Love Over 64 Squares: The Chessay

‘Chess is, in many ways, no different from sex.’

I’M NOT VERY GOOD AT CHESS. My peak Elo, the rubric of strength that chathletes (proprietary) lord over each other, is around 1050, placing me in the 83rd percentile of all players. So I’m better than you, on average, but not ‘strong’ by any real chess enthusiast’s standard.

But boy am I enthusiastic about the beautiful sport of chess. For the amount I play I really should be better, but I play ambiently, aesthetically, on sound and feel, often playing to lose, shuffling the pieces around in satisfyingly familiar ways, ways that give me the self-induced illusion that I know what I’m doing. In chess the athlete can lie to himself to his own advantage. I remind myself of the robust reasoning behind my tactical series of moves. I pity my opponent, caught unawares in my wooden trap, writhing around like a wasp hit with water, backed into a corner and forced to give up his inventory. I have forgotten that knights can move backwards. I have lost the game.

But chess is no game. A game is flippant, and uninteresting, and one does not give one’s all to engendering self-success in the matter. None of this is true of chess, the sport. In chess one is stretched mentally and physically (don’t believe me? Watch players try to hit the clock in a time scramble) to their limits, taken out to deep and murky waters, and made to fight for their survival. Only in a game (confusing) of chess can you watch a man sit still for three hours and suddenly burst into tears. Or fall to his knees in the sheer jubilation of having outwitted and outfoxed a fellow genius, from a completely even starting position. Chess is as fair as it gets, the same pieces lined up in the same configuration, a dance of call and response, push and pull, action and reaction.

Chess is, in many ways, no different from sex. Chess is as Faulkner put it, the ‘minute clicking of little wheels’ that makes up a life. And chess is also love.

The greatest players in the world see chess in sequences of 10 or 20 moves, whirling simulations showing various possible futures. I don’t play chess this way, so calculated and determined. My chess-playing is evocative of the virtuoso pianist, or perhaps 2018 LeBron James - a complete flow state, a synchrony and synonymity with the pieces at hand; I don’t play chess to win, or to improve, or with any Kantian imperative. I play chess, categorically, or rather chess plays me, and together we carry to term a rhythmic, iridescent brainchild.

Chess is a ferociously effective prophylactic. Whenever I feel myself leaning into vice, I reach for the board to soothe my wanting mind. Sometimes one does not need to go so far as to play the game; to watch others do it is enough. Occasionally, in what is known in chess circles as the ‘magnanimous cuckception of grandmasters’, I will watch titled players watch other titled players’ matches. In every case I learn something, because it is impossible to interact with chess and not learn something. From chess I have learned to balance a relationship with the demands of a working life. I have learned graciousness and care. I have learned to call out injustice where I see it. I have learned to fix a tire. This and more chess has taught me.

Chess is tripartite, like strong government, or narrative: Opening, Middlegame, and Endgame. Through each stage the players dance, a step into enemy territory met with a tentative retreat, before the roles are reversed, and he who backed down now charges forth, in a blinding light of adherence to the truth, the player’s own truth which he has calculated and by which he firmly stands, willing to stake his life on his claim that this plan, his plan, is superior beyond all the rest.

In the Opening each player seeks to establish confidence in his plan, approval in the other (by way of their proportionately careful response) and prospective prospects. A successful opening involves a dalliance with repetition, before the players sacrifice their respective point men and begin the merciless annexation of the other’s territory. A good chess player, like a goalkeeper, takes up space to the dissatisfaction of his enemy.

Where the opening might be a romantic bolero of preconceived notions, the Middlegame is a cerebral, edgy breakdance. Here the players poke and prod at the nerves of each other, noticing always in every case and never forgetting not even one time not even when it means they dip below their 600 Elo blitz rating even though they genuinely are 1050 rapid that knights can move backwards. They shuffle here and there, never so far away as not to be dangerous, but just out of mind, until one slips and falls - and they always do - and like a shark my opponent smells blood in the water.

The Endgame is not like any dance you have ever seen. It is a gladiatorial, brutal, violent series of captures, the resulting population of which can only be one. Here each player races to calculate the fecundity of their structures, and the necessary king moves (often dormant up to now) to adjust the position in their favour. There are great Endgame players, just as there are great Opening players, and there are some, not many, but some nonetheless, who can do both.

It will come as no surprise to you now, dearest chreader (proprietary), that I am one of those unicorns. With my sparkling horn I conduct, from start to finish, the waltz between myself and opponent. I see the polyvalence of chess and with open arms I index its totality, for there is no greater way to show that you love something than to understand it.