Checkmate? Purists fight to revive Myanmar's ancient chess

Gripping a monkey-faced chess piece, Thein Zaw swipes his hand across the chequerboard and topples an advancing demon, demonstrating an ancient form of the game that Myanmar traditionalists are battling to revive.
Sittuyin, as Myanmar's unique chess is called, is similar to the modern game but has distinctive pieces as well as moves that echo a time when warriors used it to fine tune real fighting strategies.
Elephants rampage across the squares, a military general marches in place of the queen and players have creative freedom to arrange many of the pieces as they wish, behind front-line pawns that start almost spear-to-chest.

"The game can feel like you are fighting a war," said Thein Zaw, a five-times Myanmar chess champion, during a recent Sittuyin contest in downtown Yangon.
His match is combative from the outset, with slain pieces quickly piling up on either side of the board.
But soon both armies become entrenched and the games reaches long into the sweltering tropical afternoon, punctuated only by exclamations, the strategic rearrangement of longyi sarongs and pensive twirling of spectacles.

The scene is a rare one in a nation where Sittuyin has retreated into the sporting wilderness.
A scarcity of traditional chess sets and dearth of available knowledge about the rules have whittled down interest, so that just under one hundred players actively attend tournaments.

"This is an ancient game and we would like to bring it back to life," Thein Zaw told AFP.
Thein Zaw's hand-carved chess set of monkeys and ogres evokes the earliest incarnations of the game in neighbouring India, playing out the mythical good-versus-evil battle of Rama and the god Hanuman against the demon king Ravana.
Experts say this suggests the Myanmar version could be over a thousand years old.
Jean-Louis Cazaux, who has written extensively on the history of chess, said Sittuyin has similarities to traditional games in Thailand and Cambodia and is an important addition to a global pantheon of chess varieties.