{"id":16811,"date":"2025-08-23T00:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T06:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/peace-is-not-all-bad\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:02:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:02:01","slug":"peace-is-not-all-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/peace-is-not-all-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace is not all bad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

The year is 1274 BC. The Egyptian Empire is at its peak and its Pharaoh is Ramesses II. Even so, the Hittite Empire from modern-day Turkey is Egypt\u2019s rival in the Middle-East.<\/p>\n

At the Orontes River in modern-day Syria the Empires clashed in the Battle of Kadesh. At first King Muwatalli II of the Hittite Empire tricked Ramesses with two spies, who misled Ramesses about Muwatalli\u2019s location and caused Ramesses to fall into a trap. But Ramesses escaped after surviving on onslaught of chariots.<\/p>\n

The war continued but the Battle was a stalemate. In large part because of this Battle, fifteen years later the two Empires signed the world\u2019s first peace treaty. With this hint in mind please try to find white\u2019s best move.<\/p>\n

Black is up a knight and pawn, its rook seals the white king to the 8th rank, who is far from home and all alone on the opposite side of the board. White cannot win.<\/p>\n

The trick is to recognize that all of the white\u2019s king\u2019s neighboring squares \u2013 d7, e7, d8, and f8 \u2013 are booby-trapped. This allows white to draw by having its rook capture black\u2019s pawn with check (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

If black\u2019s rook wins white\u2019s rook, the white king is stalemated. If instead the black king moves out of check, white trades rooks. Now it is black who cannot win with just a knight and king. Either way, peace is achieved and white has not lost.<\/p>\n

The lesson this week is that peace is not all bad.<\/p>\n

Reach Eric Morrow at ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com<\/a> or (505) 327-7121.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

move and draw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1091,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-columns","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20405,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16811\/revisions\/20405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16811"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}