed by me in a gold-colored art metal with a silvery back, or for a slight extra charge, I’ll make them out of rolled-out solid .999 fine gold, in which case, both sides of the “coin” are gold, of course. The cost of pure solid gold will vary from day to day, so inquire if you’re interested. I estimate at today’s prices that you’d have to pay around $2,000 for the solid gold version. A cherry wood board is included.
SILVER WALKING LIBERTY CHECKER SET — $950 — Arguably the best-known silver coin in U.S. history, but certainly the most popular among collectors, and hoarders. I make a variety of SOLID SILVER half-dollar “Walking Liberty” checker sets, the price determined by the quality of the coins. At the lowest level, you get a very nice, very decent coin, but don’t expect a knockout sensation at this price. You’d start to see something stunning in 1942-1945 U.S. “Walking Liberty” Half Dollars at about $9,500, around $150 apiece, times 32 pieces, plus the board. Of course you get a COA with this set. If you wanted a set with numismatics in there, you can expect to pay upwards of $100,000, and that’s the low-end figure. One single high-grade Walking Liberty can cost more than that, and there are plenty of them out there on the market. Special box-board is included.
ST. GAUDENS $20 GOLD — $300,000 — Not my personal first choice, but a GREAT way to hold gold if you’ve a mind to do that, and a fantastic way to enjoy your personal wealth, once you’ve papered the walls with millions of ten-thousand dollar bills, but it’s a risky business if you have casual visitors over for tea and board games unless you count the pieces at the end of the game. An item like this is unusual enough that it would certainly bring people into a shop or professional practice, and could be exhibited to great advantage locally, with proper security. A bank or coin dealer might be delighted, and they might have a customer for the set at double what you paid, which is the way to go when dealing retail. This is a non-returnable set, sold as-is, no kidding. I can’t afford to get stuck, and I don’t have the coins to begin with — I’m not made out of bricks, you know. I have to obtain them at a reasonable price for the state and condition of the coin, and I have to handle and prepare them and put them in mountings without injuring them, which means white cotton gloves and all that, so give me at least a week to find the coins I want, not the coins that happen to show up. This makes into a very large and very heavy and very impressive game piece, but it’s not for daily use, even for the horribly rich, because it’s not as practical and comfortable to use as the smaller, lighter pieces on the special box-board that is included.
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR 11th CENTURY CHECKER SET — $18,500 — Don’t even bother offering less. This is totally irreplaceable. The pieces were found by metal detector at the Fortress of Sidon, the last stronghold of the Crusaders who lost the war that time, too. Guaranteed genuine, highly authenticated and very exceptional, these rare coins have been fashioned into an incredibly rare checker set, one that can be given to someone who has everything, with a guarantee that there is not another one like it anywhere on the planet. A special box-board is included.
CRUSADERS vs. SALADIN — $7,500 — This set is composed of a variety of Crusader coins on the one side, and Islamic silver coinage on the other side. Special box-board is included to properly house this set.
BUFFALO NICKEL CHECKER SET — $275 — I predict that this will be very popular. The buffalo nickel is beloved among collectors, and a complete set will often bring many thousands of dollars. This is NOT the rare variety of anything, just nice FULL DATE buffalo nickels, good horns, as I said, nice sharp finely detailed coins — mounted in a small setting for a smaller checkerboard, which is included.
BUFFALO NICKEL LARGE CHECKER SET — $375 — The same buffalo nickels, but more work for me. They come mounted in a larger acrylic capsule to make a larger piece, for a much larger cherry hardood board, which is included.
BUFFALO NICKELS HIGH GRADE LARGE CHECKER SET — $4,500 — This is high grade, but not key dates.
BUFFALO NICKELS KEY DATES — $55,000 — I have the coins, if you’ve got the ready cash. This is a potent and powerful set of very impressive buffs, including one 3 legged and of course the 1918/17 “8 over 7”. Worth every penny, and absolutely unique on this planet, although I can’t say as much for some nearby worlds. Special Box-Board is included.
MERCURY DIMES CHECKER SET — $275 — A stunning collection of 1940-1945 solid silver dimes mounted as small pieces for the smaller board, which is included.
ABE LINCOLN CHECKER SET — $125 — A nice set of Lincoln Wheaties in a smaller mounting for the smaller portable checkerboard.
LINCOLN HIGH-GRADE CHECKER SET — $4,500 — Absolutely amazing fine detail on these coins dated from 1909 to 1941 make this a virtual treasure to behold. This is a very difficult set to put together and will require about a month of my efforts to assemble the coins in matching grade and conditions, which is the only way to fly. I mount them in LARGE pieces and include the large box-board to house them.
CIVIL WAR CHECKER SET– $4,500 — Indian Head Pennies dated from 1859 — Harper’s Ferry — all the way to 1865, the year of Lincoln’s assassination, these are rare and important coins, and don’t come cheap, and the search will require about 2-4 weeks to complete a matching set. Board is included.
INDIAN WARS — $3,500 — A beautiful set of matching Indian Head pennies dated 1870-1879. Hard to find, rare, scarce, expensive, but a fine group of coins can be had in these dates, providing a great TIME TUNNEL EFFECT to that period when the Wild West was just opening up to settlers, which meant war with the Indians, of course — it’s humans of Planet Earth — what else could happen?
BABYLONIANS vs. SUMERIANS — $450 — Sure, it’s cheap, but I’ve had these materials for over four decades and they cost very little at the time. Due to a new invention in the way the capsules are used, I can now make bead pieces. Name the time, place and specific culture — such as “Olmec”, “Toltec”, “Zapotec”, etc., and I can probably deliver.
BROTHEL TOKENS of the OLD WEST — $275 — These are the ONLY reproductions I will make up as a checker set, only because the originals are all-but-unobtainable at any price. One thing I can guarantee — there’s not another one like it in your home town, that’s for damn sure. What a great gift for a Man-Cave, eh? Goes right along with the gift subscription to the port download sites, which I don’t offer here, but of course, in the larger sense, they’re part of my Greater Plan — the one I came up with when my Great Plan went haywire back around 1 million B.C. — and have a definite place in coin history, at least until the human race has been replaced by something that doesn’t use or need currency for its transactions, like the cockroach, the ant, the fly, or the rat — they all seem to do well under difficult circumstances.
HEALER’S CHECKER SET — $275 — Contains Healing Sigils, can be played with your client as a calming and healing agent. Makes a healing session fun and easy to take for those who might have trouble with the healing if it were delivered in a more orthodox manner. In short, it doesn’t have to LOOK like healing to BE healing. Try this and see how it works — you will be amazed at how EASY it makes things when the client is resistant or uncomfortable with the ordinary practices.
BUDDHA MEDITATION CHECKER SET — $275 — Old Chinese coins make this a very potent meditation connection tool, directly wired into the ancient world of the Orient, it will take you there on dragon wings. Special checkerboard to fit your set is included. Can be ordered in the larger version at $375.
DREAMWALKER CHECKER SET — $275 — Play across the dimensions with this space-changing checker set. Weird and wild quantum effects and slipstreaming as you play, then returns you to original starting point, guaranteed. Special small board included. Portal sigils are made by me, by hand, on special craft metal.
DREAMWALKER CHECKER SET LARGE — $375 — Very large pieces and a large board make this attractive as a home unit, but not really portable in the “throw it in the handbag” way. I make the Portal Sigils by hand on craft metal.
DREAMWALKER SOLID GOLD CHECKER SET — $1850 — Made of solid .999 pure gold, these are each handmade by me on rolled-out pure, solid gold heavy foil, then wrapped in the capsules and they’re ready for play and for astral and dreaming work.
BYZANTINE GOLD CHECKER SET — Created from guaranteed authentic ancient Byzantine gold “solidus” coins, this will set you back quite a bit, but it will be the only one of its kind on Planet Earth, that’s a fact. Nobody else can assemble this or make it as I am able. Price? Unknown, captain. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
18th DYNASTY EGYPTIAN — $675 — Guaranteed Authentic Excavated ancient ROYAL beads from the North Palace at Amarna, not “mummy” beads, not for the dead but the living, these came from the personal apartments of Princess Meryt-Aten, sister of King Tut, and the number of sets I can make is severely limited. Even so, I have kept the price of these literally priceless relics low enough to make the set affordable. No other collector has beads from the palace, and there are very few non-mummy beads in existence anywhere. These were obtained directly from the Egypt Exploration Society at public auction and were found by Petrie. The larger pieces have his handwriting on them, but those pieces are NOT included in this set.
MEDIEVAL MAGICAL MANUSCRIPT CHECKER SET — $675 — Guaranteed Authentic parchment scraps from an unattributed Medieval text on alchemy, magic and wizardry, contained in weighted acrylic capsules to make them easy to use and nicely balanced in the hand.

There are more checker sets on the way, but I’m concentrating on putting together checker sets that have never been seen or dreamt of before, with pieces that are almost unobtainable or in some cases entirely so.

My idea is to attract attention to my eBay site, but also to make a fun entry into the world of meditation gaming, as we have done with the GODD® Virtual Gaming Physics Engine.

Okay, back to work on coins AND GODD Game — I’m working currently on Tesla IV, the Rise of the Triad, which is due for release real soon, along with the gaming poster signed by all four developers. That’s right, four. We have the output of several hundred, but it’s just four of us at the moment, putting out all those hundreds of ORBs.

See You At The Top!!!

gorby