There are many questions and requests from the chess friends especially from the foreign countries on Myanmar Traditional Chess. These are the excerpts from the book on Myanmar Traditional Chess by Maung Maung Lwin (Sit-tu-yin).
The game of Myanmar Traditional Chessis played between two opponents who move their pieces alternately on a square board called a 'chessboard'. The player with the red pieces commences the game. He shall set the initial position of his own side first and then the player with the black pieces shall set the initial position of the other side. After setting the position, no player is allowed to correct the position again. After setting the pieces and the completion of the setting is confirmed by both players, the game is started.
A player is said to 'have the move', when his opponent's move has been made. The objective of each player is to place the opponent's king 'under attack' in such a way that the opponent has no legal move. The player who achieves this goal is said to have 'checkmated' the opponent's king and to have won the game.
Leaving one’s own king under attack, exposing one’s own king to attack and also ’capturing’ the opponent’s king are not allowed. The player whose king has been checkmated has lost the game.
If the position is such that neither player can possibly checkmate, the game is drawn.
The chessboard is composed of an 8x8 grid of 64 equal light-coloured squares with two diagonal lines drawn clearly.
After the closing ceremony of Campomanes Memorial Yangon International Grandmaster Tournament, the friendly matches of Myanmar Traditional Chess are played between the visiting masters and Myanmar masters. Even though they learned it very recently, the visiting masters played well based on their international chess skills. But the outcome is in favour of the local players. Malaysian IM Mok Tze Meng managed a draw against well-experienced FM Kyaw Kyaw Soe. Bravo! He can become a threat to the hope of Myanmar players winning gold medal in 2013 SEA Games in Myanmar. After the games, the chess sets and the booklets on Myanmar Traditional Chess were given to them as the souvenirs.
