Chess

**Chess** is the first episode of BFR^1, and the second episode overall. It was released on July 30th, 2023

## Characters

### Contestants

* Nori
* Pawn (debut)

## Plot

### Cold Open

The episode starts with a shot of the rice doubling from one grain to two grains. The shot then zooms out to Reachy and Nori having a game of chess, in which Nori is playing as black and only has a king, and Reachy is playing as white has a king and a queen.

Nori seems to be in a losing position, until Reachy makes a move that forces a stalemate. They proceed to have an argument over whether Reachy forced a checkmate or a stalemate. This ends with Nori letting Reachy redo its move. However the move Reachy makes endangers her queen, causing Nori to take it, leading to a draw due to lack of pieces.

Reachy then slams itself into the chess board, when it is noticed that Pawn is now standing next to the table which the chessboard is on. Pawn then asks for clarification on if Nori and Reachy are playing chess. This startles them, which Pawn apologises for.

Nori now realises that there is another possible contestant for here, meaning that the next season of Battle for Rice can start. She points this out to Reachy. Pawn is confused about this, until he hears that Battle for Rice is an object show, which immediately excites him.

The intro then plays.

### After the Intro

Reachy tells Pawn and Nori that they are the final two contestants, which both of them are pleased about. Pawn then asks for clarification on what he and Nori are battling for, which Reachy then explains that the prize is the two grains of rice on the ground. Pawn is disappointed about this, until Nori tells him that the rice doubles every episode, so that when she wins, she will get four grains of rice instead of two.

Pawn proceeds to say that Nori shouldn't be so sure that she'll win, as he has a 50% chance (which he mentions is equal to 2-1) of winning. Nori is unsure that 2-1 equals 50%, so she pulls out her calculator and enters the equation. The calculator displays 0.5 as the answer, which she notes is not 0.5. Pawn says that this is because the answer is formatted as a decimal and not a percentage, so he presses the % button to turn it into a percent, which actually changes the answer to 0.005. They then have a short argument about this before Reachy causes the voting screen to show up.

### Closing Scene

After the voting screen, Reachy is shown playing chess with Pawn. Reachy takes Pawn's Rook with its knight, however, Pawn tells her that the move is illegal because her knight was protecting her king from his queen, and moving the knight causes her to be in check.

Nori finds this funny, causing Reachy to rage and throw the board and pieces towards her.

## Trivia

* The title 'Chess' refers to both the game of chess that Nori and Reachy were playing in the opening section, and the introduction of Pawn.
* This is the first episode with Eli as a crew member.
* Nori's scientific calculator includes a DR button, which is not a common function on scientific calculators, although it may be for switching from degrees to radians for the trigonometric functions

## References

1. ↑ A situation in chess where a player's king is not endangered, yet cannot move without putting the king in danger, resulting in a draw.
2. ↑ This is because the calculator interprets the input as not "turn 0.5 into a percentage", but rather "turn 0.5% into a decimal".