The answer, apparently, is still not enough.
I was playing a game against Dr. Wolf when something extraordinary happened. One pawn promoted. Then another. And another. Before long, my side of the board looked less like a chess game and more like a constitutional crisis in a matriarchal kingdom.
At one point I had five queens on the board.
Five.
The black king sat on e2, contemplating his life choices while surrounded by enough royal women to form a small government.
What aggravated me most was that despite commanding what was essentially an entire dynasty, I still had to be careful. Anyone who has ever played chess knows that having overwhelming material – especially overwhelming material of the most powerful piece – doesn’t automatically mean victory. In fact, it’s surprisingly easy to blunder into stalemate when your army consists of multiple queens all trying to help at the same time.
The saying “too many cooks spoil the broth” has never been more appropriate. The game ended in stalemate nine times before I finally managed to checkmate the king.
The screenshot above captures the aftermath. The game is effectively over. The black king has nowhere meaningful to go, while my queens occupy strategic squares across the board like overenthusiastic wedding planners coordinating the same event.
And yet, looking at the position made me think about something beyond chess.
Sometimes in life we spend so much time worrying about what we’re missing that we fail to notice how much we’ve already accumulated. We focus on the piece that was captured, the opportunity that disappeared, or the plan that went wrong. Meanwhile, there may already be four queens on our side of the board.
Experience.
Wisdom.
Resilience.
Skills we didn’t have a year ago.
Proof that we survived every position life has thrown at us so far.
The goal isn’t necessarily to collect queens, of course. But every now and then, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how far your pawns have travelled.
After all, every queen on that board started life as a humble pawn.
And if you’re wondering whether five queens is too many queens, the answer is simple:
When your opponent’s king is still standing, the correct number of queens is always one more.
Preferably before accidentally stalemating the opponent’s king again.