The fires await

At the beginning of each year I like to give my chess pieces a motivational pep talk.  Along the lines of:

"What are your main goals for the year?"

"What do you need to improve on?"

"What does success look like for you?"

And don't forget "Teamwork makes the dream work."

At the end of the year we do a 360 degree review.

After which as part of their balanced scorecards I rank each piece.

At the end of the day there have to be losers as well as winners. 

My lowest ranked piece by December 24th is the first one on the fire on Christmas morning.

This year my black f pawn is dead meat.  He's let me down badly on numerous occasions.

Which of your pieces is most likely to face the fires of hell this Yuletide?  

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LOL I love your posts, man. Pure energy.

I guess I would have to fire my white c pawn. Some positions call for c3, some for c4, some for NO c-pawn shove. I hate the thing. Loathe it.

C-pawn, you're FIRED!

(No offense to the user here of the same name; I respect your posts greatly!) :)

Why pick on the little guy? I bet he gave his all on many occasions. What about the boss: did he ever give up his life? Did he heck! No, he's nursing a fat bonus. As soon as the going gets tough, he throws the towel in.

Let's hear it for the little guy.

The horsy is piss poor

Thank you so much for these posts.

But I have to ask, do the pieces talk back to you? If so, I advise you get psychiatric help. You may need psychiatric help anyway...

You are missing the triangle of motivation: believe to achieve, in it to win it, and do it to it.

And it would be suicide for me to burn the one most responsible for my defeats...

Apparently "Hell" must be an offensive word.  3 posts in and the forum title has been amended to "the fires await" rather that what was originally posted "the fires of hell await"

I don't want my f pawn to merely burn I want it's soul to be eternally damned by the Dark Lord.

This requires censorship???

Can we please have some educated grown ups runnin this site please??

Just apostrophise it next time. "The fires: He'll await!"

Haha, bloody brilliant. Thanks for the laugh.

queens bishop

I think it comes close to being "religious", which never ends well on the Internet.  No worries.  Post on.  I love them.

 The barbarity! I can't believe you subject your chess pieces to this sort of cruelty. They respond to love, Beast. You must earn your pieces' loyalty, not terrorize them with a yuletide auto da fe! Justly and tenderly treated your little men will fight bravely for you. But, a pep talk from Savanarola? A review of goals and expectations from the Spanish Inquisition? It would be funny if it weren't all so horrifying. And at Christmas, too...

“Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with Church dogma must be burned without pity”. Pope Innocent III 1198 - 1216.

Here, you can replace your martyred pawn with a Pope Innocent III action figure

In the spirit of science, I'm going to toss the king onto the fire and see if the other pieces spontaneously combust.

(five minutes later)

Hey! They DON'T! Chess has been LYING to us! The pieces can survive without their king!

After a particularly sloppy game with an opponent that ate cheese-puffs while we played, I brought mine all to the tub to take a bath.

Imagine my suprise when I discovered every last one of them floated! So I carefully fished them out, tortured them till they confessed and promptly burned them as witches.