The "Game" and the "Rules"

"Backgammon's the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets
when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand
years old. That's older than Jesus Christ. Two players. Two sides. One
is light, one is dark. Walt, do you want to know a secret?"

John Locke - "Pilot"


The producers have hinted since the very beginning that the light/dark
motif would continue to be im****tant during the entire run of the
show, and "games" have shown up more often than I can remember or
count, so it's impossible for me not to figure that means something in
the overall scheme of things - but it wasn't until this last episode
that we got any actual reference to "rules" to whatever "game" is
being played. Assuming that Ben wasn't simply lying his ass off again
(something I'm never going to discount since lying is as much a part
of Ben Linus as his beady eyes), it would seem that he and Widmore are
both familiar with some kind of framework that may or may not still be
in place.

In all this talk about "rules" and whether or not Widmore broke them
got me thinking - Keamy was readily willing to pretty much do anything
he had to do to "get" Ben.  Miles was in it to make money and figured
he could do so by claiming Ben was dead with the apparent belief that
his word alone would be enough.

So, what exactly makes Ben so valuable ALIVE that Widmore would go to
all the trouble? Is this "game" like "Capture the Flag" with the Flag
being Ben Linus?  Doesn't seem all that logical, considering Jacob and
the fact that most of the Others don't seem to look to Ben as being
some kind of king.

And where, exactly does John Locke fit in.  Just about every flashback
shows him playing some kind of game.  He obviously loves 'em. He beat
the chess game on the Flame computer, something Mikhail claimed was
impossible. He knows about and was apparently employing the
"Australian strategy" in RISK :-)  Did Jacob/Craphole choose him
(Ben's replacement, perhaps?) because he was good at games in addition
to being able to be easily manipulated (a quality Ben certainly does
NOT share with him)?

RWG (more to come as we learn more about the "game")