Al pearson 16:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC) Author's note. This essay originally appeared in slightly modified form in The Shuttle, the bimonthly newspaper of the Weavers Way Co-op, a food co-op located in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Chess is fun. And the most fun you can have playing chess is to play chess seriously. For only then can you enjoy chess as being among the most sublime of the artistic engagements of the mind, ranking with mathematics, music, pure science.
A math professor in college, who also was organist at his church and a devotee of Bach, first gave me insight in this matter. He was presenting the proof of a theorem in topology (one of the 3 main branches of mathematics). He wrote each logical step in the theorem proof on the board, pausing to give a word or two of explanation for each step. After writing the last step of the proof he turned and looked at us with what was nothing less than the most simultaneously beatific and Alfred E. Neuman-like face and said, "Isn't that elegant?"
Chess is similar in mathematical elegance. It goes like this. The object of the game is for one side to checkmate the other's king (not capture the king, which is illegal; or take more pieces than your opponent, although this will help you accomplish checkmate). The game begins with some conventional opening moves in which each side is maneuvering for an advantage. With blunder-free play - i.e., neither player has, for example, given away pieces for nothing - the question whether either side has an advantage early in the game is not readily apparent, which is partly why the game has held interest for centuries. Eventually one player sees an advantage in a particular position and begins to make moves to exploit the opportunity towards checkmate, or sees the other side has an advantage and begins to defend to force the other side to make optimum moves or else lose the advantage. In any event the point is that checkmate is possible in the particular position. The only question remaining is to come up with the steps to get there, to "prove" the potential checkmate. Isn't this what the mathematician does? The mathematician has a hunch that a certain theorem is logically true, but the task is to demonstrate the truth through a series of logical steps, called the "proof." Now, was the theorem not true until it had been proved? Or wasn't it always true, but simply never guessed and never demonstrated? Similarly with a chess position, the checkmate is not something that lies at the end of a quest, but something that actually resides already in the position! It is not something, which must be gained, but rather not lost by error, that is, by inaccurate play. Or, more precisely, the checkmate is there to be proved through accurate play, else with inaccurate play the proof be lost. But if it is not lost, if the proving moves are found, what has been accomplished is of the utmost mathematical elegance and aesthetic brilliance!
Well, surprise, surprise! Haven't we always seen chess depicted in the trappings of knightly armor and might? And don't we see a generation of young players acting out the violence of the chess game in that Harry Potter movie? Slamming pieces on the board, crashing pieces against opposing pieces that they are capturing (I would use, by the way, the verb "removing" even though "capturing" is the official rule book term.), then gleefully lording it over crushed opponents, who though crestfallen now will have their violent revenge in another game in turn against their own victim. You may say I have sour grapes for losing to kids (which I have on numerous occasions!). But am I or any other player the embodiment of the evil depicted in Harry Potter? Do I or anybody else deserve this?
As a side note, my objection to the good vs. evil scenario as represented in Harry Potter is that it trivializes that ethical struggle and takes the focus off what is truly evil in the human situation, namely greed and materialism that drive conventional western society and wreak violence both at home and abroad. Harry Potter is part of the bread and circuses propaganda that are fed to us like pap by the powers that be through the commercial media.
In light of this, I have formed, in my own mind, the Society for the Elimination of Violence in Chess. Also, in protest to the idea that chess is good because of the correlation between chess and performance in school - which in my view is subjugating chess to the purposes of a materialistic, prepare the kids to be ciphers in the conventional commercial system, program of so-called education - I am self-appointed president of the conceptual non-profit Chess for Its Own Sake.
But lest there be doubts that the above is weird, here is Marcel Duchamp in a quote from 1968:
"... the milieu of chess players is far more sympathetic than that of artists. These people are completely cloudy, completely blinkered ... madmen of a certain quality, the way an artist is supposed to be and isn't, in general."(1)
Or actually I guess the above is weird. Oh well, for fun, and a frolic for your mind, try a game of chess!
Notes:
1) Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death, by Alexander Cockburn, Simon and Schuster, 1974, as cited at [1].