Chess is a game for kings

In the times of the new and many, can you be amused with the simple and timeless? Chess is simple like the blues are simple. Simple enough to allow for timeless style. A basic structure that breeds creative thought.

I was an impatient kid. I still am.

One of the best things my mom did for my mental development was show me chess. We had a board at home and I would play my sister but it was at the local library where I fell in love with the puzzles and competition.

Chess is a fair game, it makes sense. A prayer to logos. You start with the same pieces as your opponent and you can’t make up the rules as you go along. The rationality called to me, the prediction. You see all the cards in your opponent’s hand, the weapons at his disposal. My older sister and I were competitive siblings. You get used to losing as the younger one, the games are not usually fair, but with chess, I stood a chance.

You have to train your instincts in chess. A move on the board will call to your gut, an urge to take your opponents hung pawn for example. But unless you are playing blitz, you learn to test your instincts with your rationality by playing out a couple moves in your head. The really good players play for consequences 20 moves from the present. There are no re-dos in proper chess games, no luck either..

I got pretty good.  I went to occasional tournaments with the local high school team and I would sit-in as 5th board for the team score. I learned to hastily jot the notation for matches down on a piece of paper so that we could go over the crucial sequences later on with our coach in the ‘dojo’- the junior high cafeteria - after school. I never wanted to study openings or memorize sequences so I was never great; I lack the supreme patience of a Grandmaster. I wanted to feel the game as it unfolded, make my own decisions in real time. The idea of memorizing someone else’s’ pre-written moves felt like cheating. It took away from the spirit of Chess, just like replacing the carved wooden tokens with bits on the digital screen robs the game of touch and visual perspective.

The talented but haunted Bobby Fischer felt the same way about memorizing moves and the spirit of the game-- so he invented Chess960. A chess game with randomly arranged back pieces. You couldn’t memorize the openings anymore, you had to rely on spontaneity and talent. But this game never caught beyond occasional games after the serious practice was done.

It’s hard to get a horse back in the stable once it’s so far gone—when everyone’s already playing the same game and people are invested with the way things are.   

Chess crafted my problem solving style, the game helped me understand logic and arguments from a rational perspective. My friends and I would always be looking for the ‘checkmate move’ in an argument.

The game fell from personal favor for a time when a long drawn out strategic struggle was hard work compared to the instant gratification of video games--  but when I was struggling to get things done in the corporate world, I felt the call of chess again; a return to the office of the general, review the playing field, assume self-interest. People aren’t as complicated as they think they are; most are just looking out for themselves. I needed to simplify things. What would this look like if it was easy?

And there is no luck in chess, only blunders from moving too quickly.

What do you do when the game ends? You shake your opponent's hand and reset the board.