The Game and the Rules by meritamon

After watching Across the Sea and seeing the Senet games that the 2 brothers were playing, i came up with a theory that could enlighten the vision on the game that the 2 are playing and the rules that they are following. It's as simple as a Senet game.

As I replied to another post, the game the two brothers are playing is a Senet game. It's a game that has it's origins in Ancient Egypt and was very popular among all social classes. Senet was also placed, among other objects, in the tomb of the deceased, to protect him in the journey in the afterlife. The game required good strategy skills and a successful player would be under the protection of Gods.
The most interesting is that in the Lost context, Senet makes sense. Why?

The Senet board is composed by 30 cases, arranged on 3 rows. The game begins at the first row from the left to right, continues to the second row, right to left, and third row, left to right again. At the end of the last row, you have some trap/safe cases that can turn the game situation and the evolution of the players.

Well, Senet in made to be played by 2 people; each player uses 6 pieces of a certain color, a different one that his opponent uses. The turns are determined by a trow of 3 sticks (dices weren't invented yet at that time). You can skip cases in function of the number indicated by the sticks and the first player to get all his pieces off the board wins the game.

We can clearly see the 2 brothers playing Senet in Across the Sea; Jacob tries to move on on his pieces from the first row to the second or the third. His brother clearly tells him that he couldn't do that because it's against the rules or something like that. It's obvious then that the game that is played between the two follows the direct rules of the Senet game.

So, there are, or were, 6 candidates left, the 6 pieces that Jacob could move around the board (i didn't have time to establish the 6 pieces of his brother, certainly Claire, Sayid etc). The game is approaching the end so the last cases are hiding traps or other kind of surprises that can change the situation completely.
So if we follow the rules of Senet, Jacob's brother, MIB or however you want to call him, can't kill the candidates because it's against the rules of the game. The the "Rules" might be actually the rules of playing Senet. Like Jacob couldn't move his piece from the first to the third row, MIB can't either, because he would break the rules. The game must be played from the beginning to the end without cheating.

The people who are crossed from the list are eliminated from the game. for example, Kate is crosses off, that doesn't mean she's dead, but only that she finished her evolution in the game and she represents a piece that got out. The battle will go on with the remaining pieces.

I'm not sure yet what means the end of the game, i mean what happens to the pieces that get left out. Maybe the winner's game pieces will get off the island (fact that would be paradoxical, considering that Jacob wanted to get the people on the island not off. But anyways, apparently Jacob's point of view changed in time: while living with the fake mother, he agrees that they come and destroy and it always ends the same. While with MIB on th beach, Jacob is the one that summoned the people on the Island and his brother tells him exactly the same words that they face mother taught them).

Maybe the loser's people/pieces will die. maybe they will suffer a conversion and live. But we're near the end on the Senet game and the four cases of the third row could be full of surprises.