Andrew Leonard has a wonderful remembrance of playing chess with Kurt Vonnegut in his Salon blog:

On a whim, he suggested that we rearrange the board. Why did the pawns have to go in front, those sacrificial lambs about to be chewed up by the slaughterhouse of the front lines, those powerless vassals of the high and mighty? Let's force the feudal lords out of their foxholes and into the hurly-burly!

Let's put the pawns in the back row, he proposed. Let's put the knights and bishops and kings and queens in the front rank!  [full posting]

I could have done without the gratuitous Ann Coulter reference, but it is Salon.